task management software Archives

How Can Project Management Software Help Your Business?

Posted on March 20, 2023July 10, 2023 by Lillian Watts

Project management software is an indispensable tool that every company needs to streamline its project management processes.

The right project management software can be a key success factor, particularly for small businesses where time is of the essence and resources are often limited. Project managers may take on less complex projects but face the additional challenges of fewer resources.

However, this software allows businesses to manage projects, collaborate with team members, and track progress in real-time.

In today’s digital age where remote work is also becoming the norm, the right project management software can be critical to a company’s success, regardless of size, niche, or industry.

But how can project management software add value to your small business?

Let’s dive into this post and answer your questions.

1. Improved Project Overview

Project management software gives companies a comprehensive overview of their projects, including progress, budget, and resource allocation. With this review, organizations can identify areas for improvement and make adjustments to ensure projects are completed on time, on budget, and to the highest quality standards. Businesses can quickly identify potential problems and take the necessary corrective action. In addition, this overview enables better resource planning and ensures that the right resources are allocated to the right projects at the right time.

2. Increased Customer Satisfaction

This allows team members to collaborate on projects in real time, no matter where they are. By using project management software, companies can ensure that everyone is on the same page and working towards the same goal, which can ultimately lead to better results and greater customer satisfaction. However, a reliable Internet connection is essential to unlock the full potential of project management software. Since this information is updated in real-time, it is crucial for the firm to ensure good connectivity. Without it, your team may experience slow response times, connection drops, and other technical issues that can prevent them from working effectively. Cox, a popular Internet Service Provider (ISP) in the market right now, includes a fast, reliable internet service to keep your team running smoothly and without interruption.

3. Enhanced Level of Collaboration

One of the main benefits of project management software is improved communication between team members. With the ability to access project information in real-time, team members can easily communicate with each other, share files, and provide immediate feedback. This enhanced collaboration results in better decision-making, faster response times, and a more efficient workflow. Improved collaboration leads to better communication as well, which ultimately offers better results. Project management software facilitates group communication with features such as instant messaging, file sharing, and task assignment, creating an optimized communication channel that reduces misunderstandings and miscalculations.

4. Increased Efficiency

Project management software allows businesses to automate routine tasks such as planning, budgeting, and task management. This automation allows team members to focus on more important tasks, which ultimately improves efficiency. In addition, the project management software provides real-time updates and alerts so team members can keep track of deadlines and identify potential issues before they become more of a problem.

Moreover, project management software streamlines project processes and saves time and energy. This saved time can be used to focus on developing strategies for overall organizational improvement, which can lead to increased productivity and workflow efficiency. Automation can also help organizations reduce the risk of human error and speed up repetitive tasks.

5. Improved Budget Management

Project management software is especially useful for small businesses on a budget. This software provides real-time updates on project spending, making it easy to effectively manage and track budgets. Small businesses can use project management software to create and track project budgets, set spending limits, and control costs. The software can also create reports and alerts that help small business owners quickly identify budget overruns or potential problems.

6. Improved Communication Skills with Clients

Project management software also facilitates communication with clients by providing a centralized platform for sharing project information, updates, and feedback. This transparency builds trust and improves the overall customer experience, resulting in increased customer satisfaction and retention. This is because clients are more likely to be satisfied if they have a clear understanding of the progress of the project and how their feedback is taken into account in the project. This increased satisfaction can lead to repeat business and better customer recommendations.

7. Access to Valuable Analytics

Finally, project management software provides organizations with valuable analytics that can be used to spot trends, track progress, and make data-driven decisions. This analysis allows companies to continuously improve their project management processes and achieve better results. Data-driven analytics help organizations make better decisions, streamline processes, and improve project outcomes.

By analyzing design data, organizations can identify areas for improvement, implement best practices, and adjust their approach as needed. This type of analysis is necessary to identify patterns and areas of potential risk or opportunity.

Summing it up

As such, project management software enables companies to improve project transparency, improve customer satisfaction, foster greater collaboration, improve efficiency, manage budgets, improve customer engagement, and gain access to valuable analytics.

By using project management software, small businesses can save time, increase productivity, and achieve better results on projects. With the right project management software and a reliable internet connection, small businesses can overcome adversity and thrive in a competitive marketplace.

