Business Project Management Software: Start to Finish

Small business management software should allow you to follow any project from start to finish with an overview of every aspect along the way.  It should encourage you to set deadlines, create project templates, share progress with employees and clients and integrate your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) with your billing and expenses.  If it does not include all of these attributes you will find that you must have multiple software packages and repeat entries.

Next to CRM, project management is the most important snapshot of where you are in any project – and where you are going.  Look for the following project platform features when you are ready to start your business or upgrade your business software.

• Project management does not start with typing in a project title and then going from there.  Your software should automatically create a project through your sales confirmation or lead.
• If you have similar projects from different clients, sub-projects or repeats of existing projects, find software that refers each project to existing ones.
• Keep an “open book” mentality by allowing your employees and clients to be informed of the project timeline with a special password.
• Use business project management software that has the ability to drag-and-drop a calendar into each project to instantly identify problems with lag times or deadlines.  You should be able to immediately update priority and progress through this chosen software.
• The software should allow you to share documents, add comments, plan meetings for further discussion from a single, secure, online location.  It should also integrate alerts, e-mails or RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds.
• Look for a web-based CRM software that is versatile and subscription-based on a month-to-month fee base with a trial period, before you invest your time and money in an expensive packaged project management system that stands alone.  Most of these have large instruction manuals and some cannot be adapted to your particular project needs.
• Combining your CRM with billing and projects can be a daunting task if you do not have the right business project management software.  If you just concentrate on one aspect of your business at a time, such as invoices, expenses, customer relations, project timeline, quotes, sales and leads, employee evaluation and salary, database updates or budgets, it will be like playing whack-a-mole everyday you walk into the office.
• You should be able to access your information from any Internet connection and your business management software must have upgradeability as your business expands.
• Your business project management software should be able to tell you where you might be wasting money or time as you go step-by-step through each project.  You should be able to integrate price adjustments due to increased cost on products and services used on each assigned project.
• Whether you start out with one project or have a hundred projects going on at the same time, it is hard to keep the strands and details of a project (or projects) in your mind.  Color-code assignments to each project will also save time by affording you the luxury of clicking on a color and instantly getting all the details of that particular project.  A good project management software program will automatically prompt you to recall these details.

Finally, find business project management software that allows you to integrate your entire business with one single web application to give you the confidence necessary to comprehensively manage all the details and put your business in the right perspective.