So one of the key shifts that happen when switching to remote home-based staff is the lost “Hallway Conversations”. This is the project work that happens ad hoc. It could be as your team is by the water cooler, going about their day, and having offhand conversations. It’s also the kind of conversation that happens when team members inevitably get together. Like when they have dinner, lunch, or walk to the cafe together. And this is very hard to replace on a remote business when staff is home-based. Onsite Helper has compiled the best project management tools for remote businesses that can help with managed IT and so much more.
Best Project Management Tools for Remote Business
Google Chat’s advantage over Slack or Whatsapp
This is one of the things that is a real challenge. Now, of course, what’s the easiest way and the first way that most people do? They make sure that there is an easy way to connect using something like Google Chat. That allows you to quickly send messages, set up rooms, have joint collaborative spaces for people to access conversations. At the same time, you can have some productive conversations there. But the challenge is when that scales, right?
There are advantages to Google Chat and those big advantages are:
- It’s intrinsically linked to everything else in your operating system. And if you’re using Google workspace, well, it’s going to be linked to your meetings, Google Drive, and more. So that if someone is referring to a document, they can drop the document into your Google Chat. Also you can click that link and even open it right up there in the chat.
- AI features – got a meeting coming up with someone? It’ll automatically pop their name to the top of the list in chat. With this, you can drop them a quick message. And if you’re in a meeting with a group, Chat is smart enough to create a group chat. Need to send a little “I’ll be five minutes late” message? They all just automatically show up in Google Chat.
And those are only a few of the strong advantages of choosing to use Google chat. Over something like Slack, Whatsapp, or Messenger, Google Chat is clearly superior.
Google Chat Rooms and Teams
Because Google Chat is fully integrated with the rest of the Google ecosystem, it makes collaboration and communication super simple. Now, when you set up rooms and teams inside of Chat, and if someone needs to say something to a particular audience like the marketing team, leadership team, or just the executive there’s going to be a specific group there. If you want to message everyone, you can also use the All chat. And so you can automatically have conversations flowing in particular spaces for different team members.
Now, we try, as much as possible, to have a rule of not allowing people to send instant messages or personal messages about work things, we want them to happen as much as possible in a team chat or a room. And because of that, someone who’s a manager can keep tabs on what kind of conversations are happening, who needs help with things. And if you need to jump in from time to time and add your two cents, then it makes it easy.
Another advantage of Google Chat is that it’s built into your license with the Google Workspace ecosystem. You don’t have to pay for an additional license, it’s easy to set up and all of your chat histories are saved inside of your Google accounts. Google Workspace has a lot of built-in project management tools. Learn more about Google Workspace here.
Shared Mailboxes
What does a remote team need to work well together? You’re going to need Shared mailboxes. So it’s clear to see when you’ve got inbound inquiries coming from customers, whether it’s sales, operations, delivery, or support, your team needs Shared mailboxes. You want to make sure that every query that comes in from your customer is addressed, and is also addressed promptly. You also want an opportunity for your team to collaborate on the replies to your customers.
Businesses that share individual email addresses for staff members don’t scale very well.
Having a shared mailbox is the best way for you to make sure that everyone can deliver support effectively. Now, these have been used forever in tech businesses as helpdesk systems. And in the past, customers would get a ticket number, and it would be a little bit inhuman. Nowadays, this project management tool is integrated fully into your Gmail ecosystem. So right inside of Gmail, it doesn’t even look like a ticketing system to your customer anymore.
But you get all the advantages of a business, like analytics, customer service metrics, and being able to assign a customer request to a particular person. This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the advantages of having a shared collaborative mailbox.
Customer Relationship Management software or CRM
What does Customer Relationship Management or CRM software do? CRM makes sure that all interactions between you and your customers are centralized and logged in one place. Now, that must happen automatically. We’re in the world of AI and automated data collection. So it’s nuts to expect your team to drag and drop emails into folders or attach them to client files like businesses had to do in the old days. It’s also hard to prevent human error from the old method.
Nowadays, modern customer management systems and a lot of project management tools will automatically talk to your Gmail, collect all of the emails, and attach them to your staff or company records for your customers automatically. So what that means is that a remote team member anywhere in the world can see all of the interactions between any of your team or their team, and your actual customers. So a great customer management system or CRM is going to make everyone’s life easier because you can see everything that’s going on.
Task Management Software
Businesses need Task Management Software. The point of that is to make sure that projects move smoothly. Any query along the process of project delivery can be raised for the project itself, or the small questions that team members have, won’t get lost in either emails or Google Chat.
You want one cohesive place for the project, especially if a project is going to be running over multiple months. You want to make sure that the communications, meetings, and inputs all happen in one place or are organised by project management tools.
Now, these could be used mainly for two kinds of projects:
Repeating projects/deliverables
The task management software could be used to provide timely updates on deliverables or repetitive tasks. This way, it’s easy to identify the status of the projects, everyone is on the same page, and the customer can be easily informed of the progress of the project.
Internal projects
Whether your company is launching a new marketing campaign, working on a new customer service tool, or implementing new technology, task management software can greatly help you. With this, you can assign tasks and set deadlines for each member of the team.
Once you’ve put these project management tools in, you’ve got all the ability for your team to connect. If you use these cloud-based business tools correctly, they give you a complete oversight as the business owner or leader into exactly what’s happening with the company. And so you get full visibility of what work is being done, if your team is productive, or not productive, or if your projects are being delivered on time.
There’s also a way for you to measure how much work is being done by your team. For example, if I look at my customer service team, I can look at the tickets each member manages weekly. Also, I can see how much work was done. All of a sudden, you can manage KPIs, and you can manage your exceptions, rather than trying to micromanage and count them each day to get their work done.
When it comes to Project Management Tools…
What it comes down to is having your team adopt the right tools? Are they working with the tools? Are making proper use of the project management tools? Did you just throw those tools at your team and hope for the best? Onsite Helper is here to help.
With Onsite Helper’s Managed IT services, your business will be able to focus on what you do best while we make sure that your IT system is always in check. We’ll fix existing issues, and maintain a smooth and fast working environment for your team. Whether that’s for your onsite working team, remote working team, or hybrid working team, we’ll take care of it.
If you want a perfect home-based team, click the button below.
Google Workspace Migration
Best working ecosystem for hybrid, onsite, and remote team
If you’re looking for a productive and intuitive cloud system for your business, then Google Workspace is perfect for you. Google Workspace is Google’s collection of Apps that helps teams plan, collaborate, and execute tasks with transparency and ease. There are a lot of reasons to use Google Workspace, from regular updates, heightened security, and so much more.
Contact Onsite Helper today and get the best deals for Google Workspace!
