A method of determining pricing to ensure profitability for performance of a task by a business includes entry of employee data, business costs, job costs and business revenues; calculating a profit index factor from the data entered and providing ways of maximizing profit using the profit index factor as a baseline. The profit index factor is used as a baseline for performing analysis of operation profitability and performance; generating gross profit; and tracking profit on a job-by-job basis. The profit index factor is also used as a baseline for finding out how increasing operational expense will effect pricing; finding out increasing production staff will effect pricing; finding out how decreasing production staff will effect pricing; finding out the real burdened cost of billing one employee hour; and pricing service jobs to achieve or surpass a specific profit per hour target.

Computer-implemented prospective planning of personnel costs for an enterprise includes conducting planning preparation to plan the personnel costs, electronically collecting data relating to personnel costs, electronically performing a cost planning run, electronically conducting a detailed analysis of the results to revise and modify the collected data to produce updated results, and reporting the results of the cost planning run.

The invention provides a method and system to simulate a process of discrete tasks having a plurality of available resources associated therewith. The system may comprise a model database to store a plurality of models, each model including a plurality of task and resource parameters; a model portion in communication with the model database and configured to receive commands from a user, to retrieve one of the plurality of models and corresponding task and resource parameters in response to a user command, to receive input data corresponding to attributes of one or more task and resource parameters from a business database system, and to generate a simulation model based on the selected business database system and the input data; and a model server to perform a simulation of the process by processing the simulation model and to generate an output data file containing output data representative of the simulation.

A system and method for debugging system solutions under design which cooperates with a solution design platform in which relationships between two or more system-level computing components are defined, in which each system-level computing component is associated with a behavioral model, and in which each relationship between system-level computing components is defined as a message-based communications interface. During simulation of the solution, messages are created by analysis of each behavioral model, and are transported or exchanged between system components. The debugging facility monitors interfaces between the system-level components, captures messages at the monitored interfaces, and adds tracking information to the captured messages. Following simulation, the stored messages and tracking information can be reformatted and displayed for review by the user to assist in determination of the problems in system-level operation.

Computerized systems and methods for managing a workload varying in time applicable to a help desk. A future workload is forecast from historical workload data. A first analysis result is built on an earlier section of historical data, and a second analysis result is built with more recent historical data. The two results are combined to yield a workload forecast. Further, the resources needed for covering a forecast workload value are calculated automatically by equating generic expressions for the resources demanded for servicing the forecast workload and the resources offered for handling the workload.