Seven Factors to Keep in Mind while Choosing Task Management Software

Choosing the right task management software is quite a task for project managers and entrepreneurs. However, once selected and deployed, such software can assist you to streamline the entire process and deliver quality work on time. Whether it is a small project or a simple one, the right task management tool can take care of every aspect effectively. 

Without using the proper software, modern enterprises remain vulnerable to various issues like missing deadlines, absence of risk management plan, and overlooking critical tasks. These issues affect efficiency and productivity significantly and in the worst-case scenario, the entire project gets sidelined or dumped even before kickstarts. 

Best-in-class vs. Best-fit- What Should You Choose?

These days, varieties of task or project management software are available in the market. An official survey among enterprise buyers has revealed that almost 96% of entrepreneurs have purchased at least some of the software that they cannot use because of some issues. This survey puts the debate between ‘best-fit’ and ‘best-in-class’ on the centerstage. 

Even though you have selected the best-in-class software for your enterprise, chances are high that the software cannot fit well in your organization. It is, therefore, necessary to select the software that can be the best fit for your company. This makes the selection process quite daunting for project managers. 

At the end of the day, the selection of the best-fit task management application is essential for any organization. Here we give four points to consider while picking the right software for your organization. You need to check whether the system has

– All essential features for the project manager

– The right level of visibility for every user

– Compatibility with your enterprise culture and business model

– A reasonable price tag

Here we mention 7 top factors to consider while selecting the right task management software for your organization. 

How to Select the Right Project Management Software for Your Company

1. Do Extensive Research

It starts with outlining the task management-related needs and business objectives. You need to identify the current problems your team face and find the pain points related to existing and upcoming projects or complex processes. It’s about finding ‘whys’ first and then finding their answers in the task management software. 

You can also opt for researching market trends for the customized task management applications, and ask your team for sharing their thoughts. Companies need to select the project management software that can answer all the issues or requirements in line with the business model and work culture.

2. Look Beyond Big Names

Basecamp and other big names in project management software can be recalled easily when you feel the need of such software in your organization. However, it is fair to mention that technology advances at a rapid pace and new players in this domain tend to come up with innovative and more user-friendly features to stay firm amid intensifying competition.

It is always better to look around and check all the options available in the market. You can also ask your peers or other entrepreneurs what they are using. You can compare feature lists of established task management applications and new ones to find ‘must have’ and ‘nice to have’ features.

3. Compare Cost with Performance

Any project management software can be spread across a broad spectrum. Therefore, it is necessary to consider the costs and capabilities carefully. There is no room for a wrong choice because any wrong choice can lead you to have a shelf ware that can never be used. When you are ready to jump on the task management software bandwagon, you need to keep yourself updated with the latest features and trends in line with your team’s demands. 

Often, business owners or entrepreneurs have no idea how much they should spend on the evaluation of project management software. In such a situation, it is always better to compare all popular and new task management software from cost and functionality perspectives. 

Also Read- How to Manage Your Workload Using a Task Management Tool 

4. Opt for Test Drive

Free trial is a common feature for every task management software. Even if it is not mentioned on the official website, you can ask vendors for a free trial, and they will willingly provide it. You can make a small group consisting of cross-departmental users and go for a test drive. It is beneficial to use realistic project scenarios to understand the application’s capabilities to address the challenges of your business. You can make an informed decision based on the feedback and suggestions provided by team members once testing of shortlisted project management software is over. Customer support and responsiveness of vendors are also key factors to consider to choose the right project management software. 

5. Find Barriers for Implementation

After testing various project management applications, implementation barriers can stop your way. These barriers include resistance from your team, time-consuming training sessions, and critical integrations. Budget and additional expenses can also be considered as implementation barriers. You need to make a strategy to mitigate these issues and try to find the software with minimum barriers. You can make a realistic implementation plan for the selected software to mitigate potential barriers effectively. 

6. Check for Control and Collaboration

Modern business models are based on collaboration and communication. It is necessary for the task management tool to give seamless access to information to all users in real-time. Your selected task management app should also favor collaboration. Clients cannot wait to be fed with status reports every day and want to participate in the development phase proactively. Project management software should address this requirement efficiently. 

