Dipti Parmar 26 June 2015

5 Top Project Management Tools For Small Businesses

To control different aspects of the project management process, project management tools become necessary.

Every small business owner knows how challenging it is to do everything on their own and hiring staff is an expensive business. Besides, there are instances where even the best strategies and intentions have failed and a wrong turn has demolished months of work. Even a simple misstep can ruin a small business.

A project management tool therefore becomes crucial to the success of a small business. However, the traditional project management systems require on-site deployment, are usually expensive, and out of the budget for most small businesses.

A cloud or web-based system, on the other hand is both efficient and cost-effective for businesses of all size.

Here are 5 Project Management Tools For Small Businesses:

1. Nutcache
Nutcache is one of the most popular collaborative project management systems suitable for businesses of all sizes. This cloud-based tool helps businesses to “Team Up, Organize, Track, Get Paid" in order to work smarter and improve their ROI.

Helping small businesses better organize and track their work, this collaborative project management tool includes integrated time tracking and invoicing applications. The collaborative boards allow business owners to invite other users including team-members, clients and stakeholders to work on a project, track time spent on each assignment, share documents and ideas, create lists and cards, create estimates and invoices.

Features offered by Nutcache:

Create projects and assign hours as well as attach files to a project
Allocate expenses and create estimates and invoices with worked hours
Create reports on a specific project
Compare your actual and estimated data
Get insight on projects with 9 graphic indicators to analyse project profitability and advancement
Categorize your expenses and register payments
Time track by employee/project
Tax summary

Nutcache integrates with various payment gateways including Paypal, 2Checkout, Authorize.net and Stripe. Its time-tracking app is compatible with both iOS and Android platforms.

2. Projecturf
Projecturf is a cloud-based project management app that allows businesses and freelancers/contractors to manage projects, tasks and resources successfully. Once you create the project, this app allows you to add your team members/co-workers to give them instant access to the project via the Web.

Projecturf comes with a wide variety of features and functions, including creating and managing tasks and events, initiating discussions in real-time. You can upload and store documents and designs and analyse project data through the Dashboard.

Features offered by Projecturf:

Keeps you updated on all your current projects
Stores all documents and files in one central location (The app keeps a backup of all your files and documents)
Create your own custom URL, upload your business logo, change colors of the Dashboard, and customize the app
Time tracking & reporting

With Projecturf you can pay for your consumption with no contract, so you can upgrade, downgrade or cancel at any time.

3. Apollo
Apollo helps you to do things quickly and proficiently. Since this tool is on the cloud, you can use it at anytime, anywhere. It is easy to implement and it takes care of all backups, upgrades, and everything else required on the server side.

Features offered by Apollo:

Track everything related to your projects, tasks and calendars
Using the interactive timers you can track the time you are spending on a project/task
View project activities in the activity screen, including who did what and who can access your projects
Set milestones and assign tasks to milestones
Divide a project into stages to better measure its progress

Apollo integrates with popular services including Google Drive, Harvest and Freshbooks (Coming soon Dropbox support).

4. Lighthouse

If you are looking for a tool to simplify your workflow, Lighthouse is the right choice. It allows you to collaborate on projects effortlessly, irrespective of the size of your business and team. You can track the development phases of your project with ease and streamline your workflow to stay focused on what’s important.

Features offered by Lighthouse:

Create tasks automatically and tag issues to be categorized behind the scenes
Real-time updates about your projects, irrespective of where you are
Tools to organize your tickets, customize states, advanced search, bulk editing, saved search, powerful tagging system
Set project goals and group your tickets for timely release using milestones
Share documents, images and files directly to tickets

The robust API of Lighthouse allows it to integrate with various other useful services including GitHub, Beanstalk, Airbrake and Exceptional.

5: OrangeScrum
One of the top open source project management tools, OrangeScrum is a great choice for small and mid-sized businesses, freelancers and agencies. If you have a budget constraint and reluctant to invest in a project management tool yet want to say “good bye” to emails to manage your workflow, OrangeScrum is everything you want.

Features offered by OrangeScrum:

A scrum task board to keep everyone on the same page
Progress tracking by viewing who’s doing what, what’s been accomplished and what you need to do next
Resource planning and team member reminders to send daily updates
Work with remote teams
Respond in real-time from anywhere

OrangeScrum is ideal for IT companies, construction, health service providers, education institutes, and manufacturing units. It’s available on GitHub and comes with a paid SaaS solution and professional services and support.

Conclusion

There are many project management solutions available these days, making it even more challenging to find the right solution. The best way to find the right collaborative project management tool is to consider your business needs and select one that best fits your business and is within your budget.

Whilst selecting one solution over another, never overlook the importance of an agile project management software that helps you manage your work and resources, allowing seamless collaboration between all parties involved.

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Dipti Parmar is a digital marketing wiz and takes care of content marketing campaigns at E2M and Preceptist. She’s been journeying through the world of digital marketing for more than six years and is a blogger and networker, able to provide good insights on the topics like marketing, business, leadership, finance and technology. She’s also a movie buff and loves taking long walks by the seashore.

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