Project Management is the most important tool in today's world in terms of optimum utilisation of resources within an organisation. Management is required in every step of the way towards achieving organisational goals – be it managing employees or managing assignments. Technology and management together can make management tasks simple and productive. This is where the use and benefits of Project Management Software are applicable. Many organisations make use of the Project Management Software to understand the true potential of their resources.

The benefits of Project Management Software are four-fold as discussed below. Additionally, the article covers the scope of advantages and disadvantages of project management tools.

Benefits of Project Management Software can be outlined as follows:

1. Higher productivity

Project management tools enable better and higher levels of productivity. This is done in several ways: 

• Document sharing is a vital part of any organisation. A good Project Management Software assists in sharing multiple documents across projects so that all the employees involved in a project are up to speed.
• Better communication paves the path for increased efficiency amongst employees. Efficient project management tools make it easy to facilitate communication amongst employees in terms of discussing issues, mapping long threads of emails, formatting texts and attaching documents. This helps employees access their correspondence and be in constant communication with each other from anywhere, even when they are out of office.
• One of the major benefits of using Project Management Software is that it can be accessed through smartphones and tablets. This enables employees to enter and access data whenever they want, without having to be within the office and on their laptops or computers.
• Better management of time as the software incorporates time schedules which may be created by project managers, and consider the various levels of tasks at different stages in the project.

2. Better planning

Employees can plan the following with the help of project management tools –

• Plan Tasks –A dashboard providing an overview of all the tasks and projects at hand may be planned to efficiently make use of time and resources and get the job done on time.

• Plan Projects –Projects and assignments can be planned within a team in a strategic manner to ensure desired outcomes.

• Plan Teams –Teams, based on projects, can be planned and tasks may be assigned or reassigned on this basis to ensure smooth flow and functioning as the software automatically informs all employees of what role they are assigned in a project.

• Plan Time –Reports outlining the most efficient use of time and resources help employees plan their time spent on a project effectively. Further, employees get real-time visibility on the status of their deliverables and therefore can give better results.

3. Promotion of Collaboration and Encouraging Integration

Employees can work together efficiently with project management tools to achieve the following –

• Real-time reports enable project managers to get information on levels of customer satisfaction based on projects. With the help of this, project managers get a sense of understanding of the capabilities of the resources available and can plan project teams in a way to ensure maximum results with minimum inputs.
• It encourages employees to pick projects suited to their needs based on data collected on their past assignments. It enables teamwork as it helps employees understand their strengths and gives a real-time picture of their performance.
• Employees are encouraged to work by combining their synergies as both individual and team efforts are captured in the reports. Employees, therefore, engage in higher levels of problem-solving and are more efficient in delivering outputs thereby reducing costs and idle resources.

4. Less time for employees to get up to speed

The importance of project management lies in minimising time. Manually completing tasks takes more time than working on digitised platforms with the help of project management tools in the following ways –

• The staff can produce error free management reports with real-time information relating to project costs, progress, the status of the project, the profitability related thereto, utilisation of resources, performance based on the budget and customer satisfaction.
• Being a comprehensive and easy to use software, it does not involve the investment of much time on part of the employees – in fact, it cuts down on their overall time spent in logging information and data pertaining to projects.

Therefore, these are some of the benefits of Project Management Software. Project management tools are the easiest and most concise method of planning projects with clarity and prioritising them. Further, they enable optimum utilisation of resources within an organisation while improving budgets and ensuring cost control. These factors ultimately lead to increased employee efficiency.

Some of the advantages and disadvantages of project management tools are as follows: 

• Project management tools may be expensive however the advantage is that it leads to overall cost cutting and reduction of expenditure within the organisation.
• It may be a task to digitise projects however once project management tools are incorporated, employees find it extremely simple to navigate their way through different projects.
• The benefits of using Project Management Software involve minimising risks and reducing project related failures as the software enables capturing data and carrying out analysis and reviews through comprehensive reports.

Exactlly offers a Project Management Software that consists of robust and comprehensive project management tools. It is very user-friendly and its features are a combination of several project management applications into a single easy to use task management system. The Exactlly Project Management Software is not only affordable but also cuts down on several costs within the organisation. It does this by tracking timesheets, collating a central database of information and records and standardises processes. 

Project management tools are therefore an integral part of any up and coming organisation and despite having several advantages and disadvantages of project management, these tools enable efficiency among the employees, therefore leading to better results.