As your shiny small business starts to bloom, you may need to hire more and more people to help you out with the different tasks you have. Because the more you grow, the more responsibilities you have.
And it´s highly important that as a busy business owner or stressed executive, you avoid burnout at all costs.
And that's only possible when you delegate what you don’t know (or what you don't want to do) to a skilled team.
Because you are creative, you love getting in the workflow and you have multiple easy projects to materialize.
And let us tell you that if there's a perfect time for starting a side business or for elevating your brand, 2019 is definitely your chance.
With solid collaboration (no matter whether it's local or remote), you can nowadays achieve anything you set your mind into. You just need to find the right team for your brand, and some planning tools.
We’re here to help you today with the technical resources to manage a team better than ever. We have software to use both on mobile apps and desktop.
However, doing so will require you to organize your time super well.
And not only your precious time but also the one your employees will need to spend working on different tasks or projects that you delegate.
(On the different platforms we’re going to share with you, of course.)
Luckily, there are a lot of different online tools which are used to keep track of your projects in only one place and, most importantly, to do time tracking. Collaboration is nothing without proper time tracking.
Because you don't want just to throw tasks to a team, you will need to see to the whole completion process in an easy way.
Thanks to technology, you have the possibility to see in only one dashboard the different complex tasks, mini-tasks, and of course, the big picture of your team working towards your goals.
But, how do these task management tools will work exactly? Why are they a true project management solution for your situation?
Well, for starters, all of them let you assign several tasks to your work team. You also will be able to set milestones for every project (or individual task) if the task is long or complex.
They will also send daily updates to your email addresses as a reminder to all the members of the team involved in the projects.
All of these online project management tools also have the capacity to pull up detailed reports which will help you to measure your employee’s efficiency.
So, now, let's take a look at 5 different project planning tools and their key features, which you may find useful for your everyday life.
And this type of software is not only the domain of seasoned project managers. No matter the niche you’re working on, or your position, you can learn to use this kind of project management app to handle multiple projects easily.
We’re sure you ́ll adore these project planning tools.
If you have a small business running, Asana will be just the perfect fit for you. And if your company is not so small, Asana has a plan for you too.
Why?
The free version of this wonderful task management app allows you to have up to 15 team members. That means you can add 15 different employees in your “to-do” list, plan accordingly, and assign them different projects.
And of course, you can do the proper time tracking we talked about.
Asana also allows an email integration, which means that you will be able to create, assign, complete, comment, and attach tasks directly from your inbox instead of logging in.
E-mail integration is essential to avoid communication issues since people check emails every day.
Another great addition to this is their Android and Ipad compatibility. This makes Asana very accessible for you and your employees. Regardless of their location, their OS, or if they ́re on the mobile phone or their laptop.
And it´s great that Asana offers a free plan to individuals or very small teams that are starting to manage a business.
Asana shares at the same time high functionality with a stunning design in only one intuitive dashboard.
(Project managers absolutely love this management solution. And we also do.)
Teamwork Live will let you upload different documents, files, and videos. So, instead of charging you for adding members, they will charge you depending on the storage size you may want to have. There is a 50 member limit on their paid option though.
Having online storage is awesome because it allows other users to access the files you upload. That means that you won't have to fear your documents won't get to the assigned person due to their email limitations for example. File sharing runs smoothly with Teamwork Live.
Teamwork Live's interface is also really simple and intuitive to use if you ́ve never run this type of app before. Once you end your task, you can just upload the finished file, add a comment, and check it off.
That's true collaboration made easy.
This software will shortly send an email to the person who assigned the task, to let him or her know that the activity has been already completed. (It shares the email integration feature with Asana.)
Basecamp limits the projects you can manage according to the pricing (instead of limiting customers like the other first two options). Similar to Teamwork Live, it will allow you to have up to 100GB of file storage.
Now the difference here is that you will be able to create online text or excel files, similar to how Google Docs and Google Sheets work.
That means that you won't even have to upload the documents you have been working on before. And that, in the long run, will save you a lot of time.
Also, you will be able to see the daily progress of the different tasks and pull up reports to compare the time spent on each of the different activities.
That ́s mandatory to refine your strategy when assigning different responsibilities to your work team. and seriously thinking about how to make people collaborate better with less effort.
What makes Zoho stand out from the rest of the task management software, is their so-called “wiki” feature.
As the name implies, you will be able to create a knowledge base using photos and videos. And use it as an intranet for your business team that they can access while working. That ́s super original and different from the previous options we have mentioned.
Zoho also offers a chat option, which will allow you and your different employees to discuss business in real time—instead of using emails or leaving comments to communicate in an asynchronous fashion.
And like all the previous software, it will allow you to pull up a detailed report of the completed tasks and the time they took the team.
And there ́s more. The tags you can assign are quite colorful (and therefore easy to distinguish), and if you don't like the colors, you won't have to worry. Because Zoho lets you customize your interface, which is a really nice detail.
If you ́re a highly visual person and need a super aesthetic screen workspace, this software is definitely for you.
TeamLab allows you to easily synchronize your Google Drive and your Dropbox account with it so you can do file sharing more easily.
Similar to Google docs, you will need first thing to grant access or permission to any other user to edit or see your uploaded files.
It's important for remote teams to have these specific tasks like file sharing running like clockwork.
In addition, you can create “blog entries” in Teamlab, which can then be read and commented by multiple users. This should be really useful when trying to communicate certain experiences or thoughts to your co-workers. Especially if you ́re working with a remote team.
Teamlab has also an integrated forum option, where you can just split the polls in “Most Asked Questions”, or “Customer Care” for example.
Also, you should remember to check the bookmark option. This can make the process of tracking the tasks you are most interested in easier.
If you want to know more information about Apps and Social Media, please don’t hesitate to explore our Technology and Social Media categories of our blog. They ́re full of helpful and interesting articles especially written for you.
Here are some other warning signs that are screaming that you ought to delegate more now:
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