Time management software has several purposes. Depending on who you talk to, different points may be more important to different businesses.
Business needs may dictate any of the following as primary functions:
- Managing tasks and time for a project
- Managing overall staff time and tasks
- Managing personal time – unrelated to others
Although there were many home-grown applications for this in the past – virtually everyone uses package software at this point. For large organizations that use SAP, Peoplesoft, or Oracle business solutions for their other business functions, each of these packages has its own built in time management systems. Because these enterprise applications have this functionality as a sidelight, not as a primary function, they are typically cumbersome and non-intuitive.
There are a multitude of software packages that specialize in time management functions for small business and medium business needs. In fact, these are often the best solution for larger businesses as well.
These time management packages range from something as simple as the personal scheduler in MS Outlook to MS Project to other packages from time management specialists.
Major time management providers that should be considered by any business selecting a time management package include:
- MS Project and Outlook
- Franklin Covey
- Solution Corp
- Chaos Software
- Cyber-Matrix
- OzGrid
- and lots more
In selecting the time management solution for your business, consider the following:
- Need: project based jobs, remote working conditions, office vs. team, reporting needs, etc.
- Other software packages: If you use MS products for other things, it might make sense to use them for time management tasks as well. Interfacing between applications is generally stronger than in multi-provider solutions.
- Training: Especially with a small business, getting everyone up to speed quickly on a new software package is critical (lean towards vendors with large installed bases – they have responded to more customer requests.
- System resources: Not usually an issue, but sometimes small business environments are on over-taxed hardware already.