You’ve reached a breaking point. Maybe a recent project was delayed. Or maybe someone used the wrong logo on a brochure. Something happened where you or your boss decided you need project management software.
Everyone is left wondering, is project management worth it? Does it really save me time or money over my current workflow or hiring someone else to help manage it all?
Why would someone use project management software?
The question really should be, who would find project management software helpful? Everyone from users to managers to directors has their own uses for it across many industries.
- Users: Can drill down to what tasks they are responsible
- Managers: Can identify bottlenecks before they cause problems or plan future projects by using a combination of micro and macro view of projects
- Directors: Can see the progress on all projects at once from one dashboard
Sounds great! Why wouldn’t people use it?
For one, it’s hard to change! We get it. That’s why Workzone offers unlimited training to show that we understand how hard it is to stick with a new tool.
Other reasons? People don’t have an urgent feeling to do it. They haven’t felt that real pain yet. Maybe YOU have felt the pain, but others haven’t. Maybe its about budget and the value associated to it (we tackle the math below!). Other times, there’s no “champion” or “advocate” within the team that really pushes the initiative and everyone rallies behind.
What are the savings of project management software?
There are two ways to look at savings: Money and everything else.
Here’s how to envision everything else:
- Calling a support line and speaking to a pleasant human being ready to help you
- Users get sent a to-do list every day so you don’t have to tell them what to do
- Not seeing “v3, v4, v5” appended to the title of a document
You get the point. Just say, “What if…” and envision a world where you don’t have to do the manual, mundane work.
Now let’s get to the math!
Most project management software follows the same per-user pricing model. There are some variations but for simplicity we’ll use this model. Check out a more in depth pricing review of project management software here.
Annual cost of project management software:
Let’s take an average sized team of 15 users broken into 2 managers with 13 team members. For Workzone, you would pay $5,400/year.
Average Manager salary: $70,000
Average Team member salary: $40,000
Minutes saved per team member per day: 20 (498 hours/year!)
Minutes saved per manager per day: 10 (153 hours/year!)
(10 minutes saved really adds up doesn’t it?
Total Time Saved in Dollars: $16,667
Cost of Workzone: $5,400
Total Savings: $11,267
Check out the calcs and ROI of a project management tool here.
Investing in a project management solution is leaps and bounds a better deal than hiring a new employee to manually manage all your work, attempting to build your own system, or plugging away at the current broken workflows you have.