Software Development for Capacity Planning

The vendor is required to provide software to provide a software solution for capacity planning and resource management.
- The biweekly and monthly current workflow process is as follows:
a. Program lead and grant manager (pl/gm):
• Exports actual labor distribution figures from internal accounting system (cat books).
• This system was created in-house using visual basic.
• This system acts as a budgetary tool of both allocated and contemplated costs per project/index.
• These figures are also compared with budgeted encumbrances in the second accounting system, banner (Ellucian)
• Updates program budget, correcting reconciliation discrepancies between budget and actual.
• Sends updated labor distribution figures to accounting.
b. Accounting
• Reviews targeted labor distribution budget to be entered into internal accounting systems (banner and cat books).
• Updates capacity planning tool, correcting reconciliation discrepancies between budget and actual.
• Consults with team leads to review program target plans.
• Create encumbrances in banner for next pay cycle
c. Operations lead:
• ADJUST capacity plan to reflect actual labor allocations for accurate payroll expenditures in program financial tracking
• Enters new labor allocations into program budget.
• Adjust according to historical trends, remaining funds, project end dates
• Confirms with program leads accuracy of program budgets.
• Note: operations leads and/or project engineers are the only people authorized to access the confidential employee database housed in the capacity plan.
d. Accounting:
• Updates program target plans to reflect changes made to capacity plan. create corresponding encumbrances in banner (Ellucian) and internal accounting system (cat books) for next pay cycle.
• Reconciles actual labor allocations in internal accounting system (cat books) to balance.
• Verify accuracy of all changes or corrections.
- Preferred functionality for comprehensive capacity planning solution
A. Capacity planning
• Allows for distribution of employee time/labor allocations across project teams per index, project, biweekly pay period
• Allows the grouping of employees by teams/projects/indexes
• Allows multiple users to access simultaneously with alerts when more than one user is accessing the same data.
• Customizable reporting tool:
i. Items to be included in reports - reconciliation discrepancies, spending and budgeting, and filtering capabilities.
• Customizable dashboards with drag and drop capabilities
• Uses automation to improve optimization of employee time/labor allocations across project teams, per pay period.
b. Target planning -budgeting, cost allocation, spending
• Houses the project budgets and bi-weekly project labor distribution, payroll expenditures
• Allows for exportable reports by project, index, employee
• Provides safeguards, alerts, countdown to project end
• Provides templates for necessary reporting for granting agencies such as time and effort reporting.
• Incorporates ai tools for analytical purposes
c. Integration of back end secure database
• Houses secure employee cost allocation information with the appropriate permissions to restrict unnecessary access of information.
• Must be permission/role based
• Provides a link with capacity plan, target plan, budgeting, forecasting tool
d. Project forecasting tool
• Allows for scenario “what if” projections
• Able to manipulate data easily
• Provides drag and drop dashboards, reporting with data visualization tools
• Incorporates tools for forecasting optimization
e. Reporting and analytics
• Provides visualization such as analytics dashboards and insights to indicate semester-over-semester or year-over-year trends.
• Reporting should filter on various fields and dates.
• Reports should be able to be scheduled and automatically run with the capability of being emailed to a select group.
• Allows for ad-hoc reporting.
• Allows for custom report generation.
- Contract Period/Term: 1 year