How Task Management Software Helps Businesses Achieve Productivity and Profitability

Posted on October 14, 2021May 9, 2023 by Lisa Brian

Business operations involve numerous task management activities, including task creation, planning, assigning/delegating tasks, tracking, reporting, and execution. These activities demand significant time and effort.

No matter what size of business you run, the benefits of efficient task management are beyond comparison: when customer and market demand increase beyond manual management capabilities, businesses should opt for automated, digital task management to instantly scale capacity up, to handle complex tasks efficiently, and to increase productivity. It also allows businesses to avoid the time and cost of mismanagement, miscommunications, and inefficiencies that can directly impact business profits.

Businesses that leverage task management software tools can witness immense benefits and stay ahead of the competition. These tools help optimize resources, control workflow, drive collaboration, meet deadlines, enhance communication, and improve efficiency. As per reports from Fortune Business Insights, the global task management
software market size will reach USD 4,535.5 million by 2026.

Let’s see what features reliable task management systems provide and how these tools help businesses revamp productivity and profitability.

Prominent Task Management Software Features To Help Achieve Effective Productivity

task and productivity management software

Task management solutions offer comprehensive tools and features to control various stages of the task management lifecycle. Here are the most trending task management software features that can help businesses achieve effective productivity.

1. Task Planning

Task management systems help managers plan tasks systematically from the start. The software provides a platform to break a complex task into stages or smaller tasks through a structured approach based on the budget, resources, scope, and timeline. These subtasks can be assigned to different people and managed effortlessly.

Besides, you can organize, prioritize your tasks, and modify these easily throughout the planning stage. The best part is that you can view the split tasks collectively on a unified task management software platform.

2. Task Delegation

Appropriate task delegation is a challenge for managers. It is crucial to match the right task to the right person and ensure that no team member is overburdened or underutilized. Reliable task management software enables seamless task assigning.

Elimination of manual assignment ensures better accuracy and quicker task delegation. The software also sends relevant alerts to the team members when a task is assigned to them. Additionally, team members can better view subtasks and understand which person is responsible for them. It improves accountability.

3. Prioritization

With too many tasks running in parallel, it is challenging for managers to prioritize the tasks. Some tasks are dependent on others, and some have shorter deadlines. Managers need to assign these based on the complexity, deadline, and available resources.

Task management tools help automate and control task prioritization, deciding what tasks need to be completed at the earliest. The tools enable classifying these tasks into subtasks, dependent tasks, and priority tasks. The software also automatically alerts relevant people about what tasks are on priority and need immediate attention. Moreover, all the stakeholders can view the task prioritization on the software platform anytime as required.

4. Status Tracking

Task status tracking is the most common and essential task management software feature. An abundance of tasks need to be efficiently controlled, optimized, and granularly monitored at all stages. Task management systems offer task-tracking tools that help managers and teams keep track of the status of each task and identify the bottlenecks. They can thus take appropriate measures to correct the issues and ensure task completion.

5. Security

Data security is essential for every business, be it for business data or client information.

Manual data management is prone to security breaches as data is stored on multiple platforms where various people have the authority to access it.

Moreover, it becomes challenging to grant selective, role-based access to people. When sensitive data is lost or altered, it can irreversibly damage the company’s growth and reputation.

manual data management by a man reviewing charts and graphs on paper

Task management systems allow the storage of all information on a unified platform, making it more accessible for administrators to monitor security effectively. Task management software provides robust, multi-layer data security features with data encryption and role-based access controls.

The system administrator can centrally control security permissions, provide data access to relevant/specific personnel, and restrict others from accessing or modifying it. Additionally, the software records and helps track which user has accessed or altered data, making it easier to detect unauthorized access and take appropriate action.

6. Communication and Collaboration Tools

Task management software provides comprehensive document management, communication, coordination, and collaboration tools like contact management, calendar management, synchronous editing, messaging, and more. These tools help enhance team collaboration and streamline task management processes. Everyone agrees: task management systems momentously improve project management (after all, projects are comprised of tasks), task efficiency, team productivity, and overall performance.

7. Notifications

As discussed above, task management systems automatically issue notifications and alerts as needed to all the task stakeholders when there is a need for action, for example, task assignment notification, deadline alert, etc. The software also allows customized email templates for personalized notifications.

8. Analytics and Reporting

Modern task management systems provide business intelligence (BI) tools, analytics, and reporting. These features help managers make informed decisions to save time, costs, and resources. Analytics offers valuable insights into possible outcomes based on past data, while the reporting feature helps generate customized reports on performance, issues, and shortcomings requiring immediate attention.

