Best Project Management Software

What is Project Management Software?

A project management system, as its name suggests, is a management tool that can be used to manage projects — no matter how large or small. The best project management software incorporates tools that can be used to integrate workflows, track deadlines, assign and reassign tasks, synchronize separate tasks, and so on. It simplifies the distribution of resources and the control of outputs with the ultimate goal of achieving objectives.

With this tool, managers can run several projects, analyze their performances and track individual or team progress. Such software can be used in any kind of business and there are numerous project management systems that are either PC or browser-based.

The best of these tools can manage planning, cost control, scheduling, resource allocation, communication and collaboration, quality and time management, and administration systems.

It is extremely important for people in a leadership position to have a macro-level view of the progress of their projects and the best project management software not only allows this but makes it extremely straightforward.

How Can Project Management Software Help My Business?

A project management system can be used in any kind of business, be it large, medium-sized, or small, that needs to integrate separate parts of a project or projects together. The best project management tools can be used by a wide range of industries for planning, scheduling, resource allocation, and more. Using such software is a practical solution for project managers, leaders, and employees. It is even efficient for personal use if you have to handle numerous tasks.

The best project management software can help you with:

• Task delegation — You will be able to assign tasks, keep track of them and reassign them if necessary.
• Scheduling — the best project management software offers tools that will help you with time management.
• File sharing — You can attach files, and share encrypted and large files.
• Team Communication — Project management tools enable the centralization of team communication and help with collaboration.
• Detailed Reporting — The best project management software allows you to generate reports that give insights on project completion, budget status, and more.

How We Rank the Best Project Management Software

We follow a comprehensive rating methodology to evaluate and rank project management software. Our experts evaluate price, usability, features and support. For an objective evaluation, we use the Genius Score — a rating system that ranges from 0 to 100. The Genius Score is determined by a combination of external ratings and internal testing. For a detailed understanding of our methodology, please visit our rating methodology page.

Main Features of Project Management Software

Finding the best software for you and your team may not be easy. But the first step to finding the most suitable tool is to understand its most important aspects and must-have features. The best project management software will include the following features:

Third-Party Integration — The integration with third-party programs creates an ecosystem that allows you to maintain your business workflow more efficiently.

Report and Analysis — These features enable you to get information for previous changes to tasks, the number of tasks created and updated, number of tasks closed, hours and storage spent or used, and so on.

User Role Management — A project can carry critical business strategies and information such as financial data, customer information, and more. The user role management feature provides a tool to restrict access to confidential project information.

Time Tracking — This is a highly important feature for effective project management, especially when projects have tight deadlines. This is one of the best features as it helps you plan your tasks by making the best use of a limited timetable.

Benefits of Using Project Management Systems

Businesses often have numerous projects to start and finish and keeping everything organized while planning and executing them is highly necessary. Time restrictions and a heavy workload can become a problem for team management. Fortunately, today, technology has advanced and offers some of the best systems and apps that can help with project planning, resource allocation, time management, etc.

Project management systems are among the most useful tools that a company can invest in if it wants to become as competitive as possible. These systems and tools offer plenty of benefits including enhanced customer relationship management, effortless project planning, balanced resource management, improved team collaboration, and effective internal and external communication. Let’s take a deeper dive into some of the benefits that the user gets from using the best project management software systems.

Better Customer Relationship Management

A highly cited benefit of using project management tools is increased customer satisfaction. Completing projects within a set deadline will enhance your reputation in the eyes of the client or customer. If they are satisfied with the results of your completed project, they will likely contact you again for future work.

The best project management systems offer tools that enable managers to narrow their focus when needed. This means that they can improve the deliverability of their team and enhance the rate of success. Better interactions with clients will always lead to more sales.

The benefits that such CRM tools offer will massively impact your business for the best. They enable you to meet quality standards, budgets, and time requirements with ease.

Effortless Project Planning

It is an essential part of project planning and management to deliver a high-quality product while keeping the cost within the client’s budget, as well as delivering the project on schedule. Finishing the project on time is a must for any organization if it wants to build a loyal customer base and a good reputation in the industry that it operates in.

