by Kathleen Lamphier under Industry Trends

Here’s tip number five for boosting project team productivity with customizable web-based software. Tip six is coming next week.  If you’d like all the tips now, click here to request them.

Tip #5 – Automate recurring processes
The whole point of project management is to make more effective use of everyone’s time. Every hour of busywork you eliminate through automation is an hour liberated for more productive and more profitable use by team members.  Automating recurring processes reduces or even eliminates administrative work while providing more timely and in-depth communication.

Customizable, web-based project management software can help you:

Manage reports:
You can automatically distribute reports on a pre-arranged schedule (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.). Recipients can then interact directly with the real-time information in the report by making on-the-fly changes to the report and sorting information by category, dates, resources and more. Empowering users to create and modify reports saves you the time of creating one-off reports for various team members.

Communicate progress:
As work proceeds on the project, the application can be set up to automatically send status alerts that notify team members when new projects or tasks are assigned to them and update them when information changes – for example, when work is completed or delayed.

Prompt action:
Your web-based project management application can send reminders to notify team members in advance of task due dates to ensure that key dates are met.

QuickBase’s automatic email features streamline communication
Are you familiar with Intuit QuickBase’s automatic email features? They include:

Scheduled report subscriptions:
Creating a scheduled report subscription enables you to automatically email a report to application users on a periodic basis. For example, you can create a report subscription which automatically emails a report of all open tasks to your project team before the weekly status meeting.

Notifications:
QuickBase can automatically send out e-mails to notify one or all of your users – or notify you – when information in a record has changed or when a record has been added or deleted.  For example,  you might want help delegating work, in which case QuickBase can notify a user when a new project or task is assigned to him.

Notifications also let you apply very specific conditions to trigger the email and also target only appropriate individuals for receipt. For example, imagine your QuickBase application tracks deliveries for your company. When a delivery’s status changes to “Ready for shipment” you want QuickBase to automatically send a notification to the person listed in the “Driver” field. No problem. QuickBase can automate communication based on what data a record contains.

Reminders:
Don’t miss another deadline. QuickBase can let you know that a due date is coming up. You can set up your QuickBase application to automatically send an email reminder to you or any user to warn that an important date is approaching.

For example, you could tell QuickBase to email a reminder to each user five days before their task is due. If you want, QuickBase could also send the reminder a certain number of days after a task was due, to jog a user’s memory about a still-unfulfilled (and now overdue) task.

Coming next week, tip #6 – Get personal.

It’s your turn to share.
Do you use QuickBase’s automatic email features?

What kinds of reports do your team members subscribe to? What was your reporting process like before QuickBase?

by Kathleen Lamphier under Industry Trends

Here’s the fourth tip for improving team productivity with customizable web-based software. Tip #5 is coming Tuesday.  If you just can’t wait and want all the tips now, click here to request them.

Tip #4 – Maximize productivity while minimizing IT dependence
A desktop or custom project management solution requires IT assistance for installation, maintenance and support from both a time and hardware perspective. When you turn to your IT department (assuming you enjoy the privilege of having one) to provide you with a project management software tool, you add a burden to its schedule, delays to your implementation and an additional expense to your project.

Customizable SaaS project management solutions deliver the functionality you need without incurring new costs – in time and money – for installing software, adding new features or for maintenance and support.

For maximum efficiency and productivity, your project management software application should provide:

Convenience:
With the right application, your team can access project information over the Web, whenever and wherever they want. They can create and modify reports instantly without IT or developer assistance. And they can update their own task status, fast.

Customization:
Team members can easily change row and column names, create real-time reports, personalize their application dashboard to see just the project information they need, and more – all on the fly.

Speed:
Your project management software should enable you to collaborate right away, without installation or custom development delays or extensive training.

Scalability:
Teams are fluid groups of individuals that form, dissolve and re-form over time. Managing secure access and assigning varying levels of permission for each user should be simple enough for the application administrator (the person who can customize the application and access permission levels) to do without IT assistance. And adding users to the project management software should be as simple as sending an email.

Updates:
Every off-the-shelf software upgrade requires installation on each user’s machine – a time-consuming process. One of the major advantages of SaaS project management solutions is that upgrades are made automatically without imposing any work on you or your IT team.

Coming Tuesday, tip #5 – Automate recurring processes

How about you?
Has QuickBase helped you increase productivity and minimize dependence on IT?

Has QuickBase’s customizable dashboard feature helped your team members focus on the information that’s most important to them?

While commenting on a recent post of mine, one customer, Lou Brothers, shared how “using Dashboards and Notifications has really increased the quality and speed of [project] updates. Since everyone can see the information that pertains specifically to them they can focus on providing updates and ignore the ‘noise’ from everyone else.”