5 Best Resource Planning Project Management Software

So, you are in the market for a resource planning project management software.

Ideal, because in this article we have our compilation list for our top picks, and we compare the features and pricing for you. 

If you just want the best choice, we’ve added that right at the top of the article as this was what is most requested by our customers and what we see the best feedback with. So, that’ll be the “can’t go wrong” option. 

Otherwise, feel free to explore all the options we’ve reviewed on the market to find something that might fit you a little better.

Enjoy the list!

The Best Resource Planning Project Management Software

Effective project management often hinges on proper resource planning, where allocation, optimization, and productivity are paramount. Resource planning project management software is tailored to meet the unique demands of this industry, offering tools and features that ensure the successful execution of projects while optimizing resource utilization.

These solutions empower teams to streamline their operations, manage resources efficiently, and maintain project timelines, ultimately leading to successful project outcomes.

1. Monday

Monday integrates client emails, collects leads with forms, and refines marketing campaigns through scrupulous analysis that greatly enhances your relationship with clients and creates more business opportunities. It’s an easy-to-use platform that simplifies organizational tasks for sales and marketing teams.

Monday Features

Here are some features that make Monday a unique CRM:

• Software development: Monday provides templates to help your technical team quickly organize tasks, find bugs and improve iterations. You can add indicators to let the team know what you are working on and analyze the resource allocation. Every project has a specific ID that can be used; to track it among other tasks. Clients will automatically be alerted once the error is solved to reduce downtime and keep customers updated.
• HR structuring: Monday lets users manage recruiting process and track employee progression through its HR tools such as Applicant Tracker, Employee Engagement, Attendance Tracker, Recruitment Tracker, and Vacation Tracker. You can boost the team spirit of your employees by creating specific goals and giving constructive feedback on their work.
• Inventory Management: Businesses can record product and asset details while setting automation to get regular updates about sales and inquiries. You can create new templates to match the company’s requirements and integrate Monday with other applications to make the tasks easier. Moreover, Monday generates a unique QR code for each product so your clients can coherently buy the inventory.
• Marketing and Creative attributes: Monday can bridge the gap between creative thinking and marketing strategies by merging them into a single platform. You can create visualizations on campaign effects, share ideas and create personalized operations to make information accessible for employees.
• Sales operations: Monday offers CRM customization to make the leads attainable and manage all opportunity stages at a single interface. You can see the combined effect of marketing and sales campaigns to make adjustments accordingly. Moreover, businesses can centralize the available data for ease of use and synchronization of operations.
• IT workspace: You can add educational content for new recruitments to learn skills faster and ensure quality work. Monday lets you set access permissions for tasks and strictly follows security protocols to prevent cyber attacks on your CRM database. You can integrate IT tools and put technical work in order on Monday.

Monday Pricing

Monday CRM offers 4 pricing options depending upon your business size and requirements.

“Individual” plan is free of cost and lets users record work-related activities. 

“Basic” plan is priced at $10/month for a single user and offers 5GB storage along with customer support.

“Standard” plan is worth $14/month for a single user and offers additional collaboration tools. 

“Pro” subscription costs $27/month for an individual and offers chart view along with time tracking.

“Enterprise” plan is made specifically for large businesses and includes quality security features. You can contact support to get a quote on the “Enterprise” package.

2. Smartsheet 

Smartsheet provides users with a plethora of features within a single unified interface, making it easier to successfully implement strategies for projects and assess the ongoing tasks. Businesses can easily streamline processes and increase efficiency to complete more projects and serve more clients.

Smartsheet Features

Here are some exclusive features of Smartsheet:

Team Collaboration: With Smartsheet, you can add relevant team members to the project workspace and provide a platform to discuss the next step and collaborate effectively. It ensures your business can work dynamically on a no-code platform and everyone is on-page with the latest advancements.

Workflow automation: Smartsheet provides powerful automation tools to manage repetitive tasks with unique workflows. It enables your team members to work on more demanding tasks and maintain a high level of productivity. Workflow automation empowers your business by allowing users to customize workflows as per their requirements and combine multiple actions for swift functioning.