Unfortunately, much of the time spent planning a project can go to waste. That’s when project management tools come into their own. These programs can make accurate predictions of when projects can be completed, capturing the triple constraints of cost, schedule, and scope.

When it comes to project planning, the main benefit of using project management solutions is automation. Such systems help managers establish a solid foundation for their projects by providing tools to keep track of the progress of workloads.

Balanced Resource Management

People, places, and the work that needs to be done are the main project resources that must be properly managed. Such resources include the company’s team, the facilities, the tools used, the materials needed, and so forth. Of course, balancing the availability of resources with the organization’s capacity is hard work. Furthermore, the difficulty of this task increases when you have to take tight schedules and budgets into consideration. Companies cannot thrive without proper planning and allocation of resources to make sure teams have what they need when they need it.

A resource management software program is essential in such situations, to ensure that projects keep to their budgets and stay on schedule. Employees and managers know that to deliver successful projects and encourage higher standards of work, they need an effective resource management plan. This will provide a strategy to ensure teams are not overwhelmed with work or left with no work at all. The importance of such a tool should not be underestimated.

Improved Team Collaboration

By promoting better resource allocation and time management, project management systems can also help to improve team collaboration. Individual tasks are often part of a bigger project that the whole team is trying to complete. Project management tools provide managers with a way to facilitate collaboration on projects by taking into consideration the timeline of tasks, any dependencies, the overall workload, etc.

The success of a project depends on the performance of each member of the team involved. The coordination and harmony among team members can play a vital role in whether the project will be a successful one or not. So to create great teamwork a manager needs to form a sense of belongingness among the team’s members. By using a fast and reliable communication medium it is possible to motivate your employees to participate in group discussions and to level up the teamwork.

Many project management programs can help make these team communication successful by enabling built-in chat tools. Furthermore, you can select members to join a discussion, create discussion topics, add comments, share ideas, spotlight people and more.

Effective Internal and External Communication

Communication both internally for the team and externally for your stakeholders, customers, or clients is essential for the progress of your team’s tasks. The best project management software can help by developing a funnel for communication. For example, document sharing enables people to find information easily, thus providing clear and transparent communication.

Using the best project management software, good internal communication systems can be developed so that team members know how and where to obtain the information that they need. But it is not enough to just make information available, rather the available information needs to be targeted to be most effective.

Organizations also need to be able to communicate just as effectively with customers and suppliers. Using the best project management software programs, they can offer their customers the ability to only view data that is relevant to them.

In this way, readers can provide direct feedback or make edits and review progress.

Who Should Use Project Management Software?

It doesn’t matter if you’re an employee or freelancer looking to keep track of a few projects, a small business owner or manager, or even a multibillion-dollar company executive, everyone can make use of cloud-based project management programs to help them manage their workloads. Of course, not every tool will be useful for everyone as some have been developed to fulfill specific needs. For instance, some of the best project management software programs and apps have been designed for use by large companies, while others are geared towards small and mid-sized (SME) businesses.

Large Companies

Enterprise customers need software with a feature-heavy focus and premium customer support. The best EPM (Enterprise Project Management) software is designed to help companies that need to manage multiple projects. It allows managers to get an overview of the organization’s progress, manage multiple projects and align the resources according to the company’s vision. It is also useful for tracking, planning, and managing schedules. Communicating, collaborating, and executing a project becomes easier through the use of EPM software.

Small and Mid-size Businesses

SMEs need lighter-weight functions with good self-service customer support. There are some management tools that can help SMEs track and plan projects on visual dashboards. The best tools also offer insights on employee performance and the ROI (return on investment) of projects.

How Much Does This Software Cost?

There are different types of pricing models for these management tools. Some are priced per user, some have per month pricing, while other tools offer volume-based pricing.

For small businesses, tools that fit their workload may have prices that range from $19 to $99 per month. For medium-sized businesses, prices may range from $25 to $300 per month. Meanwhile, EPM prices range from $39 to $750 per month.