What is project management? Simply put, project management is being able to stay on top of your deadlines, keep track of your resources and your deliverables, keep good communication with your project team members and stakeholders and control every aspect of your project whilst steering it to a satisfactory outcome. This might seem like a lot for one person but with the right project management software tools you can transform the manner in which you do this, coordinating even the most complex of projects with clarity and ease, even via remote access if you work as part of a remote team. In fact, with remote and other more flexible forms of working increasingly becoming the norm for project management, it is a good idea to opt for something that will work on a remote access basis as there is a good chance at least one of your team members will not be in the office all of the time.
Whether you are looking for something that will help you to track individual progress, keep on top of your communication or even improve your efficiency there are plenty of software packages to choose from and selecting the right Project Management Software for your project team can be something of a challenge. Offering significant streamlining to your operations can give you more time to be productive.
Here are some of the factors that you should consider when it comes to choosing Project Management Software for your team:
1. Cost
2. Ease of use
3. Scalability
4. The ability to collaborate
5. Integrations
6. The customer service package that they offer
With that in mind, lets take a look at some of the best project management software options out there.
Artwork Flow
Artwork Flow is a project management software with AI-enabled features used by brand, design, packaging, and marketing teams around the world. A user-friendly platform built with smart features that creative teams around the globe manage their projects seamlessly.
With Artwork Flow, users can build any kind of complex workflows, bring their internal and external teams together, and manage every project from start to finish efficiently. The software is great for project managers who are looking to get end-to-end visibility, track the progress of every project, and avoid bottlenecks. The software also offers automated notifications keeping every creative in check and helps you go to market faster.
Additionally, its AI-based features such as online proofing, review, brand and regulatory compliance and so much more, making it a great choice for creative folks around the world.
Monday.com
Founded in 2012, Monday.com offer a winning combination for any project manager with accessible features and clever tools that can assist at every stage of the project, helping you to plan, track and organise your entire workload. This is software that is very modern, customisable, and incredibly easy to use. For those project managers who are looking for an easy way to visualise teams, timelines, and tasks at a glance, this is the perfect tool that can offer them all of the integration capabilities they might need. Monday.com also allows you to open Zoom calls from any dashboard, making it a very good choice for remote teams. It also offers a built-in activity log that records progress. Monday.com was the Best productivity App winner of the 2019 Webby Awards.
Monday.com also offer a free 14-day trial with no commitments for those companies who think it might be the right software option but prefer to try before they buy.
Wrike
Since 2002, Wrike, an American company, have been involved in the field of project management as an application service provider. Their software solutions are incredibly popular with project managers everywhere, and it really isn’t difficult to see why. They offer a powerful, easy, and fast solution that is ideal for all sizes of teams and offers a solution that can be scaled across teams. The interface is easy to tailor to the exact requirements of your project, and it offers both Kaban-like boards and Gantt charts, making it the perfect way to put those project management skills to good use. Wrike’s project management software offers some handy advanced features as well as automated workflows.
Like Monday.com, Wrike also offers a free 14-day trial to potential new customers, allowing them to check that the software will do exactly what they want from it.
Scoro
An Estonian company offering business management solutions since 2013, Scoro is the ideal software for those people looking to keep their team engaged and aligned. It offers the user unlimited, customisable dashboards and powerful integration and automation capabilities. This is a cloud-based professional solution that is perhaps best suited to those companies that are small to medium in size. It offers a control hub that can display account information, pending tasks, KPIs and calendar events all on one screen, which can be incredibly handy. Scoro is so confident that project managers will love their product that it is offered with a 14-day free trial so that companies can explore all of the options that it has to offer.
Celoxis
This popular project management software solution is currently only available in Europe and North America. It offers a fantastic range of customisations all under one umbrella. This is a collaborative and comprehensive solution for businesses that allows users to manage resources, projects and a range of business processes through the use of a range of different features and built-in tools. It is possible for project teams, executives and clients to collaborate and track all aspects of the project as well as getting real-time reports on a secure, single shareable platform.
It is incredibly easy to schedule resources and milestones using Celoxis as well as allocating the resources and it even comes with a 30-day free trial, making it great for those project managers who are looking for something new but don’t want to commit until they are certain they
Apploye – Time Tracker
Apploye offers remote workforce monitoring, GPS time tracking, and project tracking solutions. Businesses can track productivity, manage remote workers, and increase operational efficiency with Apploye’s user-friendly platform. Employers can track remote workers’ locations using GPS time tracking to make sure they’re working. Apploye’s project management software streamlines planning, work assignment, and team participation, improving project success rates. Apploye’s solutions help organizations meet their goals by optimizing monitoring and tracking.