Content management: Content production and management are essential for every business to entice clients into availing services. With Smartsheet, your designers have access to all relevant tools required to produce and review the content. You can include the content tasks within reporting tools to get a clear overview. It eliminates bottlenecks by allowing you to add multiple content reviewers and maintain a constant production rate.

Secure request management: Smartsheet offers a dynamic view of sharing control and access permissions. It enables you to maintain a reliable security level for business processes and manage the work requests; by using the pre-built form to accumulate and automate project data.

Governance administration: Smartsheet allows project managers to administer ongoing processes and assign the pending tasks to the available personnel. It heightens the security level; by providing you with complete visibility of all users. So you can successfully manage and change the access permissions.

Digital Asset Management: Smartsheet supports integration with Brandfolder, making it easier to manage your digital content, files and documentation. It empowers your creative teams to effectively distribute the assets among other users organize the asset metadata with intelligent tools.

Work Insights: Smartsheet provides quality insights to your employees. So they can easily complete the tasks by making better decisions. You can share work reports with the stakeholders and clients to keep them aligned; with the ongoing processes.

Smartsheet Pricing

Smartsheet offers 3 Pricing options for users looking to streamline their business processes with quality project management tools.

The ” Pro” plan is priced at $9/user/month and provides access to the basic features of Smartsheet. It is ideal for individuals or new businesses interested in Smartsheet.

The “Business” plan is priced at $32/user/month and requires a minimum of 3 users. It allows you to create unlimited; Workflow automation and provides a Brandfolder integration.

The “Enterprise” plan allows you to customize your Smartsheet experience and choose the; features you require. You have to contact the sales team and mention your requirements to get a price quotation.

Additionally, you can opt for “Smartsheet advance” to get complete access to all features. It is further divided: into “Silver”, “Gold”, and “Platinum” plans. You can contact the sales team to get a price quotation.

3. Mavenlink

Mavenlink offers a cloud-based project management platform for professional businesses to improve organizational clarity and deal with the workload. It helps your service teams to understand the project expectations and distribute tasks to employees while adhering to the company’s latest requirements.

Mavenlink Features

Here are some exclusive features of Mavenlink:

Resource Management: Mavenlink offers advanced resource management tools that help you plan your project journey till the final stage. It addresses the entire resource management cycle by providing a collaborative platform for your employees. With Mavenlink, you can enable unparalleled resource visibility and gain the ability to identify changes.

Dynamic Resource Optimization: Mavenlink offers professional organizations the transformative ability to enable predictive outcomes and optimize resource planning for a limitless scaling experience. With Mavenlink, you get real-time responsiveness designed; to continuously improve your operations. It allows you to; easily recognize changes in demand and supply while exploring impacts on your revenue and margins.

Project Workspace: Mavenlink’s project workspace is highly efficient and effective, unlike its competitors. You can view the upcoming tasks and ensure all submissions are made on time to avoid any conflicts. It offers you the ability to easily improvise and adapt to the client’s requirements and deliver the best services.

Business Intelligence: Mavenlink understands that the projects are core to; every business’s success and optimizes every step in the lifecycle around your clients. It automatically enables the selling phase once the services are demanded; by a client and updates the upcoming procedures regularly. Mavenlink helps you estimate, gather and align the right resources on the right projects, helping you stay efficient.

Integrations and Workflows: Mavenlink offers M-Bridge that helps you integrate all necessary tools for your organization’s ample development. It can be easily connected; to a CRM like Salesforce. So you can create a single working platform for your client and project management. Additionally, it equips you to configure workflows to suit your needs and create custom rules.

Operations Management: Mavenlink allows users; to robustly collaborate on projects and get a full perspective on every detail. So they can make the right decisions. You can improve execution by creating a scenario for every project and giving your team a blueprint for approaching the task.

Mavenlink Pricing

Mavenlink offers custom pricing options based on your business industry and tool requirements. To get a pricing quote, fill up your niche market, mention the size of your company and the location of headquarters. Once done, Mavenlink’s sales team will reach out to you with the best-customized plan on the provided contact details.

