Project Management

At the highest level, a project may be either a capital project or a service project. Capital project costs will usually be collected and eventually become the basis for an asset. With service projects, the project may either be for internal purposes—like an IT project or marketing campaign—or for an external customer. Some projects emphasize cost tracking where others emphasize the schedule.

The level of collaboration on a project is also key. The term "project" usually means working with other people on a common objective, which is really the definition of collaboration. With the Internet, the number of available options for collaboration has exploded, sometimes making it difficult to determine the solution that will best meet a company's need.

Considerations

• Enterprise-wide Solutions

  If projects are your organization's lifeblood and you need a high degree of integration with your accounting system for cost collection and billing you will want to look at business management or Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) suites that include project management functionality with the accounting and supply chain software. One of the primary benefits of using a business management suite is the seamless integration of projects across all applications which can increase efficiency.

• Niche or Industry Solutions

  In some cases, project management software exists for a particular industry, like architecture design projects, professional service projects, software development so it is import to see if options exist for your niche.

• Project Collaboration vs. Project Management Software

  Project management applications have been adding more collaboration functionality but there is still some distinction between applications that focus on project team collaboration vs. traditional project management applications that include more features related to cost and scheduling.

  Below are some additional items to help you determine whether a project collaboration or project management solution will best meet your needs.

  • Multiuser Updates

    Will there be more than one user maintaining project information?

  • Project Schedule

    Not all project management applications will calculate the critical path of a schedule.

  • Cost Integration

    Collect costs by project or activity and integrate with accounting for costs and billing.

  • Document Management

    Track versions of documents and facilitate document sharing.

  If you think collaboration is a better fit, check out our overview of collaboration solutions overview for more options.

Implementation Options