Endless whiteboard sessions, shouting executives, drooping sticky notes, and moving back and forth between reams of spreadsheet data Does that sound familiar? It happens when you work without a robust project management software program.
Most marketing agencies handle multiple projects and lots of communication. It involves managing large teams and loads of data. On top of that, tight deadlines add to their miseries.
Chaos happens when you have manual processes because they lead to a lot of errors, inaccuracies, confusion, unnecessary delays, and workplace conflict.
This article will discuss things to look for when choosing project management software for your agency.
What Is a Project Management Software?
A robust project management tool streamlines the processes, enhances workflows, and prevents wasteful and monotonous activities. Apart from that, it allows you to seamlessly collaborate with local and remote teams. The biggest advantage of using a project management software tool is that it enables you to scale.
The other significant benefits are as follows:
- Enables you to simultaneously handle multiple projects
- It enables you to build fail-proof processes
- Helps you generate automated reports
- Enables you to adhere to project timelines
- Helps you keep your clients in the loop
- Enables you to remain within the predetermined budgets
- Helps you to track key performance indicators such as project ROI
- Helps you define and clarify the Scope of Work (SOW) with clients
As you can see, manual management of the tasks described above can be risky and daunting. It can soon create a mess.
So, if you want complete control over your projects, use agency project management software such as DashClicks' Projects app.
What to Look For in a Project Management Software Tool?
When considering different types of software tools, it's helpful to compare various robust systems designed to streamline operations. For healthcare facilities, a well-designed practice management software is essential for clinic management and ensuring the efficient handling of appointments, records, staff schedules, and other critical administrative tasks. Additionally, medical facilities benefit from features that support marketing strategies with efficiency. Here are the significant features you need to check when deciding to invest in your agency's project management software.
1. Better Communication and Team Collaboration Features
Team members must frequently communicate and collaborate in an agency environment to successfully execute tasks. A project management system minimizes your worries by allowing all inter-team communications in one centralized location. It increases transparency and prevents delays when teams aren't working in sync or working in the absence of real-time communication.
It helps in the following tasks:
- Delegating tasks
- Tagging concerned team members to inform or update about essential updates
- Sharing documents and files
- Keeping team members in the loop to avoid unnecessary communication and delays
- Sharing project plans and details
- Tracking progress
2. Resource Management Features
As an agency owner, you need to track the following things –
- Skilled and unskilled labor
- Project budgets
- Building resources (including equipment)
- Staff schedules
- Billable and non-billable clocked time
It should also assist you with time management. Your ability to track time spent on tasks is vital to scheduling staff, resource allocation, and receiving equipment and spaces.
Your project management system should have the features for building a work calendar and smartly analyzing your team’s capacity, time, and schedule.
3. Analytics & Report Automation
Project reporting is often a headache for agency staffers since it’s a tedious, boring, repetitive, and time-consuming task, often a necessary evil. The best project management software comes with automated reporting tools such as DashClicks InstaReports.
It brings you the needed insights through a beautiful dashboard with the best analytics features. So, the system not only houses your data but also provides crucial insights into your projects and processes.
Pro Tip: View analytics associated with your client’s marketing campaigns within DashClicks’ project management software. It helps you measure your performance and tweak your campaigns with the help of analytics-generated insights.
4. Integrations
A project might need information from multiple channels and third-party tools such as Google Analytics, Facebook Ads, Google Ads, Unbounce, Callrail, Clickfunnels, etc. Integration is necessary to procure the required data from different channels to link the various moving parts of a project.
Integration also helps you understand how resource allocation affects the overall schedule of your project. Keep all your files in one central location so people can easily access and share them.
DashClicks comes with more with 60+ integrations, some of which are mentioned in the screenshot below. These integrations help in analytics.
Click the following links to learn more about our integrations and how to use them on the DashClicks platform.
- Facebook Ads Analytics
- Google Ads Analytics
- Google Analytics
- CallRail Analytics
- Listings Manager Analytics
- SEO Analytics
5. Ease of Use
The teams frequently use project management software, so it should be easy to learn and use. If they require more than one week of learning, there is no point in investing in them. Most marketing agencies don’t need such complex tools. So, if you’re investing in project management software, look for a software program with a simple interface but robust features. Make sure that you can customize and adjust it to meet your needs. The most crucial part is that it should enable you to scale your business.
6. Dashboard
The best project management software keeps your client’s data and information in one centralized location for better control over the project. It eliminates hassles related to accessing the desired information and potential errors retrieving data. In DashClicks, you have a single dashboard where you can manage all your projects under the “Projects” tab. You can add new projects and monitor your existing ones with illustrated graphics and KPIs.
But you can’t add a project to DashClicks manually. It’s all automated. When you purchase a fulfillment service or an InstaSites to build websites for a sub-account from the Fulfilment Store, DashClicks will automatically create and add a project for that sub-account to the Projects app.
7. Task Management & Prioritization
Your PMS should be able to manage and prioritize your tasks by tracking tasks and sub-tasks. For example, the task “publish quality content” can be drilled down into sub-tasks such as creating a blog, writing the copy, editing, adding graphics and interlinks, and optimizing for SEO.
Similarly, you can set deadlines, separate recurring tasks from one-off tasks, prioritize tasks, assign them to different team members, and improve collaboration.
If you do it using spreadsheets, you will have to do a lot of cross-checking. It might also lead to many errors, but using an agency PMS like DashClicks will become a cakewalk.
Final Words
If you want to run your agency with streamlined processes, less error rate, cross-team collaboration, and more successful projects, choose DashClicks. It’s a simple and intuitive project management tool, which enables you to save time, hit goals faster, and create a transformational experience by leveraging the DashClicks ecosystem.