Whether you work at a small design firm or a big digital agency, it is crucial to understand the importance of using a web-based software for planning, managing, organising and tracking all your projects and work. An intuitive and easy to use project management tool has become the go-to solution for most smart marketers. As you grow your business, you need a system to handle all the additional projects, tasks, files and communication. Here are my top reasons why your marketing team needs a project management software today.

Smooth Communication

Wouldn’t you want all feedback in one place?

Email was built for one to one communication and not one to many. Email completely breaks down if you are managing more than a couple of projects with a few people. A smart project management tool will let you assign tasks and even let everyone in your team to add comments so everyone is looped in. Best of all, everything you enter would be searchable so you can find that client feedback from early 2013 in a matter of seconds.

Happy Clients

Wouldn’t you want your clients to feel you are successful?

Keeping your clients updated and letting them review your work is just as important. Don’t finish your project and then involve the client. Instead, make the feedback loop right from the beginning. Add your client to your project management software and let them see your progress. You can even go one step further and let your clients add tasks within their projects. This way, you don’t have to deal with getting a ton of email from your client and then copy-pasting the content of the email to your project management software.

Single Source of Truth

Wouldn’t you want to have everything in one place?

Just like we keep a track of our expenses and go back to it when we need to refer to something, a project management software will let you review assignments by going back in time. I call it the the “single source of truth” for every tasks assigned and comment discussed. Protect yourself against “this wasn’t included in the plan” or “I didn’t know I had to get this across to the client today” scenarios.

Planning

Wouldn’t you want to plan better?

Success of a project is highly dependent on the planning that goes into it. It is like warming up before a big game. Poor planning may lead to two people doing the exact same thing and losing time. Chaos is directly proportional to poor planning. A project management tool is perfect for identifying roles, prioritising tasks, adding dependencies, etc. Make a plan, put it up in your system, follow it and get everyone on the same page.

Work Visibility

Wouldn’t you want to know who is doing what?

When you plan everything in one system you will know who is doing what and when something is due. As people complete their work or when clients give you feedback you will have everything happening in one place. No more searching emails or looking up spreadsheets.

Sharing Ideas & Docs

Wouldn’t you want to not lose ideas?

Imagine developing your marketing strategy and plan for all your clients in a doc and then sharing the document as an attachment to all your team members. Nightmare? Instead, use Google Docs, Dropbox or Box to write/ store your content and then choose a project management software that can integrate with these tools. This way, you can easily link your content within your projects but still have version control done by the apps that do them best — Dropbox, Google Docs and Box.

Meet those Deadlines

Wouldn’t you want to meet all those deadlines?

When working with multiple projects and clients, it is important to have a central place to check deadlines and make sure everything is on track. This can only be possible if you implement a project management software that also has a calendar feature so you can see at a glance which project is lagging behind and which ones are on schedule.

Protect Against Attrition

Wouldn’t you want your business to run smoother?

Losing a team member can lead to losing valuable information. If he was communicating with a client (via email) about an important website change then what happens to all his communication? Its trapped within his inbox. If all your processes and workflows are in your project management tool then everyone has access to everything.

Scale Your Business

Wouldn’t you want to get more customers?

We have seen customers run hundreds of projects from a project management app. Imagine doing this using email. No chance, right! I rest my case.

So go on, get your business a system that will put all your projects in cruise-control.

Happy hunting.