4. Wrike

Wrike provides an optimized solution to businesses for project management requirements. Its greatest strength is its scalable platform that grows with your business requirements. With Wrike, you can enable a collaboration platform and maintain 360⁰ visibility into all operations.

Wrike Features

Here are some exclusive features of Wrike:

Reports: Wrike offers quality reporting tools that allow you to analyze your work and stay on top of everything. It provides a high-level overview of all your current projects and enables you to identify bottlenecks and drill down to deeper task levels in order to take timely action. Wrike also provides retrospective information on your completed projects and tasks.

Wrike Calendars: Wrike Calendars helps you; keep track of what you need to work on and when. With Wrike, you can create smart calendars based on your folders or projects and filter them through several criteria. You can also create; a classic calendar and be in full control of its content.

Custom Workflows: Wrike allows you; to create unique workflows and enables your team to work in a way they find most comfortable. You can create custom statuses within each workflow to; get a reflection of what stage your tasks are in. With Wrike, it’s much simpler to report on assignments and specify; who should be an assignee once a project has reached a particular status.

Custom Field creation: For a scaling business, you have to; track all sorts of data. With Wrike, you can create custom fields in your projects and tasks and populate them with the required information. You can design specific fields for the project’s budget, marketing campaigns and sales operations, making financial management a lot easier. Moreover, Wrike automatically runs calculations for the numeric data.

Request Forms: Wrike allows Request form creation for businesses dealing with tickets or requests. It enables you; to effortlessly capture all information from a client. Once done, Wrike automatically triggers a task or project based on the available information. You can predefine this information, like assignees or locations and share it with your colleagues while also making them available externally.

User Groups: You can create user groups within Wrike based on company departments, subteams, office locations or cross-departmental teams. This way, it’s extremely simple to share something with a specific group, and you can remain in touch with every project team.

Wrike Pricing

Wrike offers 5 Pricing options plus 2 Additional subscriptions for marketing and services delivery teams.

The “Free” plan comes at zero cost and offers basic task management capabilities along with a live activity stream. It is best for new users looking to get acquainted with Wrike.

The “Professional” plan is priced at $9.8/user/month and offers interactive Gantt charts plus shareable dashboards.

The “Business” plan is priced at $24.8/user/month and allows users to create custom fields or workflows according to their requirements.

The “Enterprise” and “Pinnacle plans are only available for businesses with 5+ users and offers all features of Wrike.They are suitable for established organizations. You can contact the sales team to get a price quotation.

The additional plans for; marketing and service delivery teams can also be availed: within Wrike. You can customize the subscription and get a price quotation by contacting the sales team.

5. Liquidplanner

Liquidplanner supports flexible project management and provides your business with a clear overview of all ongoing tasks. It helps your teams perform at peak productivity and engage effortlessly with the collaborators to enhance the functioning of your company.

Liquidplanner Features

Here are some exclusive features of Liquidplanner:

Smart schedule bars: Liquidplanner offers smart schedule bars that determine how much time a task would take for completions based on; AI estimates and ongoing work; by your team. It allows you to efficiently manage your schedule and reassign high-priority issues to available employees for swift execution.

Priority-Driven Board views: With Liquidplanner, you can create several statuses and move tasks across them to symbolize how much effort needs to be interpolated; towards a particular issue. It helps you align your projects according to the priority and track every progress from a single board view.

Automatic Resource Leveling: Liquidplanner offers automation that manages your workload and resource allocation by running quality analysis on the available data. It enables you to reduce the dependency on a particular team and empowers your business to reach its potential.

Ranged Estimates: Liquidplanner runs multiple checks on the data and provides you with the best possible scenario to pursue a project. It captures uncertainty in your business plan and provides insight to improve your business’s functioning.

Target Finish Driven Alerts: Liquidplanner allows your team to set target dates for every project submission and provides regular alerts so you can cope with the deadlines. It points out schedule risk every time a task is nearing its tendering and enables you to stay on top of every issue.

Data Customization: With Liquidplanner, you can segment and customize the data by introducing your own factors to tasks and resources. It enriches your view of the ongoing projects by providing thorough analysis and dependable insights.

