“Since the birth of man, tools have always been an extension of your mindset as well as your hands.” Nabil Alami, Heat Science Expert.
Since the dawn of time, man has always used tools. This has driven the survival and evolution of our species. These tools allow us to fulfil our primary needs such as to eat and find shelter, as well as our secondary needs such as to have fun.
Today, more than ever our society is evolving rapidly, and new tools are being created every day. At work as in our private lives, using the right tools is therefore essential to be efficient, productive and organised.
During project management, it is imperative to use tools adapted for success. Do you know that 100% project success rate only exists for 2.5% of businesses? Does your creative agency use the right tools in order to succeed?
Discover 5 indispensable tools to organise work well within your agency, whilst guaranteeing your success. Collaborative tools and online collaboration platforms are an indispensable element to a business’ digital transformation.
1. The Planning
Time is precious. In order to meet deadlines, it is essential to have an updated calendar allowing you to visualise key dates, milestones and the deadlines of your projects and tasks.
Every collaborator can share their planning with team members so that everyone remains informed of their availability and the progression of their projects.
A shared calendar also allows the easy organisation of important events for projects, such as specific or reoccurring meetings with team members and clients.
Generally, it is possible to directly synchronise your calendars with your business email and smartphone in order to receive notifications and reminders.
2. Task Management
This tool is indispensable to know the differing advancement of tasks within a project.
A manager can easily create tasks, deadlines and assign one or more employees responsible for its completion. They can put in place notifications to alert them in real time when a task is updated, delayed or finished. Together everyone can visualise each task and its progression with regards to the project. In the blink of an eye, each team member knows who is responsible for each task and their advancement.
Such a tool facilitates collaboration within a team as it allows each member to easily organise themselves and to structure tasks within defined workspaces. The creation of shared task lists, (simply referred to as “to-do lists”), allows everyone to know where they are and have the feeling that they have accomplished something once a task is crossed off their to-do list.
3. A Drive
The time where work documents are exchanged by email is over. Today, online platforms exist that can store and share all of our work documents instantaneously, clearly and easily with all of our colleagues, clients and investors. These platforms are both accessible online and offline and you are able to synchronise your documents to your computer.
They’re will be no more confusion as to what the latest version of a document is. From now on these tools provide automatic versioning from the moment a document is modified or added, and you can access all the older versions at any time too.
Finally, you can control each documents accessibility as well as preventing your colleagues’ access to them whilst you edit them. This prevents more than one person working on the same document at the same time.
4. Communication tools
At work, communication is the key to success. As a creative agency, communication is your area of specialisation and therefore you must lead by example.
To communicate efficiently with your clients, team and investors, you must use high performing and adapted tools to your needs, such as:
- Private messages which allows you to share information with your employees and clients, reducing the quantity of emails you receive.
- Group discussions which organises exchanges between team members working on the same project.
- Real time chats are ideal for an instantaneous reaction to ask for your co-workers’ opinions or questions and have quick responses, to congratulate your colleagues and motivate your team.
- Video and audio calls allow easy communication with your co-workers and clients in whatever location you find yourself in. Equally, you can share your screen, which is very practical when you need to make corrections in real time.
This type of tool gives you the possibility to exchange and share ideas, documents, links, photos and comments on the project that you are working on easily.
5. A Tracking Tool
This tool is crucial to be able to have a comprehensive vision and follow the advancement of your project closely as well as the performance of your team members.
Thanks to this, you can analyse the productivity of your team, to know where they are in the advancement of their tasks and their availability. For instance, you can ask your co-workers availability to help another team member whom is running behind on their task, to avoid the task delay.
This tool is essential to give you a realistic estimate of the delivery date of a project based on your team’s performance and the time allotted to each task.
Conclusion
“You can never mandate productivity; you must provide the tools to let people become their best” Steve Jobs.
To perform and be productive, a creative agency must be organised and use teamwork tools (even this list isn’t exhaustive). A project management solution resembles all these same functions in one same tool. In this way, you not only save time as you avoid mixing up different software’s, but you also save money investing in only one unique product.
