We did it! Set up a new project management software that is. It was a long and confusing journey and based on the number of options out there, it will be for you too. I relied on reviews and information from other companies around the world to narrow down my choices and now it’s our turn to contribute.
For us, we wanted to be able to track jobs, tasks and time at a bare minimum. Above that, we were looking for invoicing capabilities, a great calendar, contact management and robust reporting capabilities.
There are lots of programs out there that do the required tasks and some are better than others.
Basecamp is certainly the most well known of the simpler project management pieces and
Teamwork PM is a newer and more powerful version. Of the two, Teamwork PM was by far our favorite and while they are planning on adding capabilities in the future, it just wasn’t enough for us at the moment (their responses to our questions were above and beyond every time for what it’s worth). Both of these options were relatively inexpensive and could be set up with a minimum of effort.
On the very opposite of the spectrum (both in cost and in capability) was
Function Point. This is meant to be a Microsoft Project replacement and is just as complex. It really was amazing program and it seemingly had the ability to do EVERYTHING. For us, it was overkill. We aren’t managing offices all over the world and projects with 200 vendors (yet) so using this program to its maximum would have taken more time than it was worth.
Workamajig is the more well known player in this space and it is equally capable but be prepared to be rejected if you don’t have 10 or more people… they won’t take you.
We needed to meet in the middle and for us, the choice was
Copper Project Management. It’s from an Australian based outfit called element software and it’s used by companies like Apple, with good reason. The interface is clean and pleasant and all of the information can be accessed quickly and easily. Tasks are easy to assign to multiple people and can be monitored easily from the Dashboard. The time tracking and update systems are both time stamped so we can see exactly when projects were updated. Above the base level needs, Copper also has a great contact management system, billing capabilities, a drag and drop calendar and ways to pull reports for custom time intervals. It really puts the budget in perspective and makes it easy to track.
To be fair, we’ve only been using the system for a couple of days now but so far so good! I’ll certainly come back in a few weeks to update our progress in the system but in the meanwhile, don’t hesitate to reach out to me if you are considering copper as well.