9. Integrations

The right task management system is the one that allows seamless integration with your existing systems as required, for example, CRM, HR, and accounting systems. Without these integrations, it’s difficult to share data across these platforms. Top task management solutions allow all the necessary integrations without hassle, out of the box.

Wrapping Up

Task management systems are tools that help organizations/businesses streamline and control the complete task management lifecycle. The software helps prevent delays, eliminate manual errors to improve accuracy, enhance communication, achieve better coordination, ensure data security, increase process efficiency, and achieve employee satisfaction. Task management software helps boost overall business productivity.

As Jim Rohn rightly stated, “Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time.”

So, save time, resources, streamline workflow, witness perfect task management, and boost profits by choosing the right task management software for your business.

10 Signs That It’s Time For An All-In-One Business Software

Posted on April 14, 2021January 22, 2024 by Brian Kinney

Is your business prepared to grow by 50x in the near future?

The answer is yes—if you’re prepared. A profitable business model and hardworking employees are baseline requirements, but it takes more than that to push your business over the top—it takes an all-in-one business management software platform.

In the spirit of preparation, take a minute to assess what a 50x growth would logistically entail:

Hiring new employees (and onboarding them)
Purchasing new materials and equipment (and cataloging them)
Expanded remote capabilities and office space
Keeping track of 50x more documents
Expanding your CRM capabilities
Increasing your accounting workload

all in one business management software growth

The list above is surely incomplete in terms of the new costs, challenges, and variables that come into play as a business grows.

Many of these challenges can be addressed by utilizing all-in-one business management software. It’s understandable that your first thought may be “I don’t need that, at least not yet.”

The key word? “Yet”. Though business management software can help businesses of all sizes, it’s absolutely imperative to organizations that are poised to expand their business. So, don’t be behind the 8-ball—here are 10 signs that it’s time for your business to enlist an all-in-one business management software solution.

1. When Growth Is Imminent

Growth is exciting. It can also be nerve-racking, stressful, and full of growing pains.

upward growth trend of Bitcoin superimposed over a gold bitcoin token

In a hopelessly-romantic, Hollywood-esque way, it can be easy to believe that growth will hit in one tsunami-like surge—a big “aha” moment, a mega-deal with a corporate giant, or an upward profit chart akin to the likes of Bitcoin.

Not featured on the big screen, however, is the groundwork that is laid slowly behind the scenes—years and years of trial and error, finding the right employees, and testing the waters of various markets.

Albeit slowly at first, growth can actually materialize in an instant—that marketing campaign you launched went viral thanks to some verified retweeters and suddenly, you’re fielding calls from what will end up being the largest accounts your business has ever managed.

The point here: growth is built slowly, but can unfold all at once. Don’t be unprepared for that moment. You’re confident in your business—be just as confident in your ability to produce results.

As the old adage goes, “Dress for the job you want, not the job you have.” Look at business management software in the same light—invest in an ERP for the company you want to grow into, not for the company you are at this very moment.

2. When Customer Relationships Need More Attention

Customers are the backbone of your business. Attaining a loyal customer base is hard work—it’s easy to become wrapped up in the exuberance of an influx of new customers.

Before your customers are customers, they’re leads. Is your sales staff equipped to not only handle managing additional customer relationships, but the additional amount of fresh leads coming in?

Help your employees assess the profitability and priority of each opportunity with an automated sales funnel. With an influx of new leads and customers, you may think hiring additional sales staff is the answer. While that may be a step you want to take at some point, it’s important to focus first on maximizing the efficiency of your existing employees.

Some of the biggest benefits all-in-one business management software brings to growing businesses lie in its CRM processes.

customers enjoying all in one business management software

Automating marketing campaigns, visual dashboards to track the entirety of your sales pipeline, instantaneous synchronicity with the rest of your finances, and customer feedback portals are some of the tools that can help you attract and retain a loyal customer base.

3. When You Find Yourself Making “Educated Guesses”

Going with your gut is a natural instinct. In the early days of your business, it was probably even profitable. Heck, you’ve probably made a gut decision today. But as your business grows, decisions will require more than just a hunch.

Data-driven decision-making (DDDM) will enhance your productivity and profitability across the board. Every business contains nuanced differences in its approach—analyzing the data that is relevant to your business is what counts.

