6 Free or Cheap Project Management Programs To Improve Your Company's Efficiency

Nearly all businesses benefit from the organization that comes with applying the principles of project management. In fact, the tenets of project management give a framework for managers to deliver valuable products and services to users within budget and schedule parameters. While no automated project management tools can replace the contributions of a trained and certified project manager, they help project teams stay on track. Even small businesses with extremely tight budgets can benefit from one of these five powerful project management software tools:

Zoho Projects

Zoho Projects provides a platform for teams to track important project activities, milestones, and deliverables. Zoho Projects is an enterprise project management tool that allows project managers to simultaneously set up, plan, and track multiple projects within a portfolio. The software comes with a collaboration feature that allows project team members to work together through wikis and forums. Zoho Projects also has a mobile application feature that allows managers greater flexibility when working on the go.

Ace Project

Ace Project’s brand of project management software recognizes the need for organization and tracking of geographically dispersed teams by delivering a free, web based project management solution. The free version of the Ace Project management program provides powerful foundational management functionality, and business owners may buy additional capabilities as their business grow.

Wrike

Wrike is also an enterprise project management program that allows for the management of multiple projects at once. The free, basic version of Wrike provides project managers with one of the quickest ways to get their teams organized and ready to collaborate on project activities. The free version of Wrike is designed for use by up to five users and an unlimited number of collaborating stakeholders. It comes with 2Gb of storage along with a host of features for task prioritization and discussion.

Insightly

The Insightly software program is a combination project management and customer relationship management (CRM) tool. Realizing that all projects begin and end with the customer, the designers of Insightly bring in elements of CRM that most project management tools ignore. This part of the tool documents contact with the customer and any associated data for that particular customer. If a relationship with the customer evolves into a viable project, project managers are already ahead of the game because they have valuable information about the new customer in a central location.

Huddle

The Huddle project management software is known for its enhanced online collaboration, file sharing, and innovative intelligent recommendation technology for fine tuned data retrieval. Huddle boasts a simple task management and online collaborative team work space. Its available mobile applications and efficient user interface make it a favorite with project managers.

MRA

Business growth sparks the need for more project management training that managers may get from training organizations like Multiskilled Australia. After managers obtain project management training from third-party organizations, like the engineering project management experts at MRA, they are able to fully tap into the functionality of other project management tools.

With robust project management tools like the ones described above, project managers working for small businesses do not have to rely on disparate tools like spreadsheets and word processing applications to manually track and report project status any more. These free project management programs provide integrated cost, schedule, and performance tracking that is shared among project stakeholders.