What is the Actual ROI of Project Management Software?

Most agencies know they need a project management solution. They want to better manage projects and find a sustainable solution that allows them to reach the next stage of growth.

A project management solution seems like such a no-brainer since it’s critical to success. Today, most project management solutions are in the form of web-based tools or software.

In most cases, agencies are likely already paying for a tool that they aren’t really using or seeing the value from.

Most agencies and companies only leverage 20 percent of the software they adopt.

When this happens, agencies ask why isn’t the team using the tool? Why overspend, overpay, and underutilize?

In addition to losing money on the tool itself, agencies are also losing efficiency and productivity, which ultimately decreases ROI.

However, it is difficult for agencies to find project management solutions that fit their needs exactly how they want.

In this article, we will explore the most common challenges in the project management space, how to choose the right project management tool, and how to calculate the ROI of your project management solution.

The Most Common Challenges with Project Management

Before we dive into how to figure out what project management tool will be the best solution for your team and agency, let’s look at some reasons why agencies seek out project management solutions in the first place.

Although there are many benefits to project management, there are also a number of hurdles. Of course, these challenges depend on the organization. According to Gallup, only 2.5 percent of companies complete 100 percent of their projects successfully, and only 64 percent of projects meet their goals.

Additionally, here are some of the most common challenges agencies encounter:

• Proper resource management and allocation
• Lack of team adoption
• Lack of accountability
• Lack of processes to support operations, or broken processes, or overly complex processes and tools
• Lack of clear communication
• Organizational culture
• Misalignment between teams and project goals and objectives

Furthermore, most organizations see an average of a 70 percent project failure rate, and only 28 percent of companies use project performance techniques to help them improve processes, delivery output, and manage projects better, according to the Project Management Institute (PMI).

On the other hand, by implementing the right project management initiatives, this can help save companies 28 times more money as their output becomes more reliable.

Here are some of the benefits to project management tools and solutions:

• Streamline operations
• Increase efficiency
• Increase productivity
• Reduce deployment delays
• Increase time-to-market
• Deliver projects on time and on budget
• Increase organization
• Boost team collaboration

In addition to increasing efficiency, and improving performance and output, project management tools can also help improve the “soft side” of project management by boosting team morale and collaboration. These benefits alone will help boost the ROI of your project management solution.

What Makes a Good Project Management Tool?

There are a ton of project management tools available on the market today, so how do you know which one is right for your team and agency? You can first start by looking at tools and solutions that provide the following features and capabilities:

• Task management
• Resource management and time tracking
• Scheduling and project timelines
• Communication and status updates
• Third-party app integrations
• File sharing and document control
• Reporting and analytics
• Visual workflow capabilities
• Built-in automation capabilities
• Help and support
• Mobile apps

Furthermore, when reviewing and considering possible project management tools, it’s also important to ask yourself and your team the following questions:

• Is this tool simple to adopt and use?
• Is this tool flexible and scalable?
• Can this be customized to our needs, if necessary?
• Does this tool support our workflow needs (i.e. visual workflows)?
• Will this tool help us build processes and an efficient workflow?
• Do we have to pay for the entire platform, even if we never use certain features?

A project management tool might come with top-of-the-line features, but that doesn’t mean it will necessarily benefit your team. For example, you don’t want to invest in a tool if your team only needs 20 percent of the features.

The ultimate goal should be to select a project management tool or solution with features that you and your team will actually use and see value from, and that will help you manage projects better and reach your performance goals.

How to Calculate the ROI of Your Project Management Solution

When considering all the features and functionalities of a particular project management tool or solution, there are other costs to consider in your investment. Training, implementation, installation and development, and maintenance costs are also important to consider.

It’s important to calculate the overall ROI of your project management solution. The Project Management Insitute (PMI) provides several mathematical formulas, but these might be too advanced and complex for smaller agencies that just want to see value from their project management investment.

We have broken down the process of calculating the ROI of your project management solution. ROI essentially includes three primary components:

• Value produced (inflows of money)
• Costs expended (outflows of money)
• Time (timing of inflows and outflows)

When weighing the pros and cons of a project management solution, it’s important to balance the opportunities and risks. To do this, agencies can ask the following questions:

• What is the projected value or return on investment?
• What is the probability that this return can be achieved?
• What are the risks associated with said solution?

As we outlined briefly above, one of the most common challenges agencies face is a lack of processes or broken processes. After doing a little math, it’s also important to consider how a project management tool can help “fix” or bridge the gap and streamline those processes.

Using a project management tool can help build the right processes in your agency—and by “right” we mean reliable, repeatable, predictable, simple, and sustainable processes that help support project and organizational goals and initiatives.

For example, investing in a project management tool with built-in automation capabilities can not only help save your team time and money on performing repetitive, tedious tasks, it can also help boost efficiency and productivity, thus increasing overall ROI.

How Rindle is Different

Using proven project management practices and performance techniques can help projects and operations go smoothly but it would be unrealistic to say that project management initiatives solve every problem that potentially arises. Project management software helps teams understand their role and how each part connects.

Although there are a number of project management tools and solutions out there, Rindle is one project management tool that is different. Rindle is extremely approachable vision for project management; easy to learn, adopt, and implement; and helps actually streamline your workflows and processes. With Rindle, your work becomes a lot easier and a lot less “by-the-book project management”.

Are you looking for a sustainable, easy-to-use tool to help support better project management? Give Rindle a try today.