ERP systems with customizable dashboards and report-generating functionality bring you the information you need to make an informed decision at a glance. Your business is unique—the business management software you choose needs to mold to your needs, not the other way around.

4. When Tedious Tasks Eat Up Your Day

Some days, work might not even feel like work. On other days, an hour might feel like a lifetime. The reality is that not every part of your job is thrilling—those mundane tasks you dread are often some of the most important (crunching numbers, taking inventory, etc.)

While these are important tasks, it’s just as important to not let yourself spend a disproportionate amount of time focusing on them.

Automation is the key to working smarter—automate the tasks that eat up your time, and use that time to focus on the bigger-picture goals that will help bring your business to the next level.

All-in-one business management software will help you do just that. From accounting to inventory to sales, many parts of the process don’t require immediate and constant attention.

Aside from automation, delegation is important, as well—monitoring the status of all assigned tasks without filling your inbox with unnecessary back-and-forth “confirmation clutter.”

5. When You’re Spending Too Much On IT Systems

Repair costs are a necessary evil. Laptops bear the brunt of coffee spillage, and interns overestimate how many monitors they can carry at once. It happens.

colored networking cables plugged into back of equipment

But what about the cost of non-accident-related expenditures? Software updates, new servers, and backups for those can chew up a budget very quickly.

With cloud computing, you’ll be able to exert more control over your finances. A cloud-based ERP removes the need for excessive hardware spending, costly software upgrades, and backup costs. All of these needs are handled off-site—and at a flat, fixed, predictable rate—so that you can focus on your business, not the tech behind it.

6. When You Need To Double Down On Regulatory Compliance

Regardless of the industry you operate in, you most likely have someone in your organization tasked with monitoring compliance. Whether you’re a manufacturer, contractor, consultant, or educator, rules are rules—and it pays to follow them.

Most of the work of a compliance manager will come in the form of keeping track of documents and ensuring on-site traceability. Checking off boxes may seem mundane, but it’s arguably the most important part of the job.

Another example, construction managers are responsible for overseeing the safety of their crew and all associated subcontractors. Before the job begins, OSHA compliance needs to be taken care of. If these certifications and qualifications are not met, it could set a problematic ripple effect in motion—delays in compliance could cause a project to go over budget and disrupt your timeline for other jobs (including the schedules of your subcontractors). A bid could also be lost outright due to a lack of compliance, causing an unpleasant impact on your bottom line as well as negatively impacting the trust your employees and subcontractors have in you.

In short, it pays to stay on top of regulatory measures by keeping all pertinent documents in one centralized, easily accessible location.

7. When You Need To Back Up Your Data

These days, data security isn’t solely the responsibility of your tech-savvy staff—it’s everyone’s job. Having a data security infrastructure in place is key, and probably something you already do to some degree. But how much of your data is backed up? And more importantly, where and how?

all in one business management cloud erp

If you are not currently leveraging any ERP solutions, the odds are your data is not sufficiently backed up. Sure, you may have redundancy measures in place on your local system, but more can be done.

In 2021, global cybercrime damage costs around $190,000 per second. Cybercriminals are everywhere and are unrelenting in their efforts to undermine legitimate businesses. If your data is stored in a singular, localized location, you may think it’s safer. But in all reality, this is not the case. If this one data center is breached, your systems will cease to function.

By utilizing a cloud software system, your data is not only decentralized and duplicated across servers, it’s backed by world-class cybersecurity professionals. Sure, your computer’s firewall is great—but having that firewall and a cybersecurity infrastructure tailored to your business needs will prevent any malicious actors from disrupting your business.

8. When Working Remotely Isn’t Efficient

Remote work is here, and it probably isn’t going anywhere for quite some time. In many respects, that’s a good thing—workers are achieving higher productivity levels, both companies and employees are saving money, and every organization’s talent pool has gone global.

There are many prerequisites to achieving successful remote work habits. Deploying proper management strategies, project management techniques, and a new kind of HR department are some of the adjustments that need to be made. But the common theme here is what lies underneath the human-based element of successful remote adaptation: using better technology.

The right all-in-one business management software doesn’t just need to be able to crunch the numbers and track your inventory, it needs to enable your people to be more effective in their roles. Track the status of projects, customer leads, and even new hires all from one place.

