Orbit PM for IT Services Firms: manage your consultants across multiple engagements in parallel
IT staffing agencies and digital services companies face a constant challenge: assigning the right consultants to the right engagements at the right time — without overloading the most in-demand profiles or leaving availability gaps unrealised. Orbit PM is built for this specific need.
View Orbit PM plansUnderstanding the IT services context
The HR and operational specifics of IT services firms
Time-and-materials vs fixed-price staffing models
IT services firms operate under two main contract types, often managed in parallel within the same organisation. Time-and-materials (T&M) means placing a consultant at a client site for a defined period, billed per day at a negotiated day rate. A fixed-price contract commits the firm to delivering a specific outcome for a fixed fee, regardless of the actual effort consumed.
These two models have a direct impact on planning. In T&M, every unbilled day (bench, absence, leave) is an immediate revenue loss — the priority is to maximise consultant placement on billable engagements. In fixed-price work, the risk is the opposite: scope creep, meaning consuming more days than estimated without being able to bill the surplus, directly erodes margin.
Orbit PM supports both models in the same tool. For T&M, the team workload view lets you track the daily occupancy rate of each consultant. For fixed-price projects, every project has a day budget with real-time consumption tracking versus plan. Delivery managers can steer both engagement types from a single dashboard.
Bench time: a financial risk to anticipate
Bench time is the period when a consultant is on payroll but not assigned to a billable client engagement. That consultant is fully compensated while generating zero revenue. For an IT services firm, a consultant with a day rate of £450 spending 15 days on bench represents over £6,750 in lost revenue, before adding overhead and fixed costs.
The problem is typically one of visibility and anticipation. Engagement end dates are known in advance, but without a centralised tracking tool, delivery managers discover them too late to arrange new staffing without a gap. It takes an average of 3–6 weeks to place a consultant in a new engagement (qualifying the client need, interview, start date), so anticipation must begin well before the current engagement ends.
In Orbit PM, every allocation has an end date. The system automatically flags consultants whose engagement ends within the next 4–8 weeks via the availability dashboard. This proactive detection turns reactive bench management into an anticipated process, and mechanically reduces unplanned bench time.
Skills growth and profile constraints
Staffing in IT services is not simply placing "someone available". Every client has precise profile requirements: seniority level (junior, mid-level, senior, expert), tech stack (Java/Spring, React, Salesforce, SAP, AWS…), certifications (TOGAF, PMP, AWS Solutions Architect, Scrum Master…), functional domain (finance, healthcare, industry). These constraints dramatically narrow the pool of eligible consultants for each role.
Add operational constraints on top: geography (on-site vs remote), partial availability (a consultant at 50% on another engagement), or contractual constraints (non-compete clauses, probation periods). This complexity makes manual staffing extremely time-consuming.
In Orbit PM, each consultant is enriched with their skills, seniority level and available capacity. Capacity planning lets you filter profiles by these criteria and instantly identify who is available, qualified and deployable to respond to an incoming bid. What used to take half a day of email exchanges now takes minutes in the dashboard.
The IT services challenge
Resource management in IT services: a problem of growing complexity
An IT services firm with 50 consultants manages on average 8 to 15 client engagements simultaneously. Each consultant may be assigned to multiple projects at variable rates. Engagement endings, extensions and bench periods are managed continuously.
With spreadsheets, this complexity quickly becomes unmanageable. Information is scattered, updates are time-consuming, and real-time visibility into consultant availability is virtually non-existent.
“Who is available to start a new engagement in March?”
→ Orbit PM: Real-time workload view with a rolling horizon
“Can we take on this new client without hiring?”
→ Orbit PM: Capacity simulation before commitment
“Is this consultant overloaded over the next two months?”
→ Orbit PM: Automatic overload detection with colour coding
“What is our global utilisation rate this quarter?”
→ Orbit PM: Consolidated KPI dashboard across all engagements
Real-world scenario
Orbit PM in practice at an IT services firm of 60 consultants
Context
An IT services firm of 60 consultants manages 12 active client engagements simultaneously. Consultants have varied profiles: fullstack developers, cloud architects, project managers, functional consultants. Many are shared across 2 engagements.
Before Orbit PM
The delivery manager maintained a 15-tab Excel file updated every Monday morning over 2 hours. Client project managers demanded urgent updates. Overloads were discovered in review meetings — too late to act without creating tension.
