Does your job require regular sharing of files, documents, and other communications with clients and other team members? Are you in need of a tool that can assist you in managing your projects and improving your productivity? If you do, then this article is just for you!

There are statistics which validate that the biggest project management challenge facing most businesses (62%) is capturing time/costs against projects. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, which reviewed 10,640 projects from 200 companies in 30 countries and across various industries, only 2.5% of the companies successfully completed all of their projects. The bad news is, out of them, 39% of projects fail due to lack of planning, resources, and activities.    

So, what is the best remedy for this problem?

According to the Project Management Institute (PMI), 80% of high performing businesses understand the value of project management. Project management is the art of managing multiple projects. Additionally, according to Management Study Guide:, Project management encompasses recognizing requirements, putting across clear and achievable goals, maintaining a proper balance between the competing demands from different stakeholders and finally ensuring that the ultimate business purpose is achieved.

Top Project Management Tools to Accelerate Your Business Goals

Now that you have understood the importance of project management in your organization, let’s look at the top project management tools that can help accelerate your business goals.

1. Asana

The amazing thing about Asana is that it integrates elements of project management, file storage and collaboration. Thus, it assists in managing projects across the team without the need for email. It is a meaningful project management tool that has immense potential. 

It consists of everything that a project manager wishes in a tool, like task lists, shared team calendars, Kanban boards, Gantt charts and team communication. And the amazing part is, all this is very easy to learn and understand.

In case if the developers at Asana decide to integrate other critical features like project reports and budgets, it can become the best project management tools ever available in the market. Until then, this tool is recommended for internal teams that do not need any financial management or comprehensive reporting.

Salient Features

• Divide your work into tasks and then assign them to your team members
• Sort your tasks into projects for roadmaps and timelines
• Review milestones and then adjudge your team’s progress
• Get regular notifications about project updates
• Use project dashboards to get a quick overview

What makes it Special? 

It is a very user-friendly tool with a simplistic layout. If you have a small team with not too complex projects, get it today.

2. Trello

Trello is one of the popular project management tools that visualizes project tasks with the aid of a cardboard-like dashboard. You can use this project management tool for managing short-term daily tasks. It is commonly used by agile software development teams and other departments like marketing, sales, support and HR.

With its help, a project manager can easily define projects, their requirements and the workflow to ensure that the project gets completed in a planned sequential manner. It comes in the form of a free subscription along with a professional package comprising strict privacy and administrative settings for large corporations. 

Salient Features

• Simplistic task management on cardboard
• Gives you the luxury of creating unlimited task lists
• Effortless sharing of files and images
• Organize your lists by date or priority
• Enables commenting for smooth collaboration

What makes it Special?

Trello has earned its name from startups to Fortune 500 companies. It provides one of the effective ways for teams to collaborate on any project.

3. GanttPro

GanttPro is one of the intuitive tools that you will ever get for project planning. Managers can quickly learn this tool which gives them the chance to start working on a new project and collaborate instantly. It is a holistic project management tool that divides projects into tasks and subtasks to ensure precise estimates and effective resource management.

This highly-flexible and agile tool is a huge success with most global organizations and is one of the most efficient ways to keep your projects on the right track.

Salient Features

• Plan views
• Task management
• Collaboration
• Import & export
• Team & resources management
• Time management
• Templates
• Budget tracking
• Custom settings
• Other

What makes it Special?

GanttPro is much more than a tool to provide a Gantt chart for planning.  You can use it for any of your project needs like team collaboration through comments, attachments & mentions, resource management & resource workload, time logging, auto-scheduling, etc. All of this accompanied by the drag & drop simplicity and a visually appealing interface. 

4. Wrike

Wrike is an online project management and work collaboration platform that allows teams to deliver their project with great speed and efficiency. It gives you access to view the status of all your teams’ projects with real-time reports. You can manage your projects easily using Kanyan boards, Gantt charts, time tracking, team communication and file sharing. The amazing thing about Wrike is, it is very easy to understand.

Salient Features

• Organized file management
• Seamless communication
• Collaborative editing
• Easy time tracking
• Reporting using real-time data
• Visual timelines
• Resource management
• Efficient task management
• Native mobile apps
• Customizable workflows

What makes it Special?

Wrike provides a visual timeline planning  which can come in handy to view the project schedule and to set task dependencies to keep your team informed about the different moving parts of a project.

5. Monday.com

Monday.com consists of all the concepts that you have already seen in other project management tools. However, it does it one step better than them. The good news is, it does not take long to learn this tool. It consists of a wide array of features and multiple types of task tracking styles. All this makes it perfect for almost all kinds of projects and teams. 

