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Picture this: One person is pulling an all-nighter to prep a campaign for a client who’s changed the brief (again). A few desks away, someone else is scrolling costume party ideas because they’re waiting for the next project to come through.
Same team. Same office. Completely different realities.
It’s a scenario that plays out in client services organizations every day – and it’s a glaring sign that something’s off. Because when your people are either burned out or twiddling thumbs, it’s not just a resource management issue – it’s a big threat to your business.
If you’re serious about growth, profitability, and retaining your top talent, it’s time to rethink how you manage your most valuable asset: your people.
Why resource management breaks (even when it shouldn’t)
Client work is unpredictable. That’s a given. One day it’s business as usual, the next it’s “just one more thing,” “urgent feedback,” or “ can we move that deadline up by a week?”
These curveballs are part of client life. But when your resourcing can't flex to absorb them, things get messy.
It's why 41% of client service leaders say bad planning is the main reason projects go off the rails (Forbes), and 80% of managers blame resource constraints for burnout and staff turnover (Harvard Business Review). Add outdated tools to the mix — still the biggest operational blocker for nearly four in 10 agencies (Teamwork.com State of Agency Operations Report 2024) — and it’s no wonder chaos takes hold.
So, the question isn’t whether you’ll face chaos – it’s whether your team can roll with the punches without taking a hit on morale, margins, or quality.
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The 5 pillars of resource management chaos
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If your business is struggling with resource planning or forecasting, chances are you’re dealing with some combination of:
Too much work, too few people: Overbooking is easy; undoing burnout is not.
Overpromising and under-delivering: Sales says two weeks; delivery knows it’s six. Cue stress.
Outdated tech stack: Still using spreadsheets to manage resources? They don’t update in real time, or talk to the rest of your apps. One formula slip = hours (and dollars) lost.
Scope creep: “Just a tiny tweak” snowballs into a full rewrite, while the budget sits still.
Inaccurate data: Forecasts based on wishful thinking crumble the moment things get busy.
Any one of these can knock a project off course. Together? They’re a full-blown roadblock to growth.
So, how do you steer clear of the chaos? With a better system – and a smarter strategy.
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3 strategies to finally get resourcing right
1. Plan for client chaos
They say two things in life are certain: death and taxes. The third is that clients are going to be unpredictable. If that’s a given, why not accept it, and build a chaos buffer into your planning process?
Great resource management isn’t about rigid plans where everything runs like clockwork. It’s about flexibility and adjusting to change when clients “go rogue” or when someone’s out sick.
In practical terms, this means:
Reserving high-level blocks of time for key jobs, then refining with actual tasks as plans take shape.
Staying agile by regularly reviewing forecasts and adjusting as new work comes in.
That way, your team stays busy, but not overloaded.
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2. Avoid boom-bust cycles
Client life is naturally filled with peaks and troughs. This is normal, but you’ll want to avoid the peaks being too high, causing your team to feel resentful about bad planning, or lack of consideration for their time.
To smooth things out:
Stagger project start dates.
Break projects into manageable chunks.
Line up back up resources (freelancers, cross-trained staff) to plug the gaps.
Hold weekly standups to check in with your team, and adjust priorities before small issues become bigger problems.
This might seem straightforward, but there are still plenty of firms that don’t have this system in place and are just working project-to-project. This limits your ability to adjust priorities in real-time, and risks small issues becoming big problems.
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3. Get the right people on the right projects
Repeat clients will often have a preferred designer, video editor, or copywriter who knows their brand or project inside out. You need to be able to pivot and shuffle resources around to accommodate those demands – whether it’s by proficiency or seniority.
Create detailed role profiles to match individual skills with project needs.
Use a skills matrix to map out your team’s strengths and spot the gaps.
Don’t forget to assign projects based on skills and availability.
That’s why we’ve built a detailed skills matrix into Teamwork.com. You can see who’s available, what they’re good at, and where they’re needed – all without juggling multiple spreadsheets. It’s like speed-dating for resourcing, minus the awkward silences.
The ROI of smarter resource planning
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You’ve seen the chaos. You’ve explored the fixes. So why does any of it really matter?
Because when you improve how work is planned, assigned, and tracked, you boost your billable utilization – the percentage of time your team spends on work you actually get paid for. And when that number goes up? So do your profits.
Here’s the catch: most teams don’t know where their hours are going, or what they’re really worth. Work slips through the cracks. Scope creep goes untracked. Time isn’t logged. And revenue quietly leaks out the side.
That’s where Teamwork.com comes in. With smarter scheduling, integrated time tracking, and clearer billing data, our platform helps you connect the dots between hours worked and dollars earned.
In fact, by using Teamwork.com for one year, most client service organizations are able to improve their billable utilization by 22%.
That’s not a marginal gain – it’s a game changer. It means:
Fewer hours falling through the cracks
Less time spent chasing down overruns
More projects delivered on budget (and on time)
Happier clients and healthier margins
So while resource management might not sound game-changing, its impact on your bottom line absolutely is. Do it well, and it pays for itself – again and again.
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Ready to run the business you meant to build?
No one starts a client service firm hoping to burn people out or leave them hanging. But that’s exactly what happens when resource planning quietly breaks down.
Workloads become unbalanced, projects and budgets veer off course, and your best people start looking elsewhere.
Get resource planning right, and everything shifts. Teams stay agile, people work where they’re needed most, and projects land on time and on budget. Billable hours rise, overruns fall, and morale lifts alongside profits. Instead of firefighting, you’re free to grow the business you set out to build.
At Teamwork.com, we’ve been there. Our founders ran an agency, and they built the platform to solve the chaos they faced every day.
So whether you’re chasing growth, supporting your people, or just trying to avoid another late-night panic… we’ve got your back.
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