Demand management – ​​find out how to apply

The IT market is one of the fastest growing in Brazil and in the world, year after year. As a result, demands are increasing for the sector. In this scenario, it is essential that managers adopt efficient demand management.

Demand management contributes to the control of all service requests and tickets. This way, the team’s efforts can be directed correctly and combined with the company’s strategic planning. 

If you are an IT manager, you have certainly found yourself in a situation where demands are coming in massively. In this article, you will discover how to manage requests in such a way that they are utilized without overloading the team.

Why is it necessary to carry out demand management? 

Demand management is a set of practices and strategies that seek to control and manage the demands of a business. It aims to ensure that requests are met without old demands being jeopardized. 

But before delving into how to carry out management, it is necessary to understand how the information technology sector arrived at the current scenario. This will help us understand the importance of demand management and why its development within organizations was necessary. 

A Brazilian IT market research, carried out by IMonitor IT, points out that in the last quarter of 2022 the IT market grew 22%. In relation to 2021, the increase was 23.4%. According to the Association of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Digital Technologies Companies (Brasscom), Brazil trains an average of 53 thousand IT professionals per year. Still, this number has not been enough to meet the demands of the sector. The average demand published by Brasscom is 159 thousand professionals per year in the area. 

Data analysis presents us with a simple conclusion: the demand is too high for few professionals. That said, it is possible to understand why it is so necessary to adopt demand management. This topic is widely studied by experts in the field, who seek solutions and innovations for company management.

After all, what is demand management? 

As stated in the previous topic, demand management will control service requests. Thus, they can be met according to the company’s strategic planning and the team’s availability. This is necessary not only to ensure that demands are met, but also so that projects that have already started are not jeopardized. 

Management will seek to identify the types of demands and understand whether they fit with the company’s strategy. The team’s effort must be carefully planned, so that employees’ time and company resources are not directed to a project that will not bring as much return to the organization. 

Ideally, all demands would be met, but we know that resources are limited and company planning requires selection. Managing demands means finding a balance between the number of demands and the ability to meet them.

For this process to be carried out, some analyzes need to be taken into consideration from the beginning. Is there an excess of work or is the team small? Is the team’s productivity within what was planned? Is it possible to meet new demands without harming existing ones?

Management’s work consists of analyzing the current context and variables to know what should be done in the future. This way, the process is optimized and the company can grow sustainably. 

In any case, demand management must be aligned with the company’s strategic objectives, as it is part of the organization’s project management. Process management and task control directly influence the management of these demands. 

It is necessary to ensure that deliveries are made within the deadlines. After all, any demand incorrectly analyzed can harm the entire workflow. 

How to manage demands

• Identify business needs 

The first step to managing demands is knowing your company’s needs. Only in this way is it possible to align demands with the defined strategic planning. 

This is because accepting a new demand causes the team to spend effort and resources. If it is not aligned with the organization’s strategy, the time spent on the activity will not bring the benefits that the company expects to receive when accepting a new request. 

It is necessary to know which demands are worth working on, so that resources are being directed in the correct way. 

Furthermore, you need to know your company’s customers, to understand the demands that already exist and analyze them as to what will be needed to meet them. This analysis allows us to understand the best way to direct resources, thinking about smart economics. 

• Manage team capacity 

With the strategic objectives defined, it is necessary to understand the team’s capacity, as well as its routine. Find out how many people there are in your company, what their roles and availability are, so that you can create a capacity map. 

The map will be used to analyze planned efforts in comparison with the team’s capacity. This will allow you to visualize how much can be done within specific periods of time. 

For this, it is essential to have a project and task tool. Gipo helps you easily identify your team’s scheduled tasks, within the period of time you want to use as a reference. Furthermore, it is possible to know how much time is spent on each type of task, through the time tracking.

• Create a workflow

The first steps were to understand what types of demands make sense for the company and understand the team’s ability to accept and execute the requests. With this, it is now possible to filter the demands and then start accepting the one that makes the most sense for the organization.  

But first, you need to understand what the life cycle of a demand is, from the moment it is accepted and passed on to the team, until the project is completed. With this in mind, it is necessary to define a workflow. 

