Resource planning is challenging enough at a small scale. But imagine coordinating 350,000 employees across multiple countries, business units, and time zones — all while managing 15,000 daily resource requests.
That was exactly the challenge Farhad Pezeshgi of FPE Consulting faced when implementing a global resource management solution at Capgemini, where they relied on Retain's platform for over 20 years.
We spoke with Farhad about his experience scaling a resource planning implementation to truly enterprise proportions, and the lessons that organisations of any size can apply.
From siloed systems to global coordination
When Farhad began the project, Capgemini had three distinct approaches to resource management across the organisation:
▪️Teams using only Excel spreadsheets shared online or emailed weekly
▪️Teams using Retain or similar tools for assignment but Excel for managing demand
▪️Teams with completely bespoke tools and processes
This fragmentation created significant problems. "One of our main catalysts for moving to a global resource planning system was our silo-oriented mentality," Farhad explains. "We were missing opportunities where we refused projects due to resource shortages when available staff were literally a few kilometres away."
Cross-staffing depended almost entirely on personal relationships or occasional meetings where managers would share lists of available resources and open demands. This inefficient approach became increasingly problematic as the company grew.
The other key driver? A fundamental shift in Capgemini's operating model, separating resources into cost centres (Practices) and sales and execution into P&L entities (Market Units). "The organisation required a global view of resources and markets," says Farhad.
Why Retain was chosen
By 2015, Capgemini already had an existing relationship with Retain spanning 15 years across several European entities. When looking to expand and upgrade their resource management capabilities, several key factors influenced their decision to continue with Retain:
"We were already convinced with the supply management, but we were looking at their capacity to help us manage demand," Farhad recalls. "When Retain showcased their new demand module, we found it rather complete, and we liked their approach to the management of skills."
Three capabilities particularly set Retain apart:
1. The new demand management module
2. The ability to customise the data model and aspects of the demand module
3. Comprehensive and configurable skill management
"The fact that Retain was used by other major firms was a big plus for us," Farhad adds. "Most other tools we evaluated didn't measure up on supply management, and while Retain's approach to demand management was comprehensive, they were open to working with our input to improve the user interface. Their willingness to accept specific customisations to fit our needs was another deciding factor."
Building the foundation managing global resource planning
Implementing a resource management solution at this scale required careful planning around infrastructure, data management, and integration with existing systems:
Integration strategy
Retain needed to connect with multiple core systems:
▪️ SAP HR for employee information (carefully limited to essential data for staffing purposes)
▪️ SAP Field Glass for sub-contractor information and procurement
▪️ SAP recruitment system for requesting new employees
▪️ Financial systems for project information and assignment tracking
▪️ Sales management tools for client and opportunity tracking
▪️ Data warehouse systems for reporting
"All of these systems worked with a day+1 delay for the data, except for some assignment tracking data that was sent four times a day," explains Farhad.
Data management approach
With GDPR and privacy concerns in mind, Farhad's team took a minimalist approach: "We minimised the amount of data kept in the resource management system while ensuring it respected the principles related to processing personal data and provided sufficient information for decision-making."
Key data principles included:
▪️ Collecting only what was necessary for the specific purpose
▪️ Ensuring accuracy and keeping data updated
▪️ Limiting storage time to necessary periods
▪️ Removing any data that could enable discrimination
▪️ Clearly defining data ownership between systems
"Based on data preservation requirements, the system would only maintain valid data for five years for employees who had left the company. After this period, the data would be anonymised rather than deleted for historical reporting reasons," Farhad notes.
Global resource planning scaling challenges
The implementation journey happened in three major phases:
1. Initial roll-out to 95% of resources (from an initial 35-40% coverage) over two years
2. Integrating approximately 150,000 employees from acquisitions over five years
3. Accommodating natural company growth to reach around 350,000 resources by the end of 2022
This gradual scaling presented both technical and organisational challenges. "For us, there were three aspects we needed to manage," Farhad explains. "Database capacity, compute capacity, and network capacity."
The team planned database capacity for the final expected data volume while gradually increasing transaction capacity as they approached limits. For compute resources, they initially planned for 10,000 users with provisions to add servers as needed.
"Network capacity had to be re-evaluated very frequently," Farhad notes. "This was one of the most critical problems during deployment and operation."
Of course, technical challenges were only half the battle. Ensuring consistent adoption across diverse teams presented equally significant hurdles. Farhad's team distributed responsibility across different entities using the system, with each designating "change champions" to work with the central group.
"Each entity would designate change champions to work with the central group to manage change and communication to their local team," Farhad explains. "During rollout, we could have daily meetings with the team. As the roll-out wound down, they became weekly and finally monthly when things settled."
Global resource planning cultural considerations
Perhaps the most challenging aspect of the implementation was managing cultural differences across regions and business units.