Advanced Access Control: With advanced access control, you can choose what information your employees see, depending on their stature and profile. It ensures your teams are not overloaded with pointless data and only see the required details.

Work Views: Within Liquidplanner, you can switch between several views like Kanban Boards and Timesheet. Its highly personalizable interface ensures you don’t face any complications while switching between different perspectives.

Liquidplanner Pricing

Liquidplanner offers 4 Pricing options for users depending upon their unique requirements.

The “Free” plan comes at absolutely no cost and offers entry-level features like predictive scheduling, smart schedule bars, ranged estimation and integrated time tracking.

The “Essentials” plan is priced at $15/user/month upon annual billing and allows you to add unlimited users plus create up to 5000 Tasks.

The “Professional” plan is priced at $25/user/month and offers Timesheet review and custom workspace dashboards. It boosts up the max task creation capacity to 50000.

The “Ultimate” plan is priced at $35/user/month and allows you to use Liquidplanner at its maximum capabilities.

Why Use Resource Planning Project Management Software?

Resource planning project management software provides a structured approach to managing resources within projects. It allows teams to plan, execute, and monitor projects with precision, ensuring that resources, timelines, and project objectives are consistently met.

Furthermore, these tools enhance communication and collaboration among project teams and resource managers.

They facilitate the sharing of critical resource information, ensure that all team members remain informed about resource allocation, and promote a coordinated approach to resource optimization. This transparency is vital in an industry where resource efficiency drives success.

In addition to improving operational efficiency, resource planning project management software helps organizations maintain resource allocation standards and project timelines.

It offers features that support resource allocation planning, resource tracking, and project timeline management, reducing the risk of resource bottlenecks and project delays.

Moreover, projects often involve complex resource allocation scenarios, with multiple teams, departments, and resource considerations. Project management software provides a centralized platform where teams can collaborate, allocate resources effectively, and ensure that projects align with resource availability and project timelines.

Why Should Organizations Use Resource Planning Project Management Software?

Organizations across various industries, including IT, manufacturing, and consulting, can benefit significantly from project management software tailored to their industry-specific resource planning needs.

IT departments use resource planning project management software to optimize IT project allocation, track resource utilization, and ensure projects are completed efficiently. These tools help IT teams allocate IT resources, manage project timelines, and deliver IT projects within deadlines and budget constraints.

Manufacturing companies rely on project management software to manage production schedules, optimize manufacturing resources, and ensure timely production. These tools provide visibility into resource availability, production timelines, and resource allocation, ensuring that manufacturing projects meet both production goals and deadlines.

Consulting firms use project management software for resource allocation, client engagements, and project monitoring. These tools help consulting teams allocate consulting resources, manage client projects, and deliver consulting services efficiently.

In summary, resource planning project management software is a strategic asset for organizations committed to achieving project success while optimizing resource allocation. It enhances project management, resource optimization, communication, and collaboration, ultimately leading to successful project outcomes.

Resource Planning Project Management Software, A Summary

In the world of resource planning project management, optimizing resource allocation and maintaining project timelines are paramount. Resource planning project management software has emerged as an indispensable asset, empowering teams to execute projects effectively while optimizing resource utilization.

Among the array of options, Monday stands tall as the premier choice. Its intuitive interface, comprehensive feature set, and adaptability make it the ultimate solution for teams seeking resource planning project management excellence.

If you’re ready to optimize your resource allocation, meet project timelines, and achieve unparalleled project success, start with Monday today.

What Project Management Software would you recommend?

In short, It’s Monday.com.

It’s a platform that simplifies communication across teams and helps hit goals faster, with team management software that maximizes productivity and empowers everyone to work smarter together. You can’t go wrong with Monday.com.

“🚀Try Monday.com For Free, It’s my favorite Project Management Software to use and recommend.” -Scott Max

Monday.com is a user-friendly project management platform that offers powerful tools to streamline complex workflows for larger companies, ensuring efficient operations and delivering impressive project outcomes. Monday.com has you covered for your: Team Projects, Service, Sales, CMS, Operations, and Marketing needs.

For more details, read our Monday.com Review.