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As businesses grow, managing tasks, teams, and projects become cumbersome. That is where most businesses use a project management tool to help keep everything moving along smoothly. Such tools organize tasks, help improve communication, and ensure that projects are finished well within the stipulated time frame. But with so many options available, how would you determine what feature set works best for your business?
In this post, we round up five must-have features in project management tools that every growing business should know. So, master your projects with these essential tools and watch your business grow.
1. Automate Activities
Tasks which do not require a person’s presence to initiate or some repetitive activities that usually require human intervention and thought attitude are best completed or completed most time-saving and timely with the help of automated systems.
That saves your team from wasting any time in making manual updates. It will also give more time to the team for higher-value work.
You can set up, for example, that every time any task is due, a reminder is sent out-automate it in the project management tool to do that on its own. This cuts down human errors and ensures everything is remembered. Automation of tasks will make your workflow smoother and keep your projects right on track.
2. Team Collaboration Tools
As your business grows, so does your team. Effective communication keeps everybody on the same page. As noted, for all the visual and task-oriented design of project management software, which has great collaboration behaviour and hence makes working in a team much easier, a user will still be able to communicate and collaborate in real-time through a shared board and file sharing, team chat as well.
Team members may respond directly to requests rather than through lengthy email threads with tasks, and such important information will not be left out as it would really help in keeping all individuals informed.
3. Reporting and Analytics
This is important to growing industries since it is imperative to understand a project’s status and scope. Reporting and analytics shed light on some more complicated developments, such as which level of the project has been achieved and where the team is at. The reports would let you know which projects are on schedule, which are running late, and the time consumed by each task.
Explicit data is provided; hence, you can make decisions that concern projects and resources. For instance, you may believe that a part of the project consumes much time when compared to what it’s supposed to spend. Now, you can reschedule or assign more resources to that area. Reporting will always keep you updated on keeping the business efficient and organized.
4. Configurable Workflows
Businesses operate differently, and neither should your project management tool. Customizable workflows allow you to set up the tool to work the way that best operates your team. You will have the ability to determine your own set of stages within a project that you would like to use, give specific roles to each of the members allocated a project, and the importance of every task will also be indicated.
Thanks to our need-based, flexible workflows you can construct a project management system which addresses the wants and requirements of your business.
5. Task and Project Tracking
Every business has to be aware of deadlines and ensure that tasks are completed with minimal delays at all times. A good project management tool should offer task and project tracking to let you know the status of projects at any particular moment. This covers tracking task deadlines, progress, and who the responsible person is regarding a particular task.
The software can create a project management to-do list, which gives an accurate view of what is supposed to happen and who is supposed to be responsible for it.This ensures that every individual is responsible for his or her role and therefore projects are able to continue without any halts.
Conclusion
The right project manager program in the right circumstances means the difference between survival and stagnation in business growth. For example, some of the integrative tools included in almost all PM solutions are project management automation, reporting, tracking, or collaboration tools. Now, enhance your interaction and do not stop your projects for anything.
