You doubtless have a favourite mission administration instrument. It’s the one you’re aware of and does all of the stuff you need. Celeste in gross sales and Ira in IT have favorites, too. All three are completely different, and since they’re all SaaS and use free trials or cheap licenses to draw prospects, everybody can run the one they need.
They’ll till there’s a merger or acquisition or somebody in IT or procurement abruptly notices a bunch of comparable apps deployed throughout the group. Now, everybody goes to be utilizing the identical mission administration instrument. How are you aware if it is going to meet your wants?
So long as it has these 9 options, you may nonetheless handle your tasks and preserve the group linked. We’ve ranked them from most to least widespread so that you just may want a extra subtle software or a higher-priced model of the instrument.
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Activity administration
In relation to mission administration, job administration is the desk stakes. Any mission administration instrument you’re more likely to contemplate can create, assign and prioritize duties associated to varied advertising and marketing initiatives.
They may all mean you can set deadlines and observe the progress towards completion so everybody on the group understands the place their numerous advertising and marketing initiatives stand. An essential side of job administration is its potential to interrupt down giant tasks (assume lengthy, multichannel campaigns, for instance) into smaller, extra manageable duties assigned to varied group members.
Kanban boards
Kanban boards allow you to visualize the workflow of your group’s advertising and marketing tasks. You may transfer the duties which can be half of a bigger mission from stage to stage (e.g., to-do, in progress, full) so you may observe your group’s progress.
What’s typically under-rated about Kanban boards is their potential to determine bottlenecks and perceive what’s inflicting delays shortly.
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Gantt charts
Many mission managers love an excellent Gantt chart. For advertising and marketing groups, Gantt charts will assist you plan and schedule your tasks utilizing a visible timeline. They make figuring out dependencies between your duties and monitoring milestones simpler.
Like a Kanban board, Gantt charts assist you observe your group’s progress and alter timelines as wanted.
Some skilled mission managers choose Gantt charts, whereas others choose Kanban boards. It’s a private desire, and your group may have its favourite. That’s why a mission administration software lets customers select their view is efficacious to many groups.
Dig deeper: MarTech’s buyer’s guide to marketing work management platforms (registration required)
Calendars and timelines
One of many causes mission administration instruments are important for advertising and marketing groups is their potential to maintain everybody on the identical web page. That’s particularly essential with as we speak’s dispersed workforces.
Venture administration instruments with shared calendars will assist your group coordinate schedules, deliverables and deadlines. Like most calendars, mission administration instruments will mean you can set alerts and reminders so everybody is aware of important dates.
One of many causes groups profit from mission administration instruments is their potential to assist individuals work collectively effectively. Actual-time collaboration is nice, however as talked about earlier, many groups have members in several areas and time zones.
Your mission administration instruments must assist real-time and asynchronous collaboration, make it straightforward to share recordsdata, and gather suggestions. The power so as to add feedback and talk about inside the platform will assist overcome the obstacles of a dispersed group.
File sharing and doc administration
Together with collaboration options, groups want a central repository for mission recordsdata and paperwork. In advertising and marketing, this may embrace all the pieces from textual content to pictures to audio and video.
Ideally, this centralized repository may also have entry controls and model management, which make it simpler for groups to collaborate on recordsdata (so long as you bear in mind to set the entry controls correctly).
Reporting and analytics
A lot of the deal with mission administration is on constructing issues — creating campaigns, creating belongings and extra. However as your advertising and marketing is aware of, that’s just the start. Your group and mission administration instrument’s job isn’t over when the marketing campaign launches.
Your mission administration instrument ought to observe the efficiency of your tasks so you may measure ROI and determine optimizations. That’s to not say you may’t use your mission administration instrument to trace spending and allocations throughout the construct section. You may. That’s particularly essential when working with businesses, contractors and freelancers.
Customized workflows
Each group has its personal workflows and processes. They may drive you loopy and really feel like pink tape, however they’re a truth of life. You want a customizable mission administration instrument that may be tailor-made to your wants.
These embrace functionalities like customized templates for recurring duties or tasks. The usage of AI in these instruments means it is possible for you to to avoid wasting time by automating repetitive duties.
Integrations
Once we speak about monitoring marketing campaign outcomes in your mission administration instrument, it would sound like a redundancy you may reside with out. You most likely have that knowledge in your CRM, social media administration instrument, or marketing automation platform.
Nevertheless, once you combine your instruments, that knowledge turns into obtainable on no matter platform you’re engaged on. Syncing knowledge between instruments eliminates the time and errors from manually transferring knowledge from one platform to a different.

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