For more details about how Project Workforce Management automates and integrates organization and work breakdown structures, see Rise of the Project Workforce.
A Project Workforce Management system provides a platform for managing:
- Organization Breakdown Structures (OBS): the hierarchy of companies, divisions, departments, groups, people, and skills available to the organization
- Work Breakdown Structure (WBS): the hierarchy of clients, portfolios, projects, subprojects, work types, and tasks to be serviced
The benefits of managing a company’s OBS/WBS using Project Workforce Management are strategic, tactical, and financial:
- Strategic: With real-time reporting–which is the most critical reason to use a Project Workforce Management system–the company gets instantly updated status on the projects and people throughout the organization, with roll-up and drill-down capabilities.
- Tactical: With alerts and dashboards, and the ability to define budgets, limits, costs and revenue rates, users at all levels can be notified when thresholds are reached for any "branch" of the structures.
- Financial: Time, expense, cost, and billing data can be assigned and rolled-up to the appropriate cost centers, business units, and groups of the WBS.
Moreover, the linking of OBS and WBS components is a key benefit of Proejct Workforce Management. For example, customers can be linked to the business units that serve them; and tasks can be matched to the skills required to perform them. Once automated, OBS and WBS elements can also be integrated with other enterprise systems.