7. Evaluate before Onboarding

Once you select the project management tool, you need to check whether it can run as per your plan smoothly and seamlessly. You can consider overall timelines for implementation, give training to stakeholders, and find out key advocates for the tool along with the role they can play in implementation. Also, it is necessary to ensure that the vendor or developer gives startup support and ongoing assistance in the future.  

Concluding Lines

Proper task management is crucial to ensure timely project completion and enhance productivity. All you need to choose the right task management software to achieve these goals. Seven criteria mentioned here will certainly help you select the right one for your business with a promise of optimized decision making and improved customer satisfaction level. 

It is fair to mention that selecting the right task management tool is a herculean task, but no entrepreneurs can avoid it in today’s challenging business scenario. TaskOPad is a robust task management application to meet all your objectives while enhancing collaboration and communication among teammates.

Originally Published At Task Management Software.

How Office Management Software Benefits Your Business in Improving Performance

Efficient Management is the need of the hour for modern enterprises. Talking about office management softwares or apps, it enables companies to digitally create, collect, store, and transmit workplace related task information using a task management software. Some entrepreneurs erroneously believe that office management softwares is about eliminating paperwork. In reality, it goes beyond the elimination of paperwork and assists companies to meet office tasks effectively.

Simply put, office management is necessary for managing information and resources while enhancing workflow management. It results in improved company performance and increased productivity. These days, thanks to evolving technology, advanced office management software can be used easily to streamline tasks. In this blog, we are going to see the major fundamentals of office management along with its benefits for businesses.

Top Fundamentals of Office Management

Workflow optimization is one of the biggest goals of office management. Here are the top fundamentals that enable your company to implement office management.

1. Easy and User-friendly Design

Before choosing the right office management software, it is always better to build a workflow manually with a user-friendly design. It is necessary to make a sequence of important tasks before implementing the office management tool.

This tool enables companies to meet their needs in the simplest way but prioritizing these needs should be done manually for ensuring more productivity. It also facilitates employees to manage work routines with real-time collaboration.

2. Compatible with Mobile

If you want to automate office processes seamlessly, it is of utmost importance that any of your team members can easily access the corporate data through mobile devices. Whether they are remote employees or professionals working from home, they can easily use the task management app through their phones.

3. Task and Deadline Management

Customized task management software can help users track various processes and monitor how the team manages all the tasks. It is easy to save and share task-related information through such software, and every team member can have an idea of the real-time status of the tasks. Be it meeting goals or reaching the deadlines, the task management tool with all the desired features can help modern enterprises by improving collaboration and enhancing performance.

Also Read- 7 Tips to Enhance Workflow Management to Improve Productivity

4. Robust Access Control

This is one of the most important aspects of office Management. Mostly, confidential corporate information can be easily shared using task management and other software. Therefore, it is important to keep access to this information in control. Considering the workflow, it is essential to grant access authorizations as per the hierarchy, and a robust access control system in workflow management can ensure the high security of the sensitive information.

5. Real-time Reporting

Real-time data can assist entrepreneurs to make prompt decisions. Companies can compare efficiency and productivity over the year through available data and find out the areas that need improvements. The office management software can provide real-time reports and workflow data like hours collectively worked for the company through the in-built analysis functionality.

6. Higher Transparency

It’s time to think of your internal customers, i.e. employees along with the external ones. A task management app with customized features can offer your team all the necessary information to perform every task easily. What’s more, in office management, new calls or new follow-up emails are prevented to ensure quieter and more secure operations.

Here we mention a few of the biggest benefits of bringing management in the office-

Top Benefits of Office Management Apps

- Companies can easily track responsibilities and the real-time status of tasks

- Task delegation and employee tracking is made easy for the companies

- Offers greater transparency because all team members are in the loop

- Reduces paperwork, manual errors, and time to complete the tasks

- Gives deadline control and enhanced information security features

- Provides higher consistency and utilization of working hours with the help of real-time actionable insights for making informed decisions

It is fair to mention that office management software can significantly increase the consistency, agility, and transparency of your business and end-users. Companies can integrate the customized office management software to get data-based insights to make meaningful decisions and increase productivity.