With Orbit PM
Every consultant is created in Orbit PM with their daily capacity. Every engagement is a project with dates and a day budget. Allocations are updated continuously by project managers themselves. The delivery manager checks the real-time dashboard to validate new assignments and anticipate bench periods.
From 2 hours to 30 minutes for the weekly update
Before commitment, not after
All engagements, all consultants, one tool
Comparison
Before / After Orbit PM in an IT services firm
| Situation | Before Orbit PM | With Orbit PM |
|---|---|---|
| Bench time management | Discovered at engagement end, reactive fire-fighting | Detected 4–8 weeks ahead, proactive action |
| Consultant availability | Excel file updated manually every Monday | Real-time view, updated continuously by project managers |
| Workload overloads | Identified in review meetings, too late | Automatic alert before capacity breach |
| Client reporting | Manual Excel export, error-prone, time-consuming | Direct export from Orbit PM with up-to-date data |
| Response time to bids | 1–2 days to identify available and qualified profiles | Minutes via capacity and skills filters |
| Planning updates | Centralised at the delivery manager, bottleneck | Delegated to project managers, delivery manager in oversight role |
IT services features
The most useful Orbit PM features for IT services firms
Per-consultant workload view
Visualise the occupancy rate of each consultant across all active engagements, day by day.
Availability forecasting
Identify which consultants will be available in 4, 6, or 8 weeks to respond to new bids.
Bench time detection
Automatically spot under-allocation periods that would correspond to uncovered bench time.
Staffing simulation
Test different staffing configurations before confirming commitment to a new client.
Microsoft Azure AD SSO
Your consultants log in with their enterprise Microsoft account. No new password to manage.
API for ERP integration
Sync Orbit PM with your ERP or billing tool via the REST API to avoid double data entry.
Activity tracking
Orbit PM and monthly activity reports
In IT services, the monthly activity report (timesheet) is an essential document. Signed by the client and consultant, it certifies days worked and serves as the billing basis. In T&M contracts, it is the supporting document that triggers invoice issuance: no validated timesheet, no payment. Managing timesheets concentrates a significant part of the administrative workload of account managers and project managers. Late signatures, day count disputes, last-minute corrections — timesheet collection is a recurring source of friction between the firm and its clients.
Allocations recorded in Orbit PM form the planned reference for each consultant's presence days. They can serve as the basis for pre-filling monthly timesheets, by exporting allocation data to your timesheet tool via the REST API. This reduces manual entry, limits errors, and accelerates the validation cycle.
How it works
- The project manager creates the engagement in Orbit PM and assigns consultants with their dates and allocation rates.
- Throughout the month, changes (leave, sick days, additional days) are updated in allocations.
- At month end, the API export provides a day-by-day breakdown per consultant per engagement.
- This data pre-fills the timesheet in your dedicated tool or ERP.
- The client validates the timesheet based on data consistent with the planning, reducing disputes.
Frequently asked questions
Orbit PM for IT services firms: your questions
Does Orbit PM handle both time-and-materials and fixed-price contracts?
Yes. Orbit PM supports both contract types in the same tool. For T&M, you track allocated days per consultant per client with a real-time workload view. For fixed-price projects, each project is associated with a day budget and Orbit PM compares actual consumption against the initial budget. This duality is essential for IT services firms that juggle both models daily.
Can Orbit PM help manage bench time between contracts?
Orbit PM lets you identify under-allocation periods proactively. By viewing the workload chart per team member, you can visualise unassigned windows weeks ahead. You can then take proactive commercial decisions — re-engaging an existing client, positioning the profile on an incoming bid — before the bench period becomes unavoidable. This anticipation is one of the most concrete operational gains for delivery managers in IT services firms.
Can I sync Orbit PM with my timesheet or activity reporting tool?
Orbit PM exposes a complete REST API that lets you export allocation data to your timesheet tool or ERP. Allocations serve as the planned reference: they can pre-fill monthly timesheets, eliminating double entry and inconsistencies between planning and billing. For firms using a dedicated timesheet tool (Sage, Cegid, in-house tool), API integration significantly reduces the monthly administrative burden.
Optimise your consultant resource management
Orbit PM helps IT services firms staff their consultants more effectively, balance workloads, and secure availability across multiple simultaneous engagements.