Resource (Headcount) Planning Model--Design Question

[LanceTylor]

Hello All,

I developing a resource planning model for a client at the moment......timelines are tight, as always! I was hoping some of the tm1 design gurus would share some insight into how they have developed resource planning models.

Resource budget model requirement
1. Budget salaries annually (based on prior year with uplifts)
2. Include Start/End dates then spread accross months
3. Salaries & Benefits
4. Future development - BI reporting & capturing actuals versus budget

Initial High Level Design
Drivers cube
- contains benefits (or std cost rates)

Resource Cube -
- Dimension (version (Budget,Actual), year (No months just Years), dept (hierarchy), Position (Numbers 1-25 including a total - placeholder for employee line item info), Measures).
-In the measures i am capturing string/numeric variables such as employee names, job titles, benefit costs (based on driver cube), start/end dates, months (containing total salary & benefits based on start/end dates.

Expense Cube -
- Summarizes all costs and all resource costs will be fed from the resource cube (including monthly rollups).

My questions are:
1. Is this how other people have approached resource planning models? I was thinking of having job titles in a separate dimension but from an end user perspective (usability/maintence) I didnt think it was it would work.
2. Does any one see any future development issues?

Thanks for any feedback.

Regards
Lance
TM1-green belt

[declanr]

LanceTylor,

Your question is quite an open ended one and some forum members may be able to give you a yes/no answer but personally I have found customers with a huge variety of desires as to what they want in a resource planning model, the model provided for one would not have even resembled what was provided for the other.

The only questions you need to ask yourself (in my opinion) is does the model meet the requirements set out by the customer? and does it do so efficiently?

If you really wish for the yes/no answer however it could be beneficial to provide information on the customer requirements and a bit of info on how you are transferring data (rules or TI)... essentially as much information as possible.

Cheers,
DR

[Steve Vincent]

That actually sounds more like a financial budget model than a resource model...

Anyway, there really isn't a way to answer those questions. You have to design your solution based upon the customers requirements. They should provide a specification of what they have as inputs & what they desire as outputs, and your task is to provide a solution to get from A to B. As each customer is different it is nigh on impossible to transfer a solution from one to another. I couldn't even do that for customers in the same company