Concluding Remarks

There is no exaggeration in mentioning that office management software can offer you better control over various business processes and you can easily improve services. It touches every aspect of the company and offers complete control over various processes. As a reliable task management app, TaskOPad helps you bring management to your office by managing workflow and tasks. You can also generate real-time reports and collaborate with teammates to ensure growth.

Originally published at https://www.taskopad.com on December 15, 2020.

Top Seven Tips to Increase Collaboration in Your Workplace

Teamwork, collaboration, and real-time connectivity- these are neither fancy words nor jargon. These are compelling necessities of every modern business. It is fair to mention that when your talented team collaborates the end result will be awesome or vice versa. Thankfully, today we have high-end task management software that can help companies improve team collaboration significantly.

In this post, we are going to give you the top tips for improving the collaboration while showing the importance of a reliable task management tool in fostering a collaborative environment at the workplace.

Top Tips for Achieving Higher Team Collaboration Every Time

1. Focus on Effective Communication

Everything can be managed effectively by establishing real-time communication. It is quite common that minor-yet-annoying things keep on happening in the workplace. However, at times, a few things convert into a big issue and cause hurdles in daily activities.

Also, some of the problems like missing deadlines can make the situation difficult to deal with, and as a result, the team needs more time to finish the task.

There, effective and real-time communication can lend a helping hand. The management can proactively manage various issues in the team by keeping the focus on establishing regular communication with teammates.

2. Use the Right Tools and Technologies

Legacy collaboration tools cannot bring your team together. Advancing technology has brought many tools that can make your job easier and faster. Modern collaboration tools have all features necessary to establish and enhance collaboration in the workplace.

All you need to select the right collaboration tool that can keep your team together even if all teammates work remotely. It should be in line with your business model so that it can help you excel in every situation. Simply put, the right collaboration tool can keep you more organized by establishing effective and real-time collaboration.

3. Arrange Meetings Regularly

Meetings have become a norm in the workplace. However, in the recent pandemic age, many companies find it difficult to arrange meetings frequently with remote workers or work-from-home employees. Also, at times, meetings become lackluster and erode the energy and morale of employees. In such a situation, the manager should lead from the front and start inspiring employees or colleagues to get them going.

The task management tool, with all actionable insights and real-time reports, can make meetings more productive and improve the performance of teammates.

4. Build Effective Teams

One of the most important factors for achieving higher collaboration is to make an effective team. In other words, the manager or the team leader has to put effort to improve their team’s effectiveness and productivity.

Here are some of the ways you can improve your team’s efficiency and productivity-

- Keep team members motivated

- Use team task management tool to stay updated about each employee’s contribution

- Get the feedback for different team members and pass the same in a way that your team remains in the loop

- You can also use task management software to set clear personal and professional goals

Also Read- 6 Causes of Professional Burnout And How To Avoid Them

5. Include Norms for Improved Performance

It is of utmost importance to define standards for your company’s work culture and team’s role. These standards or norms can help companies maintain decorum in the workplace. These team norms can also enhance productivity and enable your employees to perform better. You can store them in a document form in your task management tool for easy access and real-time sharing.

These norms should be made compulsory for remote employees also to ensure that they work with full efficiency.

6. Combines Professionals with Different Skill Sets

It is like building a dream team. Unlike the traditional assembly-line approach where each employee has to wait for their turn, you can make a team by bringing professionals with different skills together. They will work together to create the product quickly because every member has a different role to play and they work toward a common goal. These teams are known as cross-functional teams and they are capable of handling a particular problem in this challenging scenario.

Be it improving sales or opening a new plant of manufacturing, cross-functional teams remain useful for the company. Also, it is easy for the company management to increase collaboration between people with different talents and interests.

7. Get and Share Real-time Updates

A team task management tool like TaskOPad makes it easy to manage inter-department processes. TaskOPad enables its users to manage the project seamlessly by providing real-time updates about every employee’s tasks and the current status of the project. It is easy for teammates to collaborate after knowing which items are still pending and which tasks need immediate attention.

Concluding Lines

You can count on TaskOPad, your robust and reliable task management tool that can assist you to improve collaboration at the workplace. At TaskOPad, our endeavor remains to enable companies to increase productivity to remain firm amid increasing challenges. Our feature-rich task management software can meet the needs related to coordination, collaboration, and communication effectively and make your company more productive.