Salient Features

• Easy access to activity logging
• Tracking of due date
• Regular updates on email
• Integration with PipeDrive
• Carries out regular updates;
• Keeps a track of project completion time
• Ensures user access control

What makes it Special?

Monday.com utilizes the concepts already present in other project management tools in a much better way. It consists of a simple learning curve and a wide array of features which makes it a perfect option for all types of projects and teams.

6. Podio

Podio is a highly customizable and flexible online hub for work and team communication. It is perfect for those managers who have some experience with the software but are looking for lots of functionality on a limited budget.

Salient Features

• Performs task assignment, file attachment and provides discussion details within the solution
• Ability to share encrypted & large files in a hassle-free manner
• Automates the project budget tracking, sales pipelines, etc.
• Consists of visual dashboards to get comprehensive overview of the company
• Provides workflow automation

What makes it Special?

The workflows feature in Podio allows project managers to conditional logic to Podio apps. 

7. Paymo

Paymo is your perfect project management tool that consists of work reporting, project management and time billing all comprised in a single software.

 Salient Features

• Track the time devoted to tasks and projects
• Keeps the work reports complete
• Consists of a dashboard to check the team’s performance
• Prompts you to bill customers for completed tasks
• Consists of an integrated project accounting feature

What makes it Special?

When you opt for Paymo Plus, it is possible to automate your time tracking completely. Simply download the desktop app and keep a track of your PC usage. At the end of each day, it even categories all your time entries.

8. Coschedule

CoSchedule is an ingenious project management tool that allows you to manage your content marketing activities effortlessly. Not only does it have a free Headline Analyzer feature through which it scores headlines based on different parameters and helps you craft one that is eye-catching but it also is an editorial calendar software that assists in organizing your tasks, writing projects, social media scheduling, content creation, etc.

Co schedule makes it possible to manage and publish all your blog content and social promotion from a single place. 

Salient Features

• Free headline analyzer
• Editorial calendar
• View your entire schedule at a single glance
• Simple drag and drop calendar functionality
• Integrations with popular tools like WordPress, Chrome, Google Analytics and all social platforms
• Best Scheduling feature
• Integrated discussion threads & browser notifications

What makes it Special?

If there was ever a tool that could help you with content management then it has got to be Coschedule. It provides custom workflows for the entire team so that they stay accountable.

9. Evernote

Evernote helps you ensure that all your project needs are in a single place. Whether it is taking notes, making lists, reading content online and looking at something that you have written before. All these things can be done easily with the help of this project management tool. 

Salient Features

• Keep your notes handy
• Bring your team together
• A save button for the web
• Find text in any note
• Make better notes, faster
• Go paperless with Evernote
• Find information anywhere
• Connect your favorite apps

What makes it Special?

With the help of Evernote, you can save, sync and share it all to your team very conveniently.

10. Teamweek

Teamweek is an effective time-based project management tool that allows your team to schedule their upcoming meetings and tasks in the shared calendar. 

Salient Features

• Extremely easy project management
• Gantt-chart interface
• Drag-and drop task management
• Schedule work on an hourly basis
• Check on your team member’s availability

What makes it Special?

Teamweek perfectly fits into the role of a sidekick in comparison to other comprehensive project management tools. It makes time-scheduling an effortless job. In case you are looking for a cool time planning tool, it’s perfect for you!

11. Teamwork

The amazing thing about Teamwork is that it has so many powerful features yet it is so simple to use, in fact their motto is “Powerful when you need it to be”. It is feature rich but boasts an intuitive user interface and is a great choice for those looking for an all in one project management solution that will continue to have all bases covered as their business continues to grow.

It is trusted by over 20,000 businesses and 6,000 agencies worldwide.  In fact we believe it is perfect for agencies. Features such as time tracking, individual workload management and client permissions management are ideal for agency requirements.

Salient Features

• Manage multiple complex projects with ease
• Scales into a platform with everything you need to run your company
• Time Tracking
• Workload Management
• Client Permissions Management
• Team Chat
• Gantt Charts
• Software Integrations
• Fantastic customer support

What makes it Special? 

Easy to use but powerful when you need it to be. If you need a tool that is scalable, easy to use but powerful enough to do everything you need to do now and in the future, choose Teamwork.

Conclusion

Before making the call of selecting the right project management tool for your business, ensure that you have addressed the budgetary concerns along with the needs and demands of different projects run in your organization.

This will require careful scrutinization of your options. Remember, irrespective of whether your project is big or small, a project management tool can come in handy especially in respect to enhancing all forms of communication for your team.

Also, do comment below and let’s know your favorite project management tools from the ones we have mentioned in this write-up.