How to Increase Your Project Manager’s Impact on Agency Profitability

Your project managers are the operational heart of your IT agency. But most agencies are not fully leveraging their PMs’ potential impact on profitability. This article explores the financial levers PMs control, the systems and skills that amplify their impact, and how agency leaders can structure their PM function to drive measurably better business results. 

The Project Manager’s Untapped Influence on Agency Margins

When agency leaders think about profitability, they tend to focus on sales — closing more deals, at better rates, with higher-value clients. Sales matter, but it is only half of the profitability equation. The other half is delivery efficiency, and that is where your project managers live.

A project manager who consistently delivers projects within scope, on schedule, and without margin-destroying surprises is contributing directly to your agency’s bottom line. A project manager who regularly allows scope creep, misses delivery milestones, and consistently requires more hours than estimated is silently eroding your margins on every engagement they touch.

The difference between these two PM profiles is not simply a matter of individual skill. It is also a matter of systems, visibility, and organizational support. When project managers have the right tools, the right data, and the right organizational backing, they can be transformative contributors to agency profitability.

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Why Does Your Business Need Resource Management Software Today?

Today, companies are struggling to balance workloads and are unable to optimize human and material resources. This ensures that projects are delivered on time and within the budget. Without the right resource management software, businesses today are risking burdening their team members with a ton of work yet they miss deadlines while over-budgeting them.

This is where your project resource management software comes into play. It empowers your businesses to streamline operations, allocate resources effectively as well as gain real-time insights to drive efficiency.

Let’s explore the top reasons why businesses should invest in resource project management software today.

1. Optimize Resource Allocation for Maximum Efficiency

One of the biggest challenges to overcome in business operations is ensuring that resources are neither overutilized nor underutilized.

Project resource management software provides a centralized platform to allocate resources effectively.

Benefits of Optimized Resource Allocation:

• Prevent overutilization by evenly distributing workloads
• Ensure that the right resources are assigned to the right tasks
• Reduce bottlenecks and delay the project execution
• Improve project planning and project execution efficiency

You can also leverage various resource management tools where businesses can assign tasks based on employee availability, skill set and project priority which ensure smooth workflows.

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How To Use Orangescrum For Time Tracking

 

In the dynamic landscape of modern business, where time tracking is crucial and efficiency is key, organizations are increasingly turning to innovative tools like time tracking software. Orangescrum, a comprehensive project management tool that offers robust time tracking features designed to streamline operations, optimize resource allocation and enhance overall efficiency.

Orangescrum time tracking capabilities go beyond simple clocking in and out. It provides insightful analytics, facilitates better project planning, and enables precise billing. By leveraging these features, businesses can gain a clearer understanding of where their time and resources are being invested, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions that foster growth and success.

These solutions transcend basic clocking in and out, offering multifaceted benefits that revolutionize operations and drive productivity.

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14 Must Have Features in a Project Management Software

 

In the dynamic landscape of project management, the right software is crucial to transform chaos into streamlined collaboration and success. As a software company committed to delivering cutting-edge solutions for customers, understanding the essential features that elevate project management software is paramount.

In this blog, we embark on a journey to uncover and explore the top must-have features that define a robust project management tool.

Whether you're a seasoned project manager or a tech enthusiast, these features are the keys to unlocking unparalleled efficiency and success in your project endeavors.

Join us as we unveil the elements that make project management software indispensable in the quest for organizational excellence.

What is Project Management Software?

Project management software is a tool designed to assist individuals and teams in planning, organizing, and executing projects efficiently.

It serves as a centralized platform where users can create schedules, allocate resources, track progress, communicate with team members, and manage tasks, all in one place.

This software typically offers features such as task lists, Gantt charts, calendars, file sharing, and collaboration tools to streamline project workflows and enhance productivity.

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Navigating Progress – Orangescrum’s Journey in 2023

 

Orangescrum Project Management Software has helped thousands of team members to become more productive. It has powerful tools to manage project activities seamlessly and collaborate in real-time. Empower your team to achieve more and drive project success effortlessly with Orangescrum.

We are at the end of 2023, which brings us to our yearly updates on the changes and enhancements we have done in Orangescrum project management software.

 But, before we discuss the feature updates in 2023, we have a Christmas present just for you! 

In the spirit of giving, let’s unwrap the present of innovation and progress – We are offering a 25% OFF on all Orangescrum cloud and self-hosted pricing plans.

 

How to Employ Resource Forecasting to Optimize Project Delivery

Streamlining project delivery through resource forecasting is crucial for ensuring that your projects are completed on time and within budget. 

Effective resource forecasting involves predicting the demand for resources, allocating resources efficiently, and continuously monitoring and adjusting the plan as needed. 

Here are steps to help you streamline project delivery through resource forecasting:

 

How Does Resource Utilization Help To Improve Business Performance

Repeatedly companies want to improve resource utilization and productivity without getting the exact current state of play. Your business is booming, but still, you think you can get more from your team. But how? Let’s analyze the performance of your team to drive more productivity through this article.

There is an old-age phrase- “You can’t manage what you can’t measure”. This is true in the case of the utilization of resources for productivity.

For better understanding let’s take an example of a small business that delivers products and services.