The flow aims to define deadlines and communicate the development of activities with transparency to the client. Furthermore, the flow allows the team to know what to do visually. 

But how to carry out this flow, thinking about demand management? After a demand is filtered and then accepted, this demand must be passed on to the team, who will evaluate the best way to carry it out. Therefore, it is necessary to present the initial proposal to the client, so that they can adapt the project to their needs. Once this is done, you can start the project. 

The gipo also helps when building your flow, with all the steps, tasks and information defined. With the resource of kanban, it is possible to create the process in a flow of steps. In this flow, tasks go through all stages until they are finally completed.

• Recognize periods of highest and lowest demand

One of the most important points of demand management is knowing how to get the best out of the team. In this sense, understanding the seasonality of demands is essential to guarantee the efficiency of deliveries.  

In every organization there are periods when the volume of demands is higher and, at other times, the volume is lower. At the busiest times, it is difficult to accept new requests and ensure that everything is delivered on time and with the required quality. While in quieter moments it is easier to respond to new calls. 

Demand management needs to map out which are the periods of highest and lowest demand, so that the team is not overloaded with new requests. This way, new requests and projects already underway can be carried out with quality.

• Define demands by priority 

Defining the priority of projects and tasks is another way to ensure that everything is carried out on time and with the necessary efficiency. Priority definition goes hand in hand with team capacity mapping. 

 With the priorities of projects in progress defined, it is possible to define delivery dates, according to the complexity of each one. Once this is done, new demands must have their priority defined before being accepted. With this, the manager can consult the team’s capacity map and understand whether that demand fits. 

To define the priority of demands, the Eisenhower matrix can be used. This matrix was made to categorize tasks according to priority criteria. 

The two criteria are urgency and importance. In this sense, the matrix is ​​a Cartesian plane divided into four fields: urgent and important, urgent but not important, important but not urgent, not important and not urgent. 

Urgent and important:

These are the tasks that must be done in front of other tasks, in front of everything else. 

Urgent but not important:

This quadrant should include tasks that have a short deadline, but are not that important. These can be delegated by the manager, so that he can focus on the important ones.

Important but not urgent:

Important but not urgent tasks are tasks that can wait, but need to be performed with care and commitment. These are medium to long-term tasks.

Not important and not urgent:

Finally, there are non-important and non-urgent tasks that can be discarded or carried out in the long term, when there are no other priorities. 

With Gipo, you can easily define task priorities. Within the tool, tasks can have their priorities defined as “low”, “high” and “urgent”. Use the Eisenhower matrix to help classify your tasks within the Gipo. 

Furthermore, it is still possible to order the tasks of a step by priority. Thus, the most urgent tasks appear at the top of the column, while the least urgent tasks appear below. 

• Follow the development of initiatives 

Finally, it’s time to monitor the development of the projects that have been completed. It is important to remain aware of seasonality, priorities and team capacity, so that processes continue to work efficiently. 

Deadlines met and the quality of service will define whether demand management is being carried out correctly. In this sense, a tool for task management can also help. 

With Gipo, the manager can monitor which tasks are demanding the most time from employees. This makes it easier to identify flaws in processes and demand management.

Benefits of demand management  

Having well-defined and structured demand management within your company contributes both to internal processes and to meeting new requests. This is because management makes the best use of the team’s availability, ensuring that deliveries meet deadlines and maintain quality. 

Not only that, managing demands contributes to the company’s growth in several ways: 

• Analysis of seasonality of demands 
• Understanding customer needs in accordance with the company’s strategic planning 
• Increased process efficiency 
• Control of project costs
• Reduction of unforeseen events and more flexibility for employees 

This way, it is possible to understand the need to apply demand management in your business. It allows the organization of services and the sustainable growth of the company. 

To further optimize your management, use a project management tool. They make analyzes simpler and the workflow more visual. With Gipo, you have control of demands in the palm of your hand. 

It allows you to record customer data and control the costs of your projects. Furthermore, the time tracking It is the perfect resource for anyone who wants to make their team’s routine more efficient, avoiding bottlenecks and rework.