If your employees are able to have a centralized location where they can both find all of their work-related data and chat with their co-workers, they’ll be able to be focused and efficient no matter where they’re working from.

9. When You’re Unsure Of Your Employees’ Day-To-Day Schedules

Managing is a tricky job. On one hand, you want to be actively involved in your employee’s work. Their success is often a reflection of yours. On the other, most managers are savvy enough to know that micromanagement is not typically a successful method.

If you’re unsure about what your employees are doing on a daily basis, that’s a problem. Now, you don’t want to go breathing down their necks and asking them what they’re up to every day—that wastes both your time and theirs. The answer lies in the middle.

While you and your employees almost certainly use some sort of calendar app, are these calendars synced? Do you have a uniform, master calendar to access?

Not only should you have access to a universal calendar, but you should also have access to all of the tasks and projects that your team is working on. Instead of sending a dreaded “Hello! Just circling back on the status of this project! Kind regards!” type email, look to your software system for the answers. This way, you and your employees can be less focused on updating each other through emails and chats and be more focused on producing high-quality work.

10. When You Can Tell Your Employees Are Stressed

Hearing employees complain is never easy, especially when it comes to things beyond your control. Sure, there are some things that you wish you could provide them, but not every request is feasible or grantable.

One request that is feasible? Upgrading your software systems.

Stressed office worker with too much demand on thier time

Duplicate data sets, missing files and links, incomplete financial records, chicken-scratch notes strewn across an office—all of these problems slow down employee productivity. Even if your employees don’t verbalize their complaints, read the room. Frustration bubbles to the surface in different ways for every individual, and some may be more prone to silence than outward voicing of complaints.

At fixed monthly payments with top-quality customer support included as part of the base package, an all-in-one ERP is a much better solution to employee complaints than to Frankenstein together with various software that may or may not communicate with each other.

The best part? Most top-quality software is free to use at first.

It’s Always The Right Time For All-In-One Business Management Software

No businesses are alike. Products, customers, strategies, and everything in between all vary to a large extent depending on your industry’s specific needs.

However, people are a lot alike—we are stronger when working as a unified, coordinated front, climbing towards a common goal. While it’s people that allow your business to be successful, it’s software that allows them to reach their full potential.

The world is becoming increasingly digital, synchronized, and competitive. Enlisting the right all-in-one business management software for your business will help you stay ahead of the curve.

6 Ways Task Management Can Increase Business Efficiency

Posted on September 24, 2019May 22, 2023 by Scott Hammer

According to Capterra, “97% of organizations believe project management is critical to business performance and organizational success.” With companies searching for new ways to complete more tasks more efficiently, many are turning to various software applications to help them try and do it all.

If your business is trying to juggle several projects at once without letting anything fall through the cracks, don’t worry. There are solutions out there to help you manage all of your business tasks and projects effortlessly.

One of those solutions is a ERP based task management system.

What is Task Management?

According to ProjectManager, task management “involves a process by which you follow a task through its lifecycle, from planning to testing, tracking to reporting.”

A task management software can help you follow these tasks through every phase, ensuring that they are completed fully and on-time– or earlier. A task tracking software is a great way for you to get an overview of all of your tasks and ensure that they are being completed at the highest level.

Now that we have a clear picture of what a task management system is, what specific features of the system can help you streamline business practices? How can these features help you decrease wasted time in your company and increase business efficiency? Here are 6 of our favorite features of task management software:

1. Everything in One Place

Using a task management system, you can manage all of your tasks from one, centralized location. By having all of your tasks on one platform, you can better oversee both your individual tasks, as well as tasks that members of your team are working on.

2. Team Tasks

Speaking of team tasks, when using team task management software, collaboration becomes a whole lot easier. Using a task management software, you can view what task each member of your team is currently working on, what tasks they’ve completed, and what tasks they’ve failed to submit on time.

This is a great way for you to stay up-to-date on the current status of your project and allows for transparency between every member of your team.

3. Determine Task Priority

Another feature of task tracking software is the ability to prioritize tasks. Using task management software, you can determine what tasks have the highest priority and what tasks have the least priority. This is a great way for you to compartmentalize tasks and put your attention and focus on the most important tasks first.

4. Task Reports

Once tasks are completed, learn how you and your team can improve! Using a task management system, you can generate task efficiency reports.

