Still Using Email to Project Manage? That’s So Yesterday!

Whatever the project, no matter how many people are involved, online collaboration software helps reign in the pesky details. While it doesn’t magically do your work for you, it can increase business efficiency by leaps and bounds. At the end of the day, that means more money in your pocket.

I’ll be honest. I dropped Project Management 101 in university, mainly because the course material just seemed so dry and boring. Nothing sexy about it. I wanted to be a marketer, not a manager. And in the humble beginnings of my now successful consulting practice, project management never seemed like a big deal. Get client. Ask client what he wants done. Do it. Get paid. Yay for me.

Then I started landing bigger, more complex projects. The processes required to reach an end result became more numerous and the manpower more diverse (I started using subcontractors). Halfway through some of these gigs I would start laying awake at night wondering if I replied to all my emails that day, if I sent the right file to the right person, and if I was even doing things a in logical order. It was exhausting to worry like this. Not to mention the time and energy I wasted triple checking correspondence just to keep abreast of the progress we had made, or not made.

A solution presented itself when a client of mine brought me into the fold of his online collaboration system. The software was so easy to use I needed virtually no instructions. But what really impressed me was how few emails had been exchanged by the time my assignment was complete. How refreshing!

So I signed up for an account of my own with the same software provider. I didn’t use all the features right away, but I immediately noticed less email tag happening in my inbox. My clients and I could "say" something once and move on. As long as everyone was willing to log in now and then to review new information and post updates, things hummed along rather nicely. And this was before I even knew the importance of "milestones."

Suddenly, managing projects was less ulcerative and more … empowering. Plus, once you habituate your use of collaboration software, you start finding more and more ways to use it, like internal correspondence and other non-client related work. And soon your business is cruising along like a well oiled machine, freeing you up for things like product development, billable work, or a second triple macchiato at Starbucks.

Some of the benefits of using online collaboration software to manage projects include:

• Communication redundancy be gone! One conversation equals one message "thread" online. Say it once. Say it loud. Hit Post and log out.
• No more looking for a nugget of information in a pile of emails spanning the entire life of your business. (C’mon, you’ve done it!)
• Less emails to organize in the first place which means more time to be your productive self.
• Data continuity. The newest version of a file is posted chronologically–and stays posted chronologically–for whomever you choose to see it.
• No more surprise deadlines. When you post milestones, to-do lists and other time sensitive information, you can designate and notify those responsible without feeling compelled to write long and windy explanations. Dropdowns and checkboxes are your new best friends.
• An audit trail to die for. If you, your team and your client use the software religiously (and you have to be militant about this from the get-go), you will have a detailed, chronological record of the project’s progress, obstacles that occurred along the way, and how it all ended.

I know what many of you are saying: what if my clients won’t use it? How do I get them on board?

Simple. Create their online accounts the minute you’ve landed the project. They get their welcome email and from that point on, you send all correspondence through the online software. Don’t explain yourself. Just tell them to expect a welcome email shortly and everything will be self-explanatory from that point on. Your client will be impressed as all get out by your leadership, and you will look like the cutting edge project manager that you really are.

So, now that we’ve eliminated that excuse, I bet you’re going to whine about cost. Almost all of the programs out there offer a way to try their program for free. So shop around. Kick the tires. Take one or two for a spin. Eventually though, you’ll want to upgrade to a full service package that allows you to manage multiple projects online. This isn’t the time to be cheap. Think about how much your time is worth by the hour. Then consider how much time you will save by using the software to manage your business. Twenty-five or even 50 bucks a month is a paltry sum in lieu of the benefits.

There’s lots more to learn about this online project management stuff. The point is to be aware that there are much easier, less painful ways to manage large, multi-stakeholder projects than with tedious email messages.

One thing I’m sure of is that being profitable requires you be scrupulous with your time and online collaboration software is an excellent way to help you do this.