We asked 100+ resource management professionals how they feel about the state of resource management in 2025. Here are our four key learnings.
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We have recently surveyed 100+ resource management professionals to understand what's happening in the space in 2025. In this post, we unpack four key learnings that highlight the challenges, emerging priorities, and opportunities to elevate resource management. Prefer a PDF? Download the full report here:
In a space characterized by unpredictable demand, talent supply problems, and economic pressures, it’s no surprise that capacity planning and great utilization have become critical to business success.
Almost half of respondents named tasks relating to matching supply to demand as their top resource management objective, pointing to a growing maturity in the discipline. Financial and people-centric goals languish lower on the list, suggesting a shift towards using resource management to align talent with future demand, not just today’s delivery needs.
Unsurprisingly, outdated tech and manual processes are major barriers to effective resource management for almost half of businesses surveyed. A third (32%) blame poor visibility — an issue easily overcome with the right tools. This disconnect between strategic intent and operational investment needs addressing if businesses are to unlock better performance.
Beyond the tech gap, structural issues like siloed departments and decentralized processes reduce cross-functional efficiencies, while a lack of leadership support and internal resistance only further collaboration challenges.
Most organizations are focusing on tactical improvements to immediate operational needs, with improving scheduling accuracy, increasing productivity, and boosting utilization topping our list of priorities for the year. Minimizing project delays caused by resourcing challenges and improving cross-functional collaboration are secondary goals, suggesting coordination challenges persist.
Notably, fewer than one in five organizations cite implementing advanced resource management software as a priority, despite almost half stating that outdated tools and processes are dampening their effectiveness. This raises important questions: is this due to cost, complexity, or a strategic blind spot?
When asked what challenges they most want to solve with resource management, two-thirds of respondents highlight the difficulty of forecasting future needs and misalignment between capacity and demand. These issues go hand-in-hand: without the ability to predict future needs, aligning talent supply to project demand is guesswork at best.
A more data-informed approach to forecasting and allocations can help organizations overcome all these challenges, as well as improve utilization and gain better visibility into where people’s time is spent.
While many organizations are growing their resource management functions and laying foundations for improved maturity, this hasn’t translated into a universal appreciation for the practice. As effective resource management relies on collaboration and centralization, understanding isn’t a nice to have: it’s critical.
Using the RMI’s Resource Management Maturity Model, we asked respondents to assess their process maturity.
Nearly half (43%) rated themselves at Level 3 — operationally sound but seeking to elevate resource management to a strategic function — while a modest third placed themselves at a Level 2, pointing to reactive allocations and a fragmented approach. Few placed themselves at either extreme: just 4% at Level 1, where resource management is ad hoc, or Level 5, where resource management is fully integrated with strategic goals.
In three quarters of organizations (73%), resource management still sits within operational functions, including project management, operations, or delivery. While effective for day-to-day execution, this setup can limit longer-term strategic focus. Less mature organizations often spread resource management across teams, leading to siloed efforts and inconsistent processes.
A minority of organizations have a dedicated Resource Management Office (RMO), which brings governance, standardization, stronger strategic focus, and greater maturity. For these organizations, the challenge is balancing structure with agility as business needs evolve.
Here’s some good news — over four in five resource management functions have remained stable or grown in 2025. Almost half of respondents say their organization’s function has grown in the last year, suggesting greater recognition of the benefits it brings to business. A further 38% reports seeing no change.
The minority of businesses that have seen their function contract may reflect wider organizational downsizing or cuts in response to economic pressures. Rather than cut resource management roles, forward-looking businesses should empower them with the support and tools they need to fully unlock true efficiency.
It’s a common misconception that resource management is only a requirement for bigger teams. However, over a third of our respondents said they manage resource pools of fewer than 50 people.
At the other end of the scale, a small number are tasked with managing thousands of resources. Whatever the number of resources managed, a key success factor is the ratio of resource managers to resources managed. When resource managers have space to truly get to know the talent they manage (not just their skills but also their interests and career aspirations), that can significantly elevate the accuracy and long-term impact of allocations.
Collaboration and buy-in are key to the centralization and standardization that drive true resource efficiency. Thankfully, only a fifth work in organizations where resource management isn't valued or understood at all.
A vast majority (79%) say the importance of resource management is understood by ‘some’ or ‘everyone’, a heartening reflection of the discipline’s rising star.
It’s a simple fact: accurate, current data is critical to resource management. Yet many teams still rely on fragmented systems and manual inputs, undermining trust in their data. As interest in strategic planning grows, pointing to a shift toward more proactive, strategic resource planning, organizations must address the data quality and accessibility issues holding them back from confident decision-making.
More than half of respondents report their organization takes a reactive approach to resource management. Reactivity often stems from deeper issues, such as outdated tools, untrusted data, and excessive time spent on manual processes.
Without the systems and insights needed for forward planning, teams are left scrambling to respond to shifting demands. The result is a cycle of short-term fixes that undermine long-term efficiency and strategic alignment.
The full benefits of resource management depend on data-driven decisions. Yet trust in that data is far from universal. Just over half of respondents mostly or wholly trust their data; the rest have only partial or no confidence, preventing them from building that all-important foundation of trust.
