6 Key Business Benefits of Collaborative Project Management
By Debbie Cohen-Abravanel
Are you on the fence about online project management? Still wondering if using it will help you be a better project manager? There’s no need to wonder any longer – the evidence from project managers using collaborative online tools is overwhelmingly positive. Here are six of the key benefits they list.
- Speed
Using an online tool means you can get the project running fast – no need to wait for software installation or hardware support. Anyone with a web browser and the right password has immediate access to the project space – wherever they happen to be.
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Better Project Input
One of the greatest things about having a shared space for online project management is that everyone who is involved in the project can have access to it all at once, no matter what their level of responsibility. Brainstorming can also happen no matter where team members are located improving the quantity and quality of input.
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Working with Distributed Teams
Many of us these days work with widely dispersed teams. In the past, that might have caused problems of some people not being fully aware of all project parameters. With a shared project space there’s no need to worry about someone being out of the loop. All project communications are saved in the project space, improving both communication and efficiency. Team members in different time zones no longer have to wait for an office to be open to track project status – they can log in to their dashboard and see.
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Big Picture, Fine Detail
That brings us to the next point – the ability to simultaneously see the big picture and drill down to the fine detail. A collaborative project management tool allows both aspects. Online project management software can allow the managers of different sub-projects to have their own work view while still having access to the overview. If you have one overarching project on which several sub-projects depend, it’s easy to see these dependencies, assess how the projects are going and make decisions based on the overview. Goals, strategies and schedules are all beautifully organized, making it easy to keep track of accountability and performance.
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Faster Communication
Another important advantage of a collaborative project management tool is that it speeds business communication. For example if your project management software integrates with Outlook or another email program, then the software can automatically send task and milestone and deadline reminders to the appropriate people at the right times. There’s no longer a need for the project manager to track that himself and there’s no danger of key messages getting buried in an overloaded inbox.
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Saving Money
And let’s not forget about the financial benefits. If you are using a cloud-based project management solution, then the SaaS provider supports it… You don’t need to divert in-house IT resources to manage and update software – that happens automatically so you are always using the latest version. And you can control your costs by only having the number of licenses you actually need. Best of all, scaling up is as easy as clicking a mouse to make a change to your plan.
These benefits lead to a more efficient and more harmonious project workflow. So the only question is: why haven’t you tried online project management yet?
Debbie Cohen-Abravanel has more than 10 years of experience in managing marketing projects and likes to share her knowledge. Debbie is now VP Online Marketing at Clarizen. Clarizen combines core project management features in a collaborative, easy to use user interface. Clarizen’s features include: project planning, resource management, time tracking, collaboration and content management, issues tracking, budgeting and reporting. The Clarizen platform is truly extensible, with strong integrations with ecosystem tools like Salesforce.com CRM and Intact accounting. Debbie contributes to Clarizen’s blog.
