The entire MENA region is experiencing phenomenal growth in areas like tourism, trade and infrastructural projects. Several global companies want a piece of this budding market and have created their footprint in this region. With demand and consumer expectations increasing every day, domestic establishments are not far behind.
This clearly establishes a strong case for capacity planning and capacity management.
What is Capacity Planning?
The process that helps the company identify if they have the resources and skills to execute a specific task, or even the manpower supply to meet consumer demand is referred to as capacity planning.
This is not the same as resource planning at all.
In resource planning, the business looks at the resources available at the company level and creates a forecast model to ensure that the organisation is able to meet the needs of the customers.
What is Capacity Management?
Capacity management, on the other hand, is the process that is designed to cater to the demands of the company simply by employing the approach that ensures that the existing infrastructure is of adequate size. This assessment is done to ensure that the present organisational capacity is enough to meet the current and future goals of the business.
In the majority of instances, capacity management solutions fall under the purview of the ITIL framework.
Best Practices of Capacity Planning & Management that can Help Avoid Serious Mistakes
Let’s look at the best practices of capacity planning and capacity management solutions.
Take On a Continuous Planning Approach:
Capacity planning solutions needless to say should always focus on a constant planning methodology. This is an essential exercise as it enables the company to always be prepared to manage any significant business change or transformation.
Moreover, this allows makes the business more agile by staying on top of the resources available at your disposal. You can also accurately assess if the available resources are capable to meet any new demands that may evolve in the future.
The goal is to ensure that the business is able to function more efficiently by focusing on prioritizing tasks. Gaining operational efficiency will ultimately lead to better business performance whilst gaining a distinct competitive edge over your industry peers.
Explore Multiple Workload Scenarios:
An area where capacity management solutions play a vital role is to keep exploring multiple workload scenarios. The idea is to keep evaluating resources and their potential capacity to cater to demands which may emerge in the near future without any prior warning.
Moreover, running through these workload scenarios is also one way of ensuring that you have plans in place to overcome roadblocks and challenges that may get thrown at the business at any time.
Measure Workload Analytics Periodically:
Both capacity management and planning solutions are integral when it comes to helping the business predict what may perhaps happen in the future. While the future no doubt is important, it is equally essential to stay on top of what’s happening in the present.
This is specifically in relation to workload functions and how they are currently being utilised by the business. It is vital that you check tabs on the operational performance, level of efficiencies being achieved and if there is room to optimise to boost productivity and performance any further.
This continuous assessment in capacity planning and management solutions is referred to as workload analytics which is a best practice that all business enterprises should follow. It takes into account the current workload and combines it with emerging patterns and trends from historical data to assess the scale of changes that the business can expect to deal with in the foreseeable future.
Final Note
Capacity management and Capacity planning solutions play supporting roles to one another. This is essential as it helps the business to evolve and grow in the long term.
Get in touch with an MDS CS expert to discuss capacity management and capacity planning needs of your business.