How Microsoft Project Can Help Boost Efficiency

If you want your business to keep up in today’s fast-paced environment, efficient project management isn’t an option—instead, it’s a necessity.

You don’t have time to miss deadlines or constantly rework a particular section of a project. Regardless of whether it’s a large corporation or a small business, project efficiency is often an essential driver to your growth and success.

To help them, many businesses out there are turning to tools to help boost efficiency and Microsoft has plenty, including its project management software. Enhancing productivity with Microsoft Project is relatively easy, especially once you understand how it can benefit your business.

Monitor Progress

Remember the days when emails and phone calls were the primary methods used to track progress? Not only is it time-consuming to draft emails, but team members need to pause their work to craft a response. The same also applies to phone calls and you're still never completely sure if a project’s on track.

Sometimes, you may not realize a deadline has come and gone until everything is too far behind to ever get caught up.

Microsoft Project takes care of this issue. You can glance at the project dashboard to see when milestones are met and track the project’s status in real-time. The software also comes with a host of reporting options that make it easy to locate bottlenecks, gauge project performance, and even record team members’ working hours.

In other words, the software helps ensure everything is moving along smoothly and you can stop worrying about any unpleasant surprises like missed deadlines.

Better Manage Your Resources

If you’re unable to manage your resources, in this instance your team members, your project’s chances of success significantly decrease. Microsoft Project gives you a host of management features. You can assign specific tasks to qualified team members, track when staff is available for a potentially increased workload, and analyze everyone’s progress.

When you can effectively manage your available resources, you’re significantly reducing your chances of over or underusing valuable team members.

Yes, underusing team members can be just as problematic for your company as placing too much on their plates. Underused staff often feel like they’re not valuable team members or you don’t believe in their capabilities. When this happens, employee morale often takes a hit. When team members are overused, burnout is a common problem.

Improve Communication and Collaboration

A great way to throw a project off kilter is when team members aren’t communicating. Collaboration is also vital for the project’s success. When no one is communicating or working together, things can easily fall through the cracks. Someone may presume another team member is taking care of a task when in reality no one is working on it.

Microsoft Project encourages communication and collaboration, and it integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft products like Outlook, Teams, and SharePoint. Team members, managers, and other stakeholders have access to project information making it easier to make real-time decisions.

Better Manage Risks

Risks are a part of any project regardless of its scope and size. To make it easier to manage risks, Microsoft Project comes with features that make it easier to identify and mitigate any issues. Sometimes you can catch issues before they become problems. Other times, the software helps you mitigate any potential hiccups.

You have access to tools that can help you create risk mitigation strategies, create registers that track risks, and even assign probabilities of their occurrence. This way, if something does go wrong you’re in a better position to manage any potential fallout.

Works with Projects of All Sizes

Not every project demands the full attention of all team members. Some are small and only take a couple of staff members to complete while others may include multiple moving parts. Meanwhile, some businesses have more than one project in development. With Microsoft Project, no task is too small or large for the software to handle.

Microsoft Project is easily scalable to meet the needs of almost any project, and this can also extend to other software platforms. If you’re using another project management tool, chances are, it can integrate with Microsoft Project allowing for smooth data transfers. This helps keep your project moving along even if your data is coming from another software provider.

Project Planning with Microsoft Project

When it comes to planning your project, Microsoft Project is hard to beat—this powerful tool lets you create detailed plans, assign tasks, estimate timelines, and set deadlines, providing everything you need to manage a project successfully.

Before starting your next project, consider what Microsoft Project can do for your team. With its comprehensive features and innovative design, it can help improve your planning process and help guarantee your project’s ultimate success.