Frequent supply-and-demand data updates suggest data availability isn’t the issue. Instead, the main concerns for those lacking trust are completeness, accuracy, and decentralized access. Siloed systems and fragmented records lead to decisions based on incomplete information, while manual, non-standardized inputs increase the risk of errors. To improve trust, organizations must prioritize data centralization and standardization, and invest in tools that automatically capture and calculate key metrics like capacity and utilization.
Frequent supply-and-demand data updates suggest data availability isn’t the issue. Instead, the main concerns for those lacking trust are completeness, accuracy, and decentralized access. Siloed systems and fragmented records lead to decisions based on incomplete information, while manual, non-standardized inputs increase the risk of errors. To improve trust, organizations must prioritize data centralization and standardization, and invest in tools that automatically capture and calculate key metrics like capacity and utilization.
Given that more proactive planning is a goal for many organizations, it’s encouraging to see most engage in some level of capacity forecasting. While nearly half do so regularly, others take an ad-hoc approach, suggesting challenges with consistency and forecasting capabilities, rather than intent. Worryingly, one in five say their forecasting capabilities are ‘not effective’, and only 13% feel they are ‘extremely effective’.
Reporting is always going to be part of the role for resource managers, but it shouldn’t feel like a full-time job. Over half of respondents spend between one and five hours per week on reporting activities, one fifth spend between six and ten hours, and 15% between 11 and 20 hours. A few report spending over 21 hours a week on reporting, revealing a significant burden in certain organizations.
When asked which roles depended on or found value in the resource function’s data and forecasts, the most frequently mentioned roles were finance, delivery, leadership, project managers, and general managers.
These functions consistently appeared across responses, highlighting their central role in both strategic and operational aspects of resource planning.
There’s a strong consensus that having real-time visibility into people’s time is important, if not critical. This is not surprising considering one-third of respondents reported experiencing challenges caused by a lack of visibility into employee availability.
Without clear insight into who is available, when, and for how long, teams can face coordination issues, underutilization, or even burnout due to overbooking. Improving transparency around scheduling and availability is likely to remain a continual priority for companies striving to optimize operational efficiency and productivity.
Increasingly, organizations see the value of tracking skills — over half already track skills, while a further third intends to do so in the future. Yet, over half of those currently tracking skills do so in spreadsheets, which offer limited insight and aren’t able to connect skills data to the real-time resource visibility organizations say is critical.
What activities is this data seen as most valuable for? Two-fifths rely on skills data to boost allocation accuracy, while 20% hope to achieve improved workforce planning. Other desired outcomes include workforce development and optimized hiring. After all, managers can’t allocate talent that doesn’t exist.
While we can’t ignore the appetite for AI in all industries, the adoption of transformative tech is slow among resource managers. Our survey finds most teams still work with outdated tools. This tech maturity gap needs to be addressed before they can fully and effectively leverage the power of AI.
Despite the growing availability of dedicated resource management tools, the humble spreadsheet remains a staple for over half of resource managers. For low-maturity organizations, spreadsheets are a good way to get started — yet, as resource management processes evolve, most teams will benefit from investing in fit-for-purpose tooling to support critical activities.
Almost half of respondents have adopted fit-for-purpose resource management software, and 38% of those using spreadsheets also use a dedicated resource management tool. Until organizations transform their tech, the efficacy of their resource management efforts will be artificially capped, and the full potential of AI will remain out of reach.
Artificial Intelligence is high on the agenda in most industries, promising to transform and modernize business operations. In resource management, uptake is slow. Though nearly half are considering adopting AI, only one in ten currently use it in their workflows.
Among early adopters of AI, applications tend to be operational or data-led. Day-to-day, AI is used to match resources to projects based on availability and skills, and automate formerly manual workflows, while predictive analytics are helping resource managers identify trends in data sets and make faster, more confident decisions.
When asked about advanced AI applications, respondents were most excited by features supporting forward-planning and proactivity. Predictive analytics and automated assignment recommendations were deemed the most valuable, both areas where teams may benefit from greater efficiency but lack the time or headcount to execute effectively.
Organizations using dedicated resource management platforms can look forward to seeing more AI integrated into their existing tools, with intelligent features set to save organizations from the cycle of reactive staffing and project firefighting.
Our research highlights a growing momentum around resource management, as organizations look to become more proactive and improve planning accuracy.
There’s clear intent to improve planning accuracy, elevate forecasting, and give skills management a more central role; all signs that resource management is evolving from a reactive function into a strategic enabler. However, low trust in data undermines this shift. Many teams are burdened by manual processes and siloed systems that limit visibility and confidence. Without reliable insights, even the most well-intentioned strategies will fall short.
To close this gap, technology must take center stage. A centralized resource management platform doesn’t just improve efficiency, it can also unify fragmented data, reduce reliance on spreadsheets, and equip resource managers with the real-time visibility needed to make smarter, faster decisions. The path to maturity is clear: with the right tools, organizations can transform resource management into a confident, proactive capability that’s ready to meet today’s complexity and tomorrow’s opportunity.
