Blog
Pavel Aramyan, Project Management Technical WriterIf you are a marketing agency and your project and task management rely on multiple online applications, whiteboards, notes, and human memory, think again. Ever faced the problem of inefficient or faulty task execution resulting in double the work and missed deadlines? Maybe employees forget to note minor, yet important changes, which leads to unpleasant consequences. A lack of efficient task tracking can lead to much more than this.
A study conducted by the University of Hamburg revealed that the focus of our mind drops from minutes to seconds when we are on the web. The human ability to pay attention is about eight seconds as of 2015, down from 12 in 2000 as portrayed in statistics by The Associated Press. Eight seconds is about the same amount of time it took me to type this sentence right now. That’s the reality at your workplace.
The internet has trained our minds to shift attention from one thing to another lightning-fast – mainly irrelevant stuff on social media. As the workloads continue to increase day after day, it’s becoming impossible to memorize more than three tasks at a time, which eventually results in reduced productivity at your agency.
If you still need more proof, here is a list of nine benefits that project management solutions will bring to your agency.
Benefits of using project and task management software for project efficiency
1. Manage your projects and tasks in one place
Project and Task Tracking Software allows you to integrate and manage all project management tools in one place, highlighting the advantages of software implementation. No need to remember multiple usernames, passwords, URLs, and whatnot. All of your projects and processes are right there in front of you, on one big, user-friendly platform. Whether you are working on a few low-priority tasks, some personal to-do’s, or a single large project, task-tracking software will make your life a lot easier.
Real-life example:
Concordia University, the largest university in Canada in terms of enrollment, was struggling to keep up with task management, assignments, and implementation.
The university was using a custom solution called Filemaker Pro, but as the team grew it became rather impossible to manage the tasks. They went back to paper and printers and had to spend a ton of time and resources on printing every task on paper and handing it to each employee individually, a process that could benefit from the advantage of software implementation.
As quoted “We were spending a lot of time printing and handing out tasks to team members. You can imagine how time-consuming that was – plus it was a big waste of paper.”
The project Management Solution would be:
-
A project management collaborative tool
-
Provide a traceable workflow
-
Manage all projects and tasks in a single place
With the implementation of professional project management software, Concordia University was able to:
-
Have a sustainable, paperless environment
-
Improve collaboration, emphasizing the advantages of task management software implementation
-
Plan resource allocation and availability
-
Save 24000+ hours a year
All of this is a result of one single point: keeping everything in one place. It saves so much time and trouble for any organization that the benefits simply cannot be ignored, highlighting the advantages of software implementation.
“I want everything logged in Birdview PSA, I want everything in there – from the original request, the drafts to the revisions that are requested because that way I can show my boss everything. That’s been a big thing.”
“Aside from the time-saving aspect, I think it’s having everything in one place, to make sure that bits of paper don’t get lost, emails don’t get deleted, well, stuff gets deleted out of EP as well, but really not the way an email can slip through the cracks, right? It made the workflow more efficient. The end result is that we’re actually making more stuff done instead of less.”
2. Prioritize projects and tasks
Understanding which tasks are more important than others may seem simple, but it’s easy to get lost in the process when you have so much work to do. You start your workday in the morning and sometimes get lost in the completion of small, low-priority tasks, which leaves the important ones for another day. This can lead to missing deadlines or not getting the job done the right way, simply because of poor management. Task tracking allows you to prioritize your tasks and get the most important ones out of the way quickly and efficiently.
3. Balance your workload and optimize resource scheduling
Another advantage of task management software is its ability to monitor and balance your team’s workload. Managing a group of 10+ people isn’t easy. You will have to keep track of each person’s workload to know when to give more tasks to this person or delegate some tasks to others. There might be cases when an employee is assigned so many tasks at once, that it just becomes impossible to do everything on time while ensuring high quality. Use the software to monitor all the tasks assigned to employees and share the workload wisely.
