Whether you work in a large business or you’re an entrepreneur, you can probably benefit from implementing some sort of project management software into your day-to-day tasks to improve productivity and output. Project management software is becoming almost a requirement in companies today, as everyone is able to see positive impact almost immediately. Here are the top five ways that your business can benefit from a project management software.
Scheduling and Planning
The most obvious benefit of using a project management software is the added scheduling and planning abilities. Using a project management software can help you plan and schedule your days and weeks down to the hour – sometimes even less than that!
With the help of a project management software, you can clearly lay out your projects and tasks for the week, and determine what feasibly get done. This will also help you better communicate with your clients, since you’ll be able to make clear promises and deliver on deadlines. Overall, using a project management software helps provide clarity and organization to your business, that will maximize your scheduling and planning skills.
Collaboration
Another benefits of using a project management software is the benefits it offers to collaboration. When you are using project management software, it makes it a lot easier for you and your team to be able to
collaborate on large projects. Project management software allows everyone to share documents, timelines, and status updates, so you know where each team member is at, how much is done, how much is left to be finished, etc. It creates a shared sense of accountability and team pride, and helps keeps ideas and communication flowing opening between employees and teams.
Furthermore, many of these project management platforms offer seamless integrations with other platforms to streamline collaboration and productivity in the workplace. You won’t have to worry about plugging in another
source and manually connecting platforms – with many project management software tools, you can integrate directly with other tools!
In addition, using a project management centralizes communication, and prevents redundancies. If anyone has questions about a past meeting, project communication, or deliverable, they can easily get the answers they need by navigating to the source. No need to send follow up emails or dig up old communication threads, which helps save time and prevent stress from annoyance.
Not to mention, all files are saved and centralized in the same place. Employees will all know to upload important files and finished documents to the project management platform, instead of sending them via email, uploading them to a folder somewhere, or sending them in private communication threads where they can easily get lost or misplaced. A project management software helps store and centralize important files, which makes it easier to all employees to navigate to and reference them when needed.
Resource & Budget Management
If you work within a large team, you will find that project management software will help with resource management. Especially within an agency setting, where you have to deal with billable hours and being incredible specific about the amount of time and resource hours that are devoted to project, a project management software can help you outline clear tasks each week for specific individuals and resource teams, so that no one gets overloaded (and under-billed). Or vice-versa: project management software can help ensure that all teams are working the same number of hours, and provide clarity on output in the software interface.
Time Management
How many days and weeks have passed where at the end of them, you thought to yourself, “where did the time go?” Well, with a project management software, you’ll be able to actually see where you spent your time, and on what specific projects.
Different project management software platforms offer varying levels of specificity, in terms of how detailed you can get on projects and tasks, but you will likely be able to break up projects on the task level, to help you see which tasks took more time, less time, and were estimated properly.
Furthermore, many project management software also offer
time tracking integrations, so you can actually start a timer to correspond with specific tasks and see actual time allotments versus actual time spent for each task and project. This will help you evaluate profit margins and to make sure your spending your time on the most valuable tasks.
Progress Tracking
One of the most rewarding aspects of using a project management software is that it will help you track the progress of each project that you and your team are working on. You won’t have to ask employees where they’re at on a specific task, because the software will provide real-time updates. It’s also motivating to continue to see work getting done, and many project management software options offer unique visual depictions of project so you can see progress as its completed.
Finally, having this type of software cuts out the need for meetings and emails, which are little more than time-wasters in the first place, which increases productivity and effectiveness in the workplace. That way, employees can spend their time on more high-output tasks, where their work is most valuable and meaningful.
As you can see, there are a number of benefits to using a project management software, and virtually no drawbacks. Get started with a free trial version of your project management software of choice, and see how your output, productivity and collaboration changes for the better.
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