How Do You Reduce Bench Time in an IT Consulting Firm?
A 100-consultant firm billing $1,000 a day loses roughly $1.34 million a year by running at 68.9% utilization instead of 75%. That gap is bench time, and it is one of the most expensive problems in staffing and IT services. (This post is about bench time in consulting, not weightlifting or the NBA.) What does bench time mean? Bench time is the paid period an employee or consultant spends without…
Bench time refers to paid periods when employees or consultants are not working on billable projects. At a firm billing $1,000 per day, a 0.1% drop in utilization rate means losing about $1.34 million annually. TCS now imposes a minimum billable days requirement and limits unallocated time to 35 days, though this policy has faced pushback.
Major IT firms have reduced bench time from 45-60 days in FY21 to 35-45 days today. Bench time costs can be calculated by multiplying the number of consultants by their daily rate, working days, and utilization rate. Reducing bench time requires forecasting risks, maintaining a searchable skills inventory, and providing real structure for bench time through training.
Monitoring bench rates weekly is crucial to addressing issues early. Tools like We360.ai can provide real-time visibility into team capacity and workload, helping identify bench time issues before they become major problems.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