"This was a very hard problem for us to address since the decision was to create a global solution and minimise specific development for each region," Farhad acknowledges.
Their solution was to allow a certain flexibility where Retain could be configured to meet different needs. "For example, on skills we created a multi-level skill taxonomy where Europeans would use level 2 that had less complexity, and the Indian teams would use level 3 that was more detailed. That did create headaches for us, but it kept our users happy."
Other approaches included:
▪️ Sharing successful functionality from one region to influence others
▪️ Saying "no" to requests without strong business cases
▪️ Providing data access for teams to build their own custom tools when necessary
To gain buy-in across territories, Farhad's team focused on demonstrating productivity gains, developing automated reporting, and creating healthy competition between entities.
"One of the most efficient ways to get buy-in was to show the productivity gains they would get using the new tool," says Farhad. "We put specific effort into reporting around the tools, which was another driver for adoption since reports were totally automated and didn't require additional resources."
How Retain supported implementation
Throughout this massive undertaking, Retain's expertise and collaborative approach proved invaluable. "What we needed most from Retain was their knowledge gained by helping large organisations," Farhad explains.
"We were creating a monolithic solution using a Microsoft SQL database, where until that point Retain had only used Oracle database solutions outside of Capgemini. Since we had a single database and infrastructure supporting all geographies, we did extensive performance testing and capacity planning."
Key challenges Retain helped address included:
✅ Infrastructure sizing to ensure necessary performance as the user base grew
✅ Supporting global geographic coverage from the US West Coast to Australia and New Zealand
✅ Accommodating different consulting service types (strategic, IT, BPO) with their unique staffing constraints
✅ Managing cultural differences in tool usage and data requirements
Partnership evolution and future-proofing
The relationship between Capgemini and Retain developed into a genuine partnership over time.
"What I liked in our relationship with Retain was that we worked together to ensure the platform grew with our needs," Farhad says. "Retain would inform us about their future plans, which helped us tell them what was critical for us."
When needed functionality wasn't immediately available, Farhad's team would develop additional tools and share them with Retain to demonstrate use cases. This collaborative approach benefited both parties.
"One of the most important aspects of our relationship was having a dedicated team that worked with us and understood what we had built and how we used the application," Farhad emphasises. At one point, this partnership became so integrated that a Retain team member spent several months on-site with the Capgemini team in India to better understand their needs.
For long-term scalability, automation proved to be the most valuable capability. "That's one of the reasons we also explored AI-driven automation tools," notes Farhad. These tools were essential for managing the 10,000-15,000 daily resource requests flowing through the system.
Measuring global resource planning success
Tracking implementation success involved monitoring several key metrics:
- Downtime during system transitions (target: one working day maximum)
- Data migration success (no rollbacks needed in over 8 years of implementations)
- Efficiency improvements compared to pre-implementation baselines
- Activity rates showing staffing efficiency
- Mean time to staff resources
- Cross-geography staffing frequency
However, Farhad cautions against simplistic ROI calculations: "You cannot define an ROI on resource management since it's not dependent only on the tools and people but also your market and how clients are buying services."
One unexpected benefit was improved communication between previously siloed teams: "Resource managers were seeing the challenges of other entities in providing resources. This was a very big benefit for me."
Key lessons for organisations of any size
While few companies will need to manage resources at Capgemini's scale, Farhad's experience offers valuable lessons applicable to organisations of all sizes:
1. Invest heavily in change management - "Change management, change management... and more change management," Farhad emphasises.
2. Plan your infrastructure in advance - "When you're in run mode, it's extremely complex to move to another larger platform. Plan your infrastructure to avoid rebuilds. They're doable but risky when your business is running."
3. Cultural adaptation is essential - "Understand cultural differences. This means not only the person's local culture but the local enterprise culture."
4. Create a detailed migration plan - "I personally don't believe in piece-by-piece migration and am a big adept of big bang migration. Do consider them — they are technically feasible and if well planned, more successful."
5. Listen to your users - "Nothing you plan for ahead of time will go as you thought. You need to stay on top of what your users need and be constantly listening to them."
6. Get behind your users - "There is nothing better than standing behind your users and feeling and seeing their frustration with the system that you thought was perfect."
7. Allow for local flexibility - "A bit more autonomy to local teams to create their own tools. But that would require very strict governance on how people can make local tools and a means of turning these into global tools."
Farhad's experience implementing Retain across Capgemini demonstrates that successful resource management at scale requires more than just the right technology. It demands thoughtful planning, cultural sensitivity, ongoing adaptation, and a genuine partnership with your technology provider.
For organisations looking to improve their resource management capabilities, these lessons provide a valuable roadmap — whether you're managing 100 resources or 350,000.
Ready to transform your resource planning? Learn more about how Retain can support your organisation's unique needs by scheduling a demo today.
