8 Project Management Software Benefits for your SME

Businesses of all sizes unquestionably have to juggle multiple people, projects, tasks, and plans at a time. Access to the right solution can assist them in keeping everything organized as they plan and run multiple projects.

The solution lies in investing in project management software. It ensures that your SME gets to run projects in an accurate, predictable, and profitable manner. The benefits offered by this software are boundless.

A few years back, project management comprised drooping sticky notes, messy whiteboards, and a pencil. But thanks to innovation in the tech sector, project management software today helps with:

• Resource allocation
• Time management
• Change management
• Project planning

Read on to learn the eight benefits a project management software can offer your SME.

1. Improved Communication and Team Collaboration

Gathering your project data in a single location allows you to delegate tasks, share documents, and make public comments on the ongoing tasks. Project management systems, e.g., Teamwork from SmartOffice, ensure team members are kept in the loop.

The communication feature prevents past conversations from getting lost in what would otherwise have involved using numerous handwritten notes or email threads. It’s a feature that has proven beneficial to teams that prefer agile methodology.

Deciding who is working on what enables the team supervisor to reduce confusion, encourage on-time delivery, and ensure all tasks are trackable. It also reduces delays occasioned by system downtime while ensuring the project remains on track.

2. Better Resource Management

Whether in creative marketing, as part of an agency, or as a freelance contractor, you have to learn resource management. Whatever your chosen profession, you need to ensure that you keep track of all your resources, including:

• Building resources, e.g., equipment and rooms
• Skilled and unskilled labour
• Facility budgets
• Staff schedules
• Project budgets
• Billable and non-billable hours

One resource that you can’t afford to overlook is your team’s schedule, capacity, and time. An ideal project management software will assist you with time management using inbuilt features that help with:

• Analyzing when and where your resources are going
• Creating work calendars
• Reserving conference rooms and project equipment
• Tracking the time your team has spent on various project-related tasks

3. Simplify Analytics and Project Reporting

A project management system houses your project data and provides insights into the various projects and processes your team is running. The best software in the market will feature an in-depth business intelligence solution and a customizable dashboard.

You can use the dashboard to look at task completion rates and looming deadlines. The intelligence business solution may vary in terms of the available power. It’s a factor that tends to differ from one project management tool to the next.

Certain PM tools emphasize features such as ease of first use, while others lean towards customization. The latter will often have a more challenging learning curve and are best left to hardened professionals.

Project reporting provides you with a way to target important project information. You can use it to perform a comparison with your available metrics while visualizing it in a manner that can:

• Allow you to communicate data clearly to your clients across the various stages of the ongoing projects
• Boost the existing processes to reduce budget and time wastage
• Assist you in strategizing your next action based on the existing insights

4. Centralize and Organize Your Project Data

Project management systems enable you to centralize all your project data, regardless of the type or number of projects you may have at a time. It leads to an organized information system that adds a collaboration function while boosting transparency.

Every team member can use a central data source to:

• Make real-time updates
• Confirm that they are working on the correct documents

As the project supervisor, it provides you with an assurance that every one of your team members has access to the project data. All the team members will get access to the changes as they occur.
With the PM tool, you get to do away with the need to dig through never-ending email threads and instant chats. It ensures you know where to look for the information you need when you need it.

5. It Enhances Remote Work

Having confirmed that the majority, if not all your project data is in a central location, those working on ongoing projects can:

• Choose to work from any location provided they have an active internet connection
• Get onboarded to ongoing projects at a moment’s notice
• Easily refer to project completion dates
• Track the progress made by their teammates working on different components

Developers deliver most project management tools as software-as-a-service. With this tool, you get to pay a monthly service to use its features. It also means that you can access the PM tool from any location and at any time using an Android or iOS app.

Leading project management software solutions include time tracking and communication tools.

6. Better Money Management

The top priorities for any project include saving time and staying within budget. You can use the project management tool to view the available resources, go through the project data, and check how the team is using the available resources.

Access to this data combined with the availability of other features, e.g., file sharing, means your team can strategize and make adjustments at any time. Your PM tool should ideally include budget forecasting.

It’s a feature that analyzes the data collected from past projects to enable you to develop estimates for ongoing and upcoming projects. You can customize most tools to send you an alert and email notification if you surpass the budgetary limitations.

7. Risk Identification

Another benefit of project management tools is that they can piece together different information pieces to show you the bigger picture. It becomes easier to notice issues with the project when you have access to numerous ways to view the data and project reports.

Considering the multifaceted nature of risk management, you may find it necessary to track all existing project opportunities and threats. Risks come with both pros and cons, and it’s your job to assess the opportunities they may offer and present this to the stakeholders.

Project management software can assist you in charting and visualizing your SWOT analysis.

8. Better Process Standardization

Your project processes will become more complex as the team continues to grow. Those who weren’t present during the initial days may have difficulty keeping up with their colleagues. Access to this software means everyone will know what’s happening at all times.

It allows you to standardize naming conventions and the procedures used in populating the work forms. The onboarding process becomes easier when you have project management software in your organization.

Also Read: What’s the Best Mileage Tracker App?

Conclusion

You’re probably wondering why there isn’t a list of disadvantages listed above to go along with the advantages, but the reality is that they aren’t that many. The eight benefits mentioned above show you everything a project management software can do for a company.

When combined, all these benefits can significantly overhaul your operations. Without them, project-centric firms will have a hard time meeting the three essential constraints in a project – budget, scope, and quality. Don’t get left out! Invest in project management software today.