These reports are a great way for you to learn how you and your employees respond to tasks. Reports can give you insight on your response rate and your task resolution rate, which you can narrow down by date and employee. This is a great way for you to get a clear view on how your team responds to tasks, and how your business can complete tasks with more efficiency.

5. Create Deadline Alerts

If your business is hit with several tasks at once, it can be hard to keep track of them all. With all of these tasks in your business pipeline, it is inevitable that some deadlines will be missed due to lack of task management.

Using your task management software, you can set deadline alerts on tasks so that you and your employees are aware of upcoming due dates. With this task tracking software, you and your team can help ensure that no task deadlines get missed again.

6. On-Time-Task Tracking

With a task management system in place, you can track how much time each task takes to complete. This is useful information because when you go to plan a similar task in the future, you will have a better idea of how much time to allocate to that specific task.

In addition, knowing how much time is spent on a task also allows you to increase employee productivity.

For example, if one employee can complete a certain task at both a high level and in a short amount of time, wouldn’t you want them to complete all similar tasks to that one in the future? Using a task tracking software allows you to see how long each employee spends on tasks, allowing you to set them up with tasks that have them working at peak productivity.

Conclusion

When a business is growing, so is its daily workload. As your company expands, you’ll be tasked with finding new ways to manage and ensure all tasks and projects are completed both on time and at a high level.

This is where a task tracking software can help. But not all products are the same. How can you know you’re choosing the best task management software for your business?

Start with figuring out what you want your software to help you achieve. After implementing a task management software, you are your team should be able to monitor and complete tasks with more efficiency. You should be able to prioritize tasks, create deadline alerts, and ultimately streamline your task process in order to create (and sustain) a more efficient and successful business.

How to Increase Your Project Profitability

Posted on June 11, 2019April 26, 2023 by Scott Hammer

The eternal struggle: finishing projects on time, within budget, and making sure they’re profitable. Even with project management software, a skilled manager, and a dynamite team all working within carefully structured tasks and deadlines, there are always obstacles.

Scopes change. Orders change. Members of your project team get sick and miss work. No matter what industry your organization works in, Murphy’s Law probably applies when it comes to projects.

The numbers speak for themselves. An article in Gallup notes, “A study by PricewaterhouseCoopers, which reviewed 10,640 projects from 200 companies in 30 countries and across various industries, found that only 2.5% of the companies successfully completed 100% of their projects.”

What about time and budget? Gallup notes that a study by Harvard Business Review found that “average [project cost] overrun was 27%, but one in six projects had a cost overrun of 200% on average and a schedule overrun of almost 70%.”

That’s because projects, though varying in size and complexity, have a lot of moving parts. Finishing projects on time and within budget requires not only successful management of what’s known, but also having the agility to adapt to unknowns.

As with most organizational success factors, access to information is key. And the best way to access all of your company’s information at a glance? The best business management ERP.

Information, with respect to projects, isn’t just about who is working on what. In fact, many different kinds of data, from multiple sources within a company, comprise a project’s life cycle.

In this article, I’ll discuss what’s really involved in successful project management, the roles multi-divisional data play throughout project timelines, and how integrated software solutions go beyond the limitations of traditional project management software.

Project Tools: The Roundup

You can tell a lot about what’s popular in project management from some of the popular software products on the market. Gantt charts, task management systems, and agile team communication are all central to keeping your workforce aligned and aware of project status.

Indeed, consistency and efficiency in the way work is assigned, assessed, and communicated are all essential to project vitality.

But you’re not interested in just managing, right? You want projects to be profitable.

For more profitable projects, you need complete transparency, data access, and streamlined workflows. That means having a system robust enough to handle the complexity of each project stage.

Beyond Basic: Essential Project Management Tools

Any project management software worth the price tag must be able to cover the basics. But nearly every application does that.

Here are some of the necessary tools you should expect from your project management software.

Skill Management

Most projects require employees with special skills. But some are more specialized than others. From CPA services to someone certified to use specific machinery (a jackhammer, for example). Making sure you have the right person assigned to the right task is integral to project management.

However, those tools aren’t always included in typical project management software. You should be able to pull data from your HR division to give you more insight on which team members are best suited to project tasks.

Scheduling

When planning a project, you need to know who is available— and when they’re available. You also need to quickly see your team’s workload so you can properly schedule assignments.

