One of the most important topics that concerns business owners is efficiently managing day-to-day projects. Workflow is a vital business activity that can improve overall performance, if done right.
In the past, projects were managed on paper; this required the constant attention of at least one person. This also meant a lot of paper-pushing, tedious work.
However, in the past two decades, the advancements of computer and internet technologies have made things a lot easier. Due to these advancements, project management has become a lot easier and more efficient.
One of the biggest and most popular advancements has come in the form of simple project management software. There are a lot of different project management tools that aim to improve how businesses operate, built to scale … regardless of size. Particularly, online project management software has become fairly popular. There is a growing trend of companies who avoid using on-site software so they don’t have to waste time installing and managing it themselves.
Project management software can be quite beneficial to your business and here is why.
1. Track progress of ongoing tasks
When you have a lot of irons in the fire it’s important to know where you stand on current tasks. Additionally, by tracking your projects, you’re able to better assess when they will be finished. This means less downtime and more productivity. It also allows you to update clients accurately and quickly.
Online project management software offers a notification feature to update people associated with a certain project on progress, what remains to be done, and who is accountable for each task.
This allows easy insight into where you team stands on a project without having to hunt down information. Let’s face it, your team works better when everyone is on the same page. At the same time, the need for email communication and meetings are reduced.
2. Embrace a higher level of collaboration
Collaboration between you and your employees is key to getting more done. Even if a task is not considered a group task, it is often dependent and related to other tasks being completed — a small piece of a larger puzzle.
By using online project management software, all employees within can collaborate by commenting, sharing documents, or posting status updates within a certain project. Meanwhile, a good online project management tool comes with cloud storage space, giving your team the ability to download or upload important files.
The real benefit here is that information is available in real-time to everyone who needs it. There is no risk of losing valuable documents that are safely stored in your cloud or waiting around for someone to email it or give you access.
3. Improve delegation
As you grow and manage your team you’ll quickly identify their different skills, strengths and weaknesses. When you identify the right person to do a certain job – delegate tasks with ease.
Online project management tools offer options to assign roles to tasks within a project. This gives a project leader a better overall view of the project and how each team member is contributing. Additionally, your employees will clearly understand what their role is on a specific project.
4. Meet milestones with increased visibility
Each and every project management tool has a basic “start and end date” feature. You can set deadlines for a project, and you can segment smaller tasks within a project with their own due dates as well.
With this kind of detailed visibility into the scope of a project you can easily check on progress, milestone dates, analyze how quickly things are developing, etc. Usually, there are notification alerts that will ping users when a certain project or deadline is drawing near. This keeps people on their toes and it reminds them of tasks they need to complete.
It is also possible to set email notifications. This precludes you or your team leads from having to micromanage an employees work and consistently nudge someone to get a task done; the software does it for you instead.
In order to stay competitive and efficient, all modern businesses need to manage projects the best way they possibly can. You cannot do this without the right tech solutions. Make sure to implement a simple project management software solution that is cost-effective and meets your team needs.
This article has been edited and condensed.
David Miller is a researcher who has several years of experience in the field of teaching, project management and training. He is associated with prestigious brands and many leading organizations for his expertise in project management. Currently, he is pursuing research in effectiveness of project management software and is also a contributing author with ProProfs. Connect with @davidmiller4312 on Twitter.
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