Emails are simple and convenient, but they do more harm than good to your project management. Though emails are enticing to use, you should ditch this practice as soon as possible. You may wonder why it is imperative to have a proper collaboration system in place for project management. Read on as we tell you how emails are sabotaging your project management and how you can stop it.
Five ways project management tools can promote better collaboration
You may be doing everything to keep tabs on all the projects, but still, if there are certain loose ends, then it could be due to inefficiencies in your collaboration process. Though email is a great tool for communication, it is not designed for collaborations.
In the biotechnology industry, projects are lengthy and can stretch for years, such projects have endless threads of conversations. If you are using emails to track and contain such conversations, things will get messy. With several members of your team sending emails all at once, keeping track of their daily work status is impossible.
On the other hand, a project management tool is designed to manage such complex and lengthy conversations. With project management software tasks like resource allocation, setting up deadlines, creating project deliverables, etc., can be completed with accuracy and on time.
A project is a collection of various small tasks, which need to be assigned to everyone. Doing this over emails will cause confusion and misunderstanding. Also, there will not be any provision to have a bird’s eye view at the resource allocation and daily progress of the assigned tasks.
With the best project management software, you can not only assign tasks systematically but also track them daily. Additionally, these solutions provide intelligent options to perform resource forecasting, managing the vast resource pool, building teams, etc. for more details refer to our blog on resource management.
Project management involves many tasks, some of which are repetitive. If you are using emails to collaborate with your team members, then you must manually collate all their information using excel sheets. This process is not only time-consuming but also error-prone. So, whenever you need summary reports of the project, you must execute the task from scratch every time.
Specialized project management collaboration tools have options to automate most of the manual tasks. You can generate reports, and convert them into visuals with just a click. Be it a hundred sheets of clinical trials data or 6 GB of drug discovery data, you can organize it with just a click.
It is a widespread practice for small and medium biotech companies for a project manager to wear multiple hats. For example, in an SME project management, a manager can co-lead the project with a technical lead. In such a scenario, hands-on data becomes vital. If you are using emails for project management, then you need to go through a dozen emails just to find out the status of a task.
Using project management tools, you can track tasks as per the department and keep everyone on the same page. These solutions work on AI and ML which enables you to identify and extract crucial insights from your project data without the need to perform any manual work.
Another crucial area of project management is having real-time control over the project. The project manager should be aware of every minute detail of what is happening within the project. If you are using emails for collaboration, then most of your time will be invested in searching for emails in your inbox, and that information is also not real-time.
Project management software will help you have a bird’s eye view of the project with just a click. You will be able to view the progress in a project in real-time, this data can also help forecast the future trends of the project based on the current progress.
Project management is more than just communicating with each other, it has special needs, and a software solution can help fulfill them. Unlike popular myths investing in a PPM tool is neither expensive nor time-consuming. All these tools are said to give a greater ROI and can be implemented in 1-2 quarters.
i2e Consulting has 13 years in life science project management consulting. Our team is well versed with the implementation of Project Online, Planisware, etc., for global biotechnology companies.
PPM Advisor
PPM Practice Lead