Visme
Visme is best known for it’s content designing and creation capabilities but it’s also a great project management tool for your content creation team. Visme take care of each step of your project, from ideation to organisation, include documentation, tracking, reporting and visualisations while providing a collaborative environment where every member of the team can work alongside there team member and you can even use it’s team meetings features to create awesome graphics.
ClickUp
ClickUp came to life in 2017 when it was founded by Zeb Evans as an internal tool for him to use with his team when they wanted to be able to manage their workload in one place. However, it soon took off and became a full-scale platform. ClickUp is a powerful project management tool that allows users to plan and then track and collaborate on a range of projects. It can be used to manage marketing campaigns and development sprints as well as create an ideal workflow for an entire project management team. It is a cloud-based collaborative project management tool that is suitable for all sizes of businesses and industries. It offers collaboration tools, alerts, task assignments and statuses.
This is a very popular project management software solution as it offers a great range of pricing plans, has a design that it very user-friendly and has a wide range of different features.
Miro
Miro has been around for a number of years and is well-established within the project management field. It is often mistaken for Jira, but the two are not the same. Miro is a whiteboard platform with online collaborative features. It can be used to enable distributed teams to work together effectively at every stage of the collaborative process. It is suitable for use with any size of team. The virtual whiteboard is easy to use and offers a good range of ready-made templates that can cover most scenarios. Using the templates, project managers can move projects forward whilst bringing all the members of their team together and, more importantly, solve those bottlenecks that are standing in the way of any success in their project. It is ideal for businesses that deal with a lot of visual features like architecture firms or housing developments who have to share visual ideas on a regular basis.
HubSpot
Whilst HubSpot may not be on everyone’s list, it has plenty of great features to offer in terms of project management software. HubSpot was created in 2004 as a result of a collaboration between two graduate students from MIT. This is a great software choice for any company who are looking to incorporate some marketing features into its project management solution. HubSpot states that it is an all-inclusive project management system, it also has marketing automation features. The main feature of HubSpot is that it is a CRM platform with the capacity to connect all of the things that a scaling company may need to deliver within a great customer experience and all in one place. The software has been designed to allow for team growth using tools that are powerful enough on their own but work even better when they are all used together.
The software offers a Freemium plan with the option to upgrade it at any point in time.
Nifty
A “simple but powerful” tool, Nifty offers the essential features of project management: collaborative documents (including 2 way Google docs), built-in direct chat & project discussions, and a powerful automation suite. Nifty simplifies workflows of all types and empowers collaboration across all departments. Out-of-the-box reporting tools facilitate scaling your workflows. The data offered includes insights into project completion, employee workloads, and daily task reports.
Conclusion
Whatever software you opt for, it’s essential you learn about all of its benefits and features and how to use it correctly to get the best out of it. All too often, project managers will be missing out on some of the important features of their project management software because they do not fully understand exactly how to get the very best from the software. This can be a big disappointment that can even result in them looking for a new project management software solution for their team.
It’s advisable to make a list of questions to help streamline your selection process:
– Does it integrate well with our existing tools and platforms like HubSpot?
– Does it provide any helpful website add-ons or benefits, such as tools for SEO or user navigation, like breadcrumb functionality?
– Are there features that support both project management and website management?
– Can it enhance the user experience both internally for the team and externally for our customers?
– What additional features does it offer that align with our business goals?
Whether you opt for training from the provider or go through the manual yourself, will determine how many of those all-important features you will be able to unlock fully. Be thorough when it comes to the training that you undertake on any new project management software platform that you invest in because this will give you the best opportunity to take advantage of all that it has to offer.
One very important point that you need to consider with any project management software solution that you are looking at is that not every option out there will work for your company. Increasingly we are seeing niche tools for specific industries, such as production scheduling software for the manufacturing industry or dropshipping management software. So it’s worth researching what software has been designed specifically for your industry or service. Consider the features that you need from your software and look for something that most align with the needs of your company. If you undertake a wide range of different projects, you may even find that different software solutions work for different projects that you undertake. There isn’t always a “one-size fits all solution” when it comes to project management software. Large enterprises, in particular, may require more advanced BPM tools for business process optimization, such as Camunda, Activity, or Webcon, for example.
