An orchestra without a conductor is a disaster waiting to happen. Instead of a symphony of beautiful notes and tones filling the hall, you’ll have a mess of misplaced sounds and noises that annoy more than delight. Even with all the right musicians, a symphony won’t work without someone to direct them. However, with the right conductor, a majestic, beautiful, and tranquil sound will emerge from the instruments and collectively create a spectacle that will give the audience members the symphonic experience they paid for.
When it comes to project management, you need the right software in place to streamline marketing projects and ensure that everything goes smoothly. Similar to how a musical number may begin with the woodwinds in an orchestra, your marketing projects begin with the strategy team. Next, the woodwinds will be joined by the brass instruments, or in the case of a marketing project, the creative team. Finally, the percussionists will join in so that all of the instruments are involved. At this point in the marketing project, management will start to get involved so they can ultimately sign off on the project.
So, just as a conductor will signal each section when it’s their turn, a project management software will effectively keep track of the timing for tasks and completion of projects. This allows everyone involved in the process to know when they have a task so they can easily complete it and trigger the approval task from their manager. Project management software that integrates with asset management software is especially critical for the creative teams within an organization. They must have access to all the assets they need in a timely manner. Otherwise, barriers are inevitable.
To help you find the perfect conductor for your creative department, here are seven of the best project management software solutions to make sure your marketing team is as coordinated as the Vienna Philharmonic, rather than a middle school concert band.
Hive is a great project management option for teams who want consistent communication. Their messaging feature remains one of the best and allows users to directly communicate with other team members or employees with ease. This tool can also be integrated with third-party apps like Slack. For creative teams who need to share files, streamline the work with third-party apps like Dropbox, Box, or Google Drive.
Project Insight has one of the features that everyone loves when it comes to their software: the drag and drop. This convenient navigation gives employees the opportunity to allocate tasks in an efficient manner. The software also allows users to post a comment and collaborate on any item, which creates a centralized point for all relevant information. This way, everyone within the organization is on the same page. Project Insight also allows for cross-project resource allocation, placeholder resources, over-allocation alerts, and tools to help visualize workloads (so you don’t work your creative team to death).
Zoho Projects is a comprehensive project management tool that allows for everything from basic task management, social project management, charts and reports, time tracking, and issue tracking and workflow. Creatives will appreciate how thorough the software is, especially when it comes to the social project management. Feeds, pages, chat options, and forums help facilitate tasks, as well as collaborate and find solutions to issues when they arise.
For smaller businesses, Backlog is an excellent option. The tool allows you to keep all your project files in one location, as well as attach them to comments that assigned teammates can access. To separate files between employees, teams, projects, and issues, you can create folders that are specific to each area or business need. For creatives who run across issues with no real sense of direction for solutions, Backlog offers the option to report issues easily. Once a report is sent, a ticket is created automatically and assigned to a team member who is dedicated to handling the type of issue that is reported.
Wrike is a very highly-reviewed project management software. One reason for this is the user-friendly navigation, which allows for quick adoption from employees. In addition, Wrike helps creative teams circumnavigate around admin roadblocks. As any creative knows, slowdowns from the administration side can seriously impede your creative flow. Wrike now has an entire set of features specifically designed for creative departments. The goal of these features is to help streamline the needs of the creative team without waiting forever for the assets or information to work its way down the ladder.
MediaBeacon is a digital asset management (DAM) software with workflows options to manage processes for projects. Business Process Management (BPM) workflows start with a creative brief and kick off review and approval tasks. Because it is integrated with DAM, creatives have access to the images they need, when they need them. They can even access the assets and tasks directly through design software so they don’t have to leave the creative apps they love. Creative managers can annotate and compare versions side by side and then send for revisions or approve the artwork for distribution. DAM with BPM allows your creatives to take campaigns from concept to distribution from a single system.
Esko’s WebCenter is a web-based platform designed to manage the packaging product specification, approval, and project lifecycle. WebCenter capabilities include graphic review and approval, workflow automation, online editing, and the ability to use it on your mobile device. With WebCenter, you can classify and organize your packaging management assets, such as technical keylines, artwork, graphics, logos, images, and other elements. WebCenter is GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) compliant.
