2012 is the year of mobile workforce: With the widely-available cloud-based business tools and the gaining-in-popularity tablets and smartphones, we can literally work anytime and anywhere we want; we are now in the age of remote working. The trend of BYOD (bring your own device) is also experiencing strong growth: Bringing your own mobile devices allows you to be more productive, and it’s proven to be able to improve employee retention.
Those developments in remote working (or cloud working, if you like) allows strong growth in web-based software for business. One kind of such software is online project management software.
Today’s online project management software allows you to manage projects via a web-based “dashboard” – and collaborate with your team members – wherever they are, whenever you want; charting, time tracking, expenses tracking, and team collaboration are some of the most common features found in a powerful online project management software.
There are also project management software allowing you to access third-party resources for tasks, allowing you to do outsourcing and crowdsourcing right from your online dashboard. The right project management software also allows you to connect with third-party apps for added flexibility. Those capabilities are powerful, as you can practically run your entire business in the cloud.
The bottom line, you have no reason not to embrace the cloud and not to use online project management software. Now, the next question is, which software should you use?
Which project management software?
I am not going to recommend you a particular project management software (that would be for our next article!) – I have tried numerous project management software – Smartsheet, AceProject, and many more. What I am going to do is recommending you where to look for the right project management software.
The first and foremost thing you should do is to look for reviews. Visiting every website is time consuming; reading reviews will allow you ponder on what others think about a project management software. So, where to look for reviews?
1. Software review sites
You can look for project management software reviews on reputable and trusted review sites. Do avoid review sites that are affiliated with certain project management software, because obviously the reviews will be slanted toward their affiliated software. Sites like Project-Management.com, GetApp.com and such can offer you trusted reviews.
2. Stand-alone resources
Surfing and searching the web, you can discover some articles related to project management software, such as this Squidoo page, infographics, discussion forums threads, and many other sources.
Takeaway
I was typically looking at software which offers me seamless integration to numerous third-party apps. Although this could be the solution to many, I recommend you to choose project management software that offers features you really need. What’s good having 100s of apps connected with your software when you only need 1 or 2 of them?
I also recommend you to look for project management software that offer stellar collaboration features, with ease of user management and communication. Your aim is to make things easy for you and your team to collaborate whenever you wish; so, unless I work on my own without a team, powerful project management features with poor collaboration tools won’t interest me.
Last but not least, you need to choose a software offering you superb customer support. When things go wrong, the last thing you don’t want is to contact support and get no replies for days.
