Why Agencies need an Effective Project Management Tool

In an ever-changing corporate setup, every organization either big or small scale are ought to adapt to constant changes. These changes can be well represented by technological growth which long conferred an apparent contribution to many organizations.

For agencies, in order to perform several tasks and projects for their clients, they need to inject basic technological input to at least, adapt and prosper. This input can be in a form of Project management in which you craft your own objectives, break down the steps, and execute them to transform them into reality.

Project Management is said to be the backbone of an agency, however, it cannot fully function without the system that supports it – the Project Management Tools.

Surprisingly, amidst several changes, Project Management Tools seem to easily pave the way for popularity. For project managers, these tools are important to ensure that the tasks were properly streamlined within the organization. Therefore, PMs need to be firm with the idea of lodging a considerably competitive Project Management Tool.

Of course, the answer as to why is quite simple but can be quite knotty.

Don’t hold your horses now and let’s take it bit by bit.

Let’s start moving!

What is Project Management Tool

While some project managers claimed that it is totally fine organizing their teams without technological input, its popularity proved otherwise.

According to Projectsly, not employing software tools in project management consumes a lot of time on little things instead of doing more necessary work. Contrarily, when you’re using tools, it can juggle all those tasks giving you ample time to work on other important projects.

A project management tool is usually a system/ software shared within the organization that promotes effective collaboration and teamwork to eventually achieve their end goals. It is designed to help the project teams and everyone involved to stay up to date on to-dos, in-progress items, and follow-ups.

This tool provides help particularly in planning a project and monitoring progress to guarantee that goals are met within the time allotted or accelerate the projects to meet the dues and deadlines. This is specifically true in an agency setting, where everyone is dealing with a wide range of tasks for internal and external stakeholders.

In the most simple terms, Project Management Tool is software usually used by project managers to achieve their goals as well as to keep the members updated with everything that concerns the project.

Particularly in small agencies, project managers are critical members of your team, therefore, it is important that they have the right tools to execute their responsibilities.

Key features of a Project Management Tool

Whether or not you’re planning to have a web-based project management tools, below are the key features you may want to know:

a. Project estimation

Of course, tracking real-time progress is one of the important variables to ensure a successful project. However, it is not confined only to that, take note that you also need to estimate the project constraints based on your current performance. This could be in the form of budget forecasts, EVM, or baselines.

b. Budgeting

This tool will also help you keep track of your finances and ensure that you stay within budget. It will help you monitor your expenses, track actual costs to invoice clients and pay your employees, compare planned and actual costs, forecast your budget, and analyze your budget health.

c. Resource allocation

To make sure that you are not overworking or underworking your employees and to check if the right people are working on the right task, the project management tool definitely got your back!

Not only that, but it will also help you designate tasks based on the employee’s workload and availability.

Imagine, you have a clear plot of all the people involved and their responsibilities lied down in front of you. Please tell me it’s not a perfect scene to watch!

d. Collaboration

Talking about the most essential feature that project management tools can offer – none can thwack collaboration.

To ensure that everyone is on the same page, you may use virtual collaboration tools like chat messages, web conferences, and forums to bring your team together and promote unity, openness, and tight connection.

e. Quality management

Now, if you’re already overwhelmed with all the features mentioned above, well surprise, here’s more!

You see, these project management tools are not only present to facilitate collaboration, cost allocation, and the like. It also allows you to monitor and constantly manage the quality of your project.

Automation in dealing with bugs is an added bonus.

f. Project administration

It’s critical to properly introduce your employees, clients, and organizational structure to a new product like project management tools. However, there are multiple ways project management software may assist you with project administration, ranging from industry-specific templates to various third-party connectors.

g. Risk management

Another advantage project management tools have to offer is their capability to deal with the risk and uncertainties of each project/task. Usually, people use these tools to arrange tasks to meet various deadlines and juggle multiple projects simultaneously, as part of an overall objective

Benefits of Project Management Tools

Now, whatever thought you have that is still giving you doubt about the importance of Project Management tools, here are points and benefits that might help you be enlightened.

Why do agencies need Project Management Tool? Here’s why:

1. Increased transparency and accountability

The core difference between agencies and other companies is that agencies have a relatively smaller scope, therefore, everyone works in a more direct manner and in a much tighter-knit.

Project Management tool helps foster transparency with the tasks and progress of every personnel. Through this tool, team members can focus on their responsibilities, be held accountable by monitoring their reports, as well as allowed them to see the bigger picture and adjust their work, if necessary.

2. Budget Management

In a project, although financial responsibilities at times are being set aside for the project itself, one of the clear benefits of having a reliable project management tool is budget management.

If you’re a project manager, this tool will definitely help you keep an eye on the costs and expenses of your project and ensure that everything is within the borders. You can save a lot of energy wondering where your money went since you are in control of the budget and you can see the costs in real-time.

For these reasons, you can pull out the card of ‘good decision’ and make amendments to your budget, if necessary.

3. Effective Communication

It’s not even debatable even today how effective communication contributes a lot of positive gains in an organization. It ensures that all information flows freely to everyone concerned fostering understanding and healthy relationships.

Since the surge of the coronavirus, work-from-home (WFH) setup and the use of digital platforms had been dramatically utilized. Communication channels such as chats and video conferencing are just two of the various channels that are widely used for communication.

The use of project management tools is not only limited to sustaining the organization’s communication funnel, it also extends its purpose to serve the external stakeholders (clients) since they can log in and view data relevant specifically to them. That way, your clients can provide you with direct feedback, make edits, and review project progress in the same place – they just need a valid password and username.

To further improve customer relationships, Woffice CRM got you covered! Get the most out of your grind and enjoy full-blow CRM for your business.

4. File Sharing

With project management tools running and administered to a project, you do not need to dwell on difficult file dispersal anymore. The majority of professionals use drives in accessing and sharing important documents, however, according to Projectsly, “project management software is a more practical option.”

Since it offers cloud-based storage where you can share and download files, you can carry your work out with more ease and trouble-free experience.

5. Planning and scheduling

Worse than we can ever imagine is taking too much time for project planning only to fail. With management tools like Gantt Chart, you can not only have a streamlined and systematic approach to planning and scheduling but you can also guarantee that you can achieve your end goals.

Project management software has been at the forefront of giving accurate AI predictions of when projects can be completed, identifying restrictions like cost, scope, and schedule.

6. Increased Productivity

Another key benefit that management tools offer is increased productivity. Increased productivity at work is a by-product of a good decision-making process.

Through these management tools, project managers are able to intensify their risk strategies and assemble all the available resources to create a practical solution. From there, managers can bring off an improved overall efficiency of the team.

7. Risk Management

The presence of risk in an organization is structured as a bittersweet episode for PMs. It may or may not generate a positive result, but all will be dependent on how you manage the risk.

Risk management or the process of identifying, analyzing, and then responding to any risk is an important aspect that you should eagerly attend to as it will either help you be on track or off track.

Having said that, one of the practical ways of approaching risks is to tie them with a project management tool. In doing so, you’ll not only gain control but will also enable you to provide qualitative and insightful solutions needed to mitigate organizational risks.