But if your calendar isn’t connected to your project management software, you’re going to spend far too much time tracking down schedules and trying to make them fit into your project timeline. Having a dynamic, fully transparent scheduling tool can help you make sure you’ve accounted for every detail.

Time Off

You can’t easily schedule a project without easy access to employee time off. What if members of your project team are scheduled for vacation during a major deadline? Knowing that, and being able to make adjustments within the same software system, will prevent your projects from being delayed.

Order Management

As you’re planning your project, you’ll naturally ask yourself a version of the following questions: How much of the budget can we use on design? How much was approved by the customer for this construction labor?

No matter what industry you’re in, you want to make sure you don’t go over your budget. Having the visibility to see exactly what your customer ordered and approved will provide the details you need to allocate hours and resources on tasks and spending.

Communication and Visibility

There are many ways to communicate with your customers throughout a project’s lifecycle. But few of them are quick, simple, and built into the software you’re using. What if messages get lost, and you’re late replying to a customer?

Keeping your customers informed of their project status is the best way to limit risk and confusion. It’s also how you develop a good, long-term working relationship. In fact, if you’ve waited for your customer to inquire about a project, you’re probably not being proactive enough.

Having a customer portal allows your customers to see their project status without ever having to ask. They can also view messages, respond to them, and pay their invoices directly through the system. Customer portals provide a much cleaner way to communicate— you eliminate confusing email chains and the potential for missed messages.

Contract Management

Having the ability to upload a PDF contract is nice, but that’s a far cry from instant approval. Imagine submitting an order, having your contact review and approve it, sign it electronically, and store that information with the order and project.

There could be a great deal of interaction involved in getting orders approved. But there doesn’t have to be. With proper contract management software built into your system, you’ll easily be able to see what was ordered. You’ll also see whether (and when) the customer approved the order. All without the annoying back-and-forth.

Budget Commitments

A lot of project management software applications allow you to track your overall budget. But shouldn’t you really know how much money your customer approved for specific items, milestones, or project stages?

When you have integrated accounting and project management software, you’ll get a drill-down level of insight that’s very difficult to collect from separate applications. Seeing committed budgets in the form of invoices and line items can help you understand what has been paid for and plan for working hours to accommodate that payment.

Expense Tracking

Similar to your budget commitments, you should have the ability to track expenses down to specific levels of detail. For example: do you need to record expenses for specific job tools? Do you need to know how much you’re paying subcontracted labor?

Being able to track and bill for these expenses is a huge advantage in managing your project profitability.

You should also know when a customer paid for your service without them having to tell you. Closing a milestone is one thing, but being able to receive a payment against an invoice is entirely another. When you’re trying to understand how much income you’ve received, an integrated accounting and project management solution is essential.

Profitability Tracking

Understanding profitability isn’t just the core question: how much money did we make from this project? It can also give you insight about how (and whether) you should approach projects like it in the future. A good report can help make sure that no expense, billable time, or payment falls through the cracks.

In short, your profitability helps you make decisions about what’s working best for your company, and it gives you the data to understand why. It can help you learn from your mistakes, go after winning projects, and adjust your processes for the future.

A detailed profitability report needs to pull in your financial data, which is why a solution that integrates your accounting and project management functionality is ideal.

In short, your profitability helps you make decisions about what’s working best for your company, and it gives you the data to understand why. It can help you learn from your mistakes, so that your total expenses couldn’t harm your net income much, go after winning projects, and adjust your processes for the future.

Document Collaboration

Throughout the course of managing a project, you’re going to need easy, centralized access to documents. Whether you’re requesting a blueprint, compliance doc, or financial record, you should be able to access it in seconds.

Traditional project management software is unlikely to store all of the documentation you need to access your project information. And it’s not just a question of access. You’ll need to share documents with your team throughout the project timeline. Centralized document storage helps you make sure your team can stay on the same page as your project progresses.

Conclusion: Project Management Centric ERP Software

Successful projects are both profitable and timely. To properly manage and account for every variable, you’ll need integrated resources that go beyond the limited scope of typical project management software.

Otherwise, you’re likely to spend half your time trying to track down information from accounting, human resources, sales, and whatever other sources of data comprise your projects. Being able to communicate within a single system that streamlines information is the best way to be completely in control of your projects.

When you’re evaluating management software, make sure you consider everything that affects the scope, profitability, and timeliness of your projects. When you find a solution that can account for all of them, you’ll know that you have chosen wisely.