OrangeDot’s Smart Resource Management System
6 minute(s)
Many professional services businesses are struggling to reach their monthly billable hours. The problem may not be a lack of work. It may be a lack of visibility into who is available to do the work.
As more clients are onboarded and projects become increasingly complex, managers lose sight of one of the most important questions in the business: Who actually has capacity to take on new projects?
A consultant may appear available because one project is wrapping up, all while another project manager has already allocated him to a different client. A designer may appear overloaded, when in reality, she already finished half of her tasks. Another team member may have an entire day free simply because nobody can see the gap between assignments.
The result isn’t just frustrated project managers. This lack of clarity can lead to delayed projects, uneven workloads, unnecessary hiring, and lost revenue from billable hours that could have been utilized but were never assigned.
That was exactly the challenge facing OrangeDot, a leading monday.com consultancy.
Although the team already managed every implementation project inside monday.com, understanding resource capacity across the business remained surprisingly difficult. Project information existed. Time was being tracked. Consultants had schedules. But none of that information came together in a way that helped managers make educated decisions about future assignments.
The Challenge
OrangeDot specializes in implementing monday.com for enterprise organizations, meaning every consultant typically works across multiple projects at the same time. That isn’t unusual. Most consulting firms, agencies, software development companies, and professional services organizations operate the same way.
The problem is that work usually lives in separate project boards. One consultant may have active tasks on five different client boards, another may be supporting an internal initiative while delivering billable work for two customers, and someone else may already have vacation booked next month.
Viewed individually, every board looks manageable.
Viewed together, the picture gets blurry, or worse, entirely incomprehensible.
This is where many organizations begin relying on guessing instead of data. Project managers start asking around before assigning work. Team leaders check calendars manually. Delivery managers try to remember who’s busy next month. Hiring decisions are based on instinct because nobody has complete visibility into future capacity.
OrangeDot recognized this challenge long before implementing SuperPlanner.
During the webinar, Managing Director Julia Hanold explained that while they could report on historical work effectively, understanding future availability was much more difficult. Historical reports answered what had already happened, but they didn’t answer the questions project managers needed every day: Can we take on another client? Does this consultant have room for another implementation? Are we about to overload someone without realizing it?
Why Workload Visibility MattersÂ
One of the most interesting takeaways from OrangeDot’s story is that the solution to increasing billability wasn’t hiring additional consultants.
Instead, the team discovered they already had available capacity. They just didn’t realize it.
Like many professional services businesses, OrangeDot works toward weekly billable targets. Every hour assigned to client work contributes directly to revenue, while unused availability represents an opportunity that’s difficult to recover once the week has passed.
Without clear visibility, managers naturally make incorrect decisions. They delay accepting new work because they’re unsure whether the team has capacity. They assign projects unevenly because they don’t have confidence in workload data. In some cases, they even begin discussing hiring before understanding how effectively existing resources are being used.
Once SuperPlanner brought workloads together across every project, those conversations changed.
Instead of asking, “Who do we think has availability?” managers could immediately see who actually had capacity, who was approaching their limit, and who would become available in the coming weeks. That visibility alone allowed OrangeDot to dramatically improve utilization without increasing headcount.
Resource Planning Where Decisions Are Made
Managers shouldn’t decide who to assign after checking every company board or studying dashboards for an hour. They make those decisions while they’re already working inside relevant project boards.
For that reason, SuperPlanner displays the full team’s capacity directly where assignments happen.
As project managers assign a task, they can simultaneously see each consultant’s current workload, planned effort, upcoming leave, and remaining availability. There’s no need to open another report or switch between multiple boards to understand the impact of their decision.
The same principle applies on a higher level.
SuperPlanner’s Workload View combines assignments from every connected monday.com board into a single planning environment. Instead of viewing projects individually, managers gain a complete picture of each person’s workload across the organization. Hovering over a resource reveals exactly what tasks or days off are contributing to their capacity. If priorities change, work can be redistributed directly from the workload view before small scheduling issues become major delivery problems.
Capacity Should Reflect Reality
Many people mistakenly assume every employee is available for the same number of hours each week. Reality is not quite that clear cut.
Some people work full time. Others have regional holidays, planned vacations, or reduced schedules. Actual effort often differs from planned effort, and priorities shift constantly throughout the life of a project.
Effective resource planning needs to account for those realities.
SuperPlanner calculates capacity using each person’s actual working schedule, calendars, holidays, planned effort, and reported work. As consultants log time and complete tasks, workloads update automatically so managers are planning with current information instead of static estimates.
This proved especially valuable for OrangeDot because it gave project managers confidence that the workloads they were looking at genuinely reflected the team’s availability, not simply the original project plan.
The Result
Perhaps the most surprising outcome wasn’t the increase in utilization. It was how quickly OrangeDot’s decision-making changed.
Questions that previously required conversations, spreadsheets, and multiple reports could now be answered in seconds.
- Can we commit to another project next month?
- Do we need to hire, or do we already have enough capacity?
- Where are bottlenecks likely to appear?
Those answers became instantly visible because every project, every consultant, and every workload was visible in one place instead of being spread across dozens of boards.
Within four weeks, OrangeDot improved resource utilization from 50% of its weekly target to 96%. More importantly, the team replaced uncertainty with confidence. They weren’t simply assigning more work. They were assigning the right work to the right people at the right time.
Better Resource Planning Starts with Better Visibility
Most organizations already have the data they need. The challenge is turning that information into something managers can actually use. When workloads are visible across every project, capacity becomes easier to understand, assignments become easier to make, and planning becomes proactive instead of reactive.
For OrangeDot, that visibility uncovered hidden capacity that almost doubled their weekly utilization. Whether you manage a software development team, an agency, an IT department, or an internal PMO, effective resource planning isn’t about collecting more information. It’s about using the information you have in a more efficient way.