4. Team collaboration
Any form of marketing is a team effort, nobody can do it alone. With project tracking, team collaboration becomes easy. Discuss tasks, brainstorm on various topics, make real-time task updates together with your team, and never forget an important idea. The best part is, that you can always access the brainstorming sessions and review all the stored ideas/information anytime you want.
5. Bring teams together
Are you an international agency? Is one of your team members out of the country? Maybe he or she is out of the office and something urgent needs to be delivered ASAP. Online Project Management Software allows you to bypass all of these issues. Put everybody on the same page concerning each task by providing live updates and changes. There’s no need to wait another day or two for a teammate to return to the office – simply update the task online and you’re good to go.
Real-life example:
Nick Basket, the managing director of Matta Consulting on the cross border teamwork:
“We did a comprehensive review of project management systems, and required a cross-platform solution that we could deploy across borders, and that was easy to use. Birdview PSA stood out from the other solutions we looked at.
In using it, we have not been disappointed, it has genuinely made a significant contribution towards solving our problems in cross-border communication on high-value projects. The integration of timesheets and billing has in particular been useful.”
Connect your Teams and Clients for Fast and Effective Collaboration
6. Manage deadlines and get notified In Real Time
When you are bombarded with a ton of tasks, it’s easy to get lost. There is no surprise that some deadlines might not be met due to lack of time, inefficient management or simply forgetting. When you use Project Collaboration Software, you’ll be able to significantly minimize the risk by allowing your team to set reminders and ensure that nothing falls through the cracks.
7. Track time spent on projects and tasks
Track every minute and hour spent on each task by each employee. With this information available, you can understand what assignments need more time than usual so you can plan your next similar project accordingly. It’s also a good way to estimate employee productivity. For example, if one of your employees takes considerably more time to complete a task than another one, you can consider reassigning tasks for maximum productivity.
Real-life example:
Founded in 1994, CyberMark has been helping businesses grow their profits using online marketing. Despite the fact that people did not have much trust in the online world at that time, CyberMark continuously helped its clients grow with professional SEO services, PPC advertising, social media marketing, and more. As this is an hourly waged business, every minute mattered.
As CyberMark founder Kimberly Judd-Pennie said:
“Prior to Birdview PSA, we used a custom-built system (PHP/MySQL), supplemented with spreadsheets and databases (Excel/Access/SQL). It was obviously fragmented and it lacked the features we needed and we had no time to build those features.
We had many challenges, however, time tracking was one of the major challenges we needed a solution for. In our business, we bill on an hourly rate so we needed a robust system that could handle over 400 projects and thousands of tasks.”
The need for an easily customizable solution had reached a point, where it could no longer be ignored. After two years of a long and troublesome search, the company settled on its choice of EasyProjects. The time-saving and customizable advantages were absolutely mind-blowing.
“We recently implemented one of our processes directly into Birdview PSA. It eliminated a process that we ran through spreadsheets. We estimate that it will save us 1-2 hours per project just in set-up time. The customizable nature of Birdview PSA is what really helped improve our workflow.
It is highly adaptable. If an internal process changes, we’re confident that Birdview PSA will be able to adapt. If something doesn’t work for you right out of the box, 9 times out of 10 you will be able to make a few easy customizations to solve your issue.”
8. Save more time on follow-ups
When you assign a task to an employee, it’s important to follow up to check progress, ensure the tasks are proceeding smoothly, deadlines will be met, and more. Each of these follow-ups takes time, and you have to remember every follow-up yourself. With task tracking, you won’t have to ever think about following up again. After creating and assigning a task to an employee, the software will take care of everything and you can see the progress online as employees just update their tasks in real-time.
9. Access anytime, anywhere
If you plan to continue working when you are out of the office or on weekends but forget some important notes or information at your workplace, you’ll have to go back and get them. Task tracking software allows you to access your database anytime from any device: You just need an internet connection.
These are just a few examples of the Benefits of Cloud-based Project Management Software. If you have more than 10 employees and are already struggling to keep up, it will only become worse as your agency grows.
But don’t worry, technology is there to help you out 🙂
What are the benefits that you value most? Share them in the comments below!
