Which project management tool is best for my business” is a common yet complicated question, with an equally maddening answer of “it depends on what you need.”
Factors from scope of your project, use case, size of your team, the nicheness of your industry, should all play an important role in your decision. No one size fits all.
Here are some of the questions that need to be answered when looking for the right tool for you and your business:
- Can you just use Google spreadsheets or online documents to track your projects?
- Would it be better to use a 3rd party Project management tool?
- What advantages would a project management tool built using the Salesforce platform have over the alternatives?
Let’s get into the answers!
- Using Google spreadsheet or documents to track project progress( is it even possible?)
Managing projects within Spreadsheets is indeed possible. Project tasks can be tracked by adding and updating details consistently, teams working together can communicate with each other by adding comments, tagging each other, and also sharing the document with every stakeholder.
But, it only proves to be a good option for small teams with no budgets for project management tools. Or those who need to execute simple projects where tasks have to be done in a linear fashion. If the team is larger with multiple stakeholders or the project has many tasks that need to be executed parallelly, things quickly start to fall apart.
It isn’t secure, the data can be easily tampered with and the project tracking takes a lot of manual effort. Not only is it inconvenient, it’s hard to navigate through data and numbers.
- 3rd party project management tools
As your team grows bigger, you need to use third party management tools that go beyond spreadsheets and tables.
Pros:These tools provide great functionality and features, but sadly at the cost of security, extra resources, time and budget. While the functionalities allow project managers to automate project planning and scheduling, for example, a feature where project managers can create a management plan that prioritises tasks with the highest ROI, it still isn’t enough.
Cons: While these tools have powerful base features, these tools cannot typically be customised. Which means if there are certain processes, analytics or reports your business might need now or in future, you’ll have to either invest more money in the tool or develop these as add-ons from your end. Another downside is that these tools need custom integrations to access your data repository, which would involve full time resources and subscriptions to plans which may be expensive.
Finally these third party tools store data externally and not on your internal server, there is always a risk of a data leak. On top of all this, data sharing is not in real time and the amount of data you can share with your external project management tool is limited.
- How tools built on the Salesforce platform shine over their competition
There are a class of tools called OEM products that are built using the Salesforce platform. These can be plugged into the Salesforce platform if needed, interact with the apps on the Salesforce appexchange, but DON’T require a Salesforce licence and can be used as a standalone product. They give you the advanced functionality your business would need to succeed, while avoiding the downsides of third party project management tools.
Here are some reasons why you should consider tools built on the Salesforce platform:
- AppExchange ecosystem: These project management tools can be seamlessly integrated with apps found in the Salesforce appexchange, giving you the unlimited options to process, treat and store your data and processes how you want. These can also be automatically updated giving you the new features and functionality without having to pay more.
- Low code: With most of these tools being low code or no code, they are extremely customizable. New workflows, templates and event triggers can be easily created among other things. These tools can be easily customized as per your business needs, without any additional resources being tied up.
- Powerful Built-in Analytics: These tools offer powerful built-in analytics to measure project performance via dashboards and reports, which can be used to track project progress, identify bottlenecks, and make data-driven decisions, all in real time. With these analytics tools, businesses can gain valuable insights into their project management processes, and make changes to optimise their performance, anytime, anywhere.
- Safe and secure: since these tools are built on the Salesforce platform you can rest assured the platform takes enough care to ensure that all these tools pass security checks. Additionally the Salesforce API allows every app to communicate seamlessly and safely hence any data can be pulled from reports or dashboard and be shared without any security concerns.
There you have it folks, those are the options to choose from when picking your own project management tool. But if you want a project management tool which consists of every single feature mentioned above and is cost effective at the same time, we strongly recommend checking out WorkOn. Its everything you need to track your projects, increase teamwork efficiency, and simply get work done.