Originally published at https://www.taskopad.com on December 10, 2020.

How To Track Employee Productivity During Work From Home

In this pandemic period, working remotely or from home has become a new norm. However, companies find it increasingly difficult to manage their remote teams and tracking their activities. There, task management software or a feature-rich team task management tool comes into the picture. It enables companies to keep track of employees’ activities and establish a culture of accountability in the remote workplace.  

Let’s go through some of the most effective ways that enable you to manage the tasks of your remote employees and enhance the productivity of your company. 

Use Online Task Management Tools

With the right planning and a feature-rich task management tool, companies can easily manage a remote team. Here three elements are crucial- quality, reliability, and communication for managing the remote team. Online tools for communication like Skype and task management like TaskOPad can work wonders in assessing workload and managing tasks. These online tools can also add value to your business and increase transparency. 

Get Assistance from Advancing Technology

Task management software can help companies create greater accountability among their employees and show more transparency. The team task management tool can show the entire team who is working on what projects and which phase of the project is in progress at a specific time. Also, advanced features in this tool show employees key timelines and deliverables. These aspects make employees more responsive and ready to accomplish their tasks. 

Establish Communication 

It is of utmost importance for the company management to stay in touch with remote employees after assigning tasks to them. Regular communication through various channels can assist managers to avoid missing any deadlines with the real-time intervention in the project. 

Frequent check-ins with remote employees can also enable project managers to reduce the chances of human errors, and remote workers get the feeling of inclusion because of continuous interaction and engagement. It is better to set rules of engagement along with the frequency and ideal timing of communication to keep everyone in the loop. 

Ask for Reports

Managers can keep track of all the tasks assigned to remote workers simply by asking for weekly reports. These reports not only give an outline of accomplished tasks but also give a glimpse of tasks to be accomplished in the coming week. Weekly reports can effectively assure accountability and ensure that all the employees are in the loop. 

Also, weekly reports can assist managers to guide employees remotely when things do not align with the expected or current workflow. High priority tasks and trivial tasks can be also classified with ease and it becomes easy to set the priority. 

You can also ask for an end-of-day report. This is specifically important when remote employees work on milestone-based projects or other projects in which deadlines need to be met. Here, task management software can play a vital role and eliminate the need for daily reports. The software can show the progress of every remote employee for each task on a 24/7 basis.    

Hold Video Conference

Weekly video conferences can help you keep in touch with remote employees and give you a chance to know their thoughts. Also, such meetings can help managers assign tasks in a manageable way for every employee. During this video conference, KPIs of all remote employees can also be discussed to allocate them tasks accordingly. Holding video conferences regularly can keep remote employees on the right path. 

Use Time-tracking Tools

Chances are fairly high that remote employees while working from home, spend more time doing personal chores. It directly affects their efficiency and productivity. As a result, even if your employees appear online all the time, you may not get the work as per expectation at the end of the day. 

What’s more, remote employees can easily get distracted and spend more time on social media during working hours. Here, time-tracking tools can lend a helping hand for project managers. Tools like TimeDoctor Tool can track the employee’s internet usage and measure their productivity. Such tools also assist managers to monitor the remote employees’ online activities like time spent on social media and clicks. 

Concluding Lines 

Managing remote teams is quite a task for modern enterprises, however, these tips will remain helpful for managers to keep track of their remote employees and maintain productivity. It is fair to mention that a feature-rich task management tool can effectively show the progress of every employee and your company can save a lot of time and effort in tracking the daily activities of remote employees.

Originally published at https://www.taskopad.com on November 2, 2020.

6 Amazing Strategies For Successful Project Management Road Mapping

Strategic planning plays a vital role to meet deadlines and maintain productivity for every project on board. For effective strategic planning, the project managers have to visualize the objectives and key milestones of the project. Here, the project roadmap comes into the picture. It not only assists the stakeholders to get insight into the project’s goals but also facilitates managers to allocate resources and expect deliverables in a given timeframe.

These days, many project management software or tools are available for making a roadmap to get the big picture. Here in this blog, we are going to give you effective tips and tactics for making an effective roadmap to manage projects efficiently. Let’s start from scratch and understand the meaning and importance of a project roadmap for modern industries.