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Why Productivity is the Real Badge of Honor

Employees working for long hours and badging themselves as “I am busy” is not uncommon these days. Researchers show that a busy and overworked lifestyle has become an aspirational status symbol instead of productivity.

This leads to some obvious consequences such as improper work-life balance, staying unhealthy and unhappy frequently and finally decreasing your Productivity at the workplace.

Effective and successful businesses understand the importance of workplace productivity.

If your employees are happy, their productivity will increase, and that’s exactly what you need to help your business grow.

To be happy, you need to have proper work-life-balance which becomes easy with but also with proficient task and time management and a little hard work.

How do we strike that perfect balance?

What can we do to become organized and results driven without creating a ruckus?

Let us take a look at some proven tips to be productive at our workplace:-

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Spreadsheets and Project Management - Made for Each Other

We have seen a surge in Project Managers and IT Managers engaging with us for a Project Management Solution. And in our efforts to help them achieve their desired outcomes and ease their challenges we found them to be eager to move from spreadsheet management to true project management.

As soon as people hear – “Project” they run to open spreadsheets on their computers to start taking notes, making a plan, listing tasks and entering date and time information.

But the sad part is, these “source of information” become obsolete in less than an hour once they are live (read shared with the team).

Conventional methods are somewhat suited for rudimentary TO-DO list management or to maintain notes. They have never been able to keep pace with the evolving technology landscape.

They may appear to be cost savers in the short term, but the resulting cost of inefficiency is far greater than the dollars saved.

For every $1billion invested in the U.S.; $122million is wasted due to lacking project performance.

If you’re a Project Manager, read how a project management software can help and use this guide to make a case for investing in a solution that enables

• Single pane of Organizational view
• Data driven and analytical approach
• Quicker & accurate decision making driven by real-time granular data
• Unbridled clarity around business directives and organization goals
• Centralized collaboration among workforce
• Last mile integration of team(s) goals with that of the organization
• Real time monitoring of key deliverables and milestones
• Highly coordinated project planning and execution
• Improved and automated clutter free communication
• Well defined employee performance management and engagement
• Highly motivated and productivity oriented workforce

Why Spreadsheets Don’t Work for the modern Project Managers

Multiple Versions

With a globally dispersed team of multiple members, everyone making edits to documents, it makes project managers spend a lot of time in consolidating updates to keep everyone on the same page.

Having multiple versions of a file shared by various team members make it increasingly difficult to understand what has been done, what needs to be done, and what needs to be done next.

As the project progresses, more data are generated, further contributing to the chaos. Instead of spending time adding value to the organization, project managers feel more like a “Spreadsheet Manager”.

Project management software solutions are almost always cloud-based, which means that team members and project managers can align around “one true source of information”.

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How To On-Board Your Team To Project Management Tool

Investing in a project management tool is the best thing you can do to your business and team. It is not about having a fancy brand or tool onboard but a platform that is in-sync with your desired business outcomes and gets the work done! 

Let’s see how our teams typically start their day and go about doing their business from task to task or one project to another, the challenges they face and how a collaborative project management platform can help us save the day.

What is the latest status of the tasks I assigned to my team? Isn’t it the question you begin your day (almost every day!) with?

How many times have you been clueless because someone forgot to hit “Reply All” on an all important progress update?

It happens! And it happens more frequently than we would expect.

These are just two of the million such things that put us on the spot or out of it while we continue to run and manage our projects the traditional way. Emails, Spreadsheets, Word documents etc.

And the result

• The documents and spreadsheets become obsolete almost the moment they were created.
• Status updates and tasks progress not updated in time. And to update, the teams need to manoeuvre their way through are a cumbersome process.
• Add to the mix, the project or document owner has not granted the right permissions to the team and neither the proper steps or agreed flow for updating these crucial project documents.
• All the action is in the emails. And there is no link between your documents and the emails. Thereby, your project update and progress is shelved in multiple disconnected mailboxes.
• The bigger picture and the vision are almost lost in these uncoordinated actions. 
• There is no place for you and your team to see the entire flow, the progress of the project end to end without having to mine multiple documents and inboxes.

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How to Use Resource Availability in Orangescrum

Running a business efficiently is all about managing resources effectively. And the two such critical resources are – team and time.

Resource planning, allocation, and efficient management involve careful planning, analysis, foresight and ability to account for possible risks in terms of rapidly changing business demands and landscape.

It is of utmost importance to be aware of the available bandwidth of your resources, your pipeline, in-flight projects and what you can take up further. Thus it is necessary you have a dashboard or a tool that can give you this information on a single pane in real time.

You and your team must always have access to critical information about your resources’ utilization, availability, leave and travel plans if any. More so when you have a globally dispersed and ever mobile workforce.

In this article, we’ll show how Orangescrum takes care of all your time and resource management woes with its comprehensive time tracking, resource availability, resource utilization and leave planning features.

Let us understand how they work and help us in real time.

How to use Resource Availability?

On the Resource Availability Calendar, you can see the resources’ or team member’s “Available” and/or “Booked” hours. You can use the quick project and resource dropdowns to focus on your most precious resources and projects.

Create a task, and never forget to define the “Start Date”, “Due Date” and “estimated hours” in it.

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