7 Reasons to Replace Emails With Management Software
Replace confusion and chaos with order and productivity
Emails have always seemed disarray to me long before other collaboration tools were even famous or for that matter available. Most of the time, all the purposeless emails bury the important ones. Also going back and forth through the email threads for the entire day mars the productivity.
Research says that an employee receives and sends an average of 112 emails a day and another research says that an average employee spends 28% of his work week on reading and reverting emails.
If we look at the statistics, many companies have replaced emails with other management software and increased their productivity manifold.
Some of you might never consider switching to a new kind of collaborative tool because you are doubtful if it will be effective enough or if your team can adapt it easily.
Here is an analysis of the contribution of email vs other management software which acts as collaboration tools.
Let us first look at some features of emails that show that emails are there to stay.
- Email is a well-understood concept.
- Emails incorporate professionalism into communication.
- Emails are a great platform to share messages of a confidential nature and also longer messages.
- One-to-one customer relations are developed using the platform of emails.
- Email is a closed system, it offers more secure conversations.
Let us look at the cons of Emails now.
- A lot of information can get lost if an employee does not provide proper access to his official email before leaving the company.
- Emails are not a good medium for sending information to a greater number of people simultaneously and spontaneously.
- Emails only push out information, they do not provide push and pull interaction.
- Emails can lead to forgetting the important tasks because the email overload distorts the prioritization.
- Email conversations waste a lot of time.
- In the case of global teams, we need faster solutions and interactions, which are not possible through emails.
If we give a careful look into the pros of the email platform mentioned above, we don’t see anything that increases the overall efficiency of the work system. All it seems to offer is bland communication that too without spontaneity and collaboration.
In today’s scenario, where global teams are a commonplace thing, we need something more than emails, a platform to not only facilitate seamless and spontaneous communication but also increase the productivity and efficiency of our work.
Collaboration tools in project management software serve this purpose for many companies these days. Management software facilities team communication as well as communication with clients in a very effortless manner.
Take a free trial of ProofHub to find out how it can make your collaborations easier
Let us probe into the reasons which justify why emails should be replaced by management software.
- Scattered information
In emails, we find information scattered among different inboxes. Different people own bits and pieces of information about a bigger whole in their email boxes. We spend a lot of time copy-pasting the information in our emails and to find what we need.
A management software acts as a central location where you can find all your project-related files, documents, tasks, duties, status reports, conversations in one place. Everyone on the team can have access to the necessary information in a click with just an internet connection.
- Better communication and collaboration
Easy communication and collaboration can speed up the work by bringing clarity in the work process. Emails are not the best solution for organized communication. When a project has multiple stakeholders, going over and again through emails to communicate with the project team can brew a lot of confusion and frustration.
A project management software helps in collaboration such that all the team members can instantly connect to discuss any project related ideas. In the case of a global team, it is not possible to meet your team in a conference room (video conferencing is not that impactful and unifying a solution for global teams). Project management software instantly connects global teammates to carry out important discussions.
Apart from this, team members can connect with another team member to ask a question, clarify something about the project or discuss something one-on-one through the chat section of management software.
- Task allocation made easy
Let us say that you have to assign tasks to ten team members working on two different projects. You will either call a morning meeting every day and waste everyone’s time when you assign the task and give its description to one member. Or you will resort to emailing everyone’s tasks. Then, in case, the members have confusion regarding their task, they will revert you in their respective mails. This is how a thread of email conversations initiates and your day flies by in handling your emails.
With project management software like ProofHub, you can assign tasks to all your teammates without calling any meetings. Every person will be notified about their assigned tasks immediately. You can break one task into smaller subtasks and assign subtask to different members so there is no confusion about who is doing what. Once a teammate has finished his task, he can tick that task and you will be notified immediately.
Look how easy the whole task allocation work becomes with management software.
- Announcements
Every time you need to make an announcement using emails, there is a possibility that you forget to add somebody in the recipient list. Also, the comments on this announcement will be received again initiating a thread of conversations.
While with management software, for example in ProofHub, you get a section dedicated to announcements solely. You can make everybody known about important announcements instantly. People can also add their comments on the announcement. This is a great way of celebrating milestones, wishing birthdays and anniversaries, acknowledging performances and other non-project specific communication which builds great team culture.
Email cannot make everyone feel as connected as the announcement section does because everyone’s responses can be seen in the form of uninterrupted flow.
- Tracking the progress of work is easier
Sending daily emails for the end of the day reports or the status report of the work accomplished are very cumbersome to send as well as consume. This results in sending dozens of doc files and spreadsheets.
Whereas you get inbuilt workflows in project management software which facilitates immediate updation when one stage of a task has been accomplished. There is no need to make separate status reports as clients as well as managers can have access to all the project-related tasks and their progress in a click. You can spot the bottlenecks in your workflow using the Kanban boards and take action to remove loopholes so that you can deliver your projects on time.
ProofHub also provides a separate inbuilt section where you can create custom reports and visualize the overall project and resource progress to plan further. It will give you all the required information in seconds.
So you do not need to write tedious weekly status reports anymore. The good news is that ProofHub provides you default as well as customizable report sections. You can customize your status reports as per the parameter you want to see.
While you have to dig in email threads to compare reports, project management software provides a visual representation and presents a clear picture of missed deadlines, pending tasks, undelivered tasks, etc.
- No more missed messages
We all must have missed an important message because we did not check our mails for a day in our work life. An overflowing email inbox is another reason why we might miss messages. But real-time notifications in project management software saves us from missing important messages or information.
In most cases, notifications are delivered to a built-in inbox. The notifications lead you to the message where you can see the details and respond accordingly. It makes the whole process of conversations fast.
- Get what you want
Emails are such a mess when you want to retrieve the latest version of a file or re-read a task briefing. Also, the files and documents stay trapped in a few email accounts, whereas in project management software, all the files, documents stay in a centralized place. So, when an employee leaves the company, the intellectual property of the company remains safe and the new employee can have access to all this information.
Wrapping up
Replacing the use of emails with project management software can increase the productivity of your project teams with leaps and bounds. It is high time to replace emails with project management software which acts as a tremendous collaborative tool.
Emails are distracting in nature as they stay open in your workstation for the entire day and break concentration from other important work at hand.
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