Project Roadmap- Brief Introduction

It is an easy-to-follow source of information that enables stakeholders and managers to visualize the project strategically and make critical decisions without putting much effort into understanding the minutiae. Unlike the project plan that breaks down the project into tasks and subtasks, the project roadmap gives a big picture of the entire project completion process.

Simply put, the project roadmap acts as the project dashboard from which stakeholders and the top management can track the progress of the project while assessing all the strategic details through charts, updates, and graphs. The project roadmap considers all the data generated from an ongoing project and converts the same into structured, actionable insights.

What to Include in Project Roadmap

The project roadmap is aimed at showing the link between various variables and their role in accomplishing the project.

Here is the list of major components that should be included in the project roadmap-

1. Key Objectives

The project’s key objectives should be included in the roadmap. In other words, the project roadmap should answer the questions like- what are the goals for the particular project, how we can achieve them rapidly, and can we achieve these objectives on time. The project roadmap includes all the targets, deliverables, resources, and tasks associated with the particular project. It helps the company management to find whether the effort is on track to achieve all the key objectives.

2. Milestones to be Achieved

Milestones for the project indicate various levels within the project. In a way, the milestone tracking offers a unique and effective way to measure the progress of your project by checking the outlined completion levels. In other words, milestones are included in the project roadmap for tracking the completion levels of the project.

3. Details of Deliverables

Project deliverables are nothing but the material results that are aimed to be derived from a project within the given time limit of the project. Stakeholders can readily measure project progress simply by viewing deliverables in the project roadmap.

4. Management of Resources

It involves a count of the resources allocated to a project for measuring their impact and make real-time decisions for increasing or decreasing allocated resources. Here, the project management software can provide real-time data regarding the performance of employees, and you can easily modify the allocation based on this data. It helps you gaining objectives quickly.

5. Timeline and Associated Risks

The project management timeline is important to measure the project’s progress and find out how long it will take to accomplish the project. While considering the timeline along with other factors, we can easily and accurately visualize whether the project is on track or at risk.

Finally, the project roadmap also contains the potential risks or obstacles that may prevent the successful completion of the project.

After discussing the necessary factors to be included in the roadmap, let’s go through the top strategies for making an effective roadmap in project management.

Also Read- How a Task Management App can Help Managers Delegate Effectively 

Choose the Right Project Management Software

It is essential to choose the right project management tool for building an effective project roadmap. The project management tool can show you the employee’s tasks, their performance, and overall productivity of the company that can achieve the deadline. These tools can provide the real-time data from different sources and the project manager can track and visualize the process with ease.

For example, TaskOPad, a robust project management software, takes care of necessary aspects like dependency tracking, project collaboration, and time tracking for making an effective roadmap.

- Identify Project Objectives

The second step is, of course, defining project objectives that can be tracked in the later stage of the project to measure the progress. The project tracker tool can track the predefined project objectives like the target audience and scope of the project. It is necessary to define project objectives in a way that we can get an answer to the question ‘what are we aiming to achieve?’ in trackable terms.

- Determine the Timeline

Timeline or project deadline comes next. Based on the project objectives and other variables including the scope of the project and overall efficiency of employees, the management can define the project’s timeline. It involves extensive planning on how much time it will take to accomplish the project.

- Make a Mock-up

Once we have a project tracking tool, defined objectives, and determined a project timeline, we are ready to create a mock-up. Creating task dependencies can make it easy to track the project in real-time.

- Get the Reviews

As mentioned above, the project roadmap is designed to facilitate the key stakeholders to check whether the project goes in the right direction. The project sponsors or stakeholders can give their reviews about the roadmap after going through it.

- Keep on Updating the Roadmap

As the project kicks off, the project managers need to keep updating the project roadmap to drive the project successfully.

Concluding Lines

In a nutshell, project roadmaps play a critical role in accomplishing various projects across different industry sectors. When the roadmap is properly created, the project can be successfully managed. All the strategies mentioned in this post will help you create the effective roadmap. Project roadmaps offer a reliable source of actionable insights for the project management team and stakeholders of the project. With a robust and feature-rich project management tool like TaskOPad, you can successfully create an effective roadmap for your upcoming projects.

Originally published at https://www.taskopad.com on December 2, 2020.