Many project teams are geographically dispersed. Projects are inherently collaborative efforts. The very nature of projects is such that it is generally understood that there are multi-member teams. Often project teams incorporate multiple organizations. Team members may include not only employees, but also customers, vendors, subcontractors, and other third parties.

Sometimes the entire project team belongs to the same company or organization; however, members often work from different offices, either within a country or globally. Even if the project team is in the same office, in fast-paced business scenarios, information needs to be transmitted as quickly as possible, making centralized project management software essential.

the growing trend of outsourcing work and development offshore continues; project managers need to sync across multiple time zones. So when the west team goes to sleep and the east team goes to work, they can log in to the web-based project management solution to see the progress of their task. Companies that manage this process well stand out compared to their competitors.

In addition, clients are demanding more visibility and transparency about the progress of their projects. Customer-facing project teams that have a collaborative software system to interact with their customers are selling this as a competitive advantage and winning business over their competition.

Many companies manage projects using desktop software applications such as Microsoft Project and Microsoft Excel. The challenge with using desktop software to manage projects is that these apps are not designed for multi-party collaboration. In the worst case, the file is shared via email with all parts of the team. In the best case, the file can be published to a network or extranet and shared from there.

Another problem with using desktop apps is that by the time the information is emailed to the project team, the data becomes stale. That is, the information is not available in real time. Projects are inherently dynamic, efforts that change by the hour and sometimes by the minute.

A 100% web-based project management solution solves these problems by allowing project managers and their team members to access information from any browser in the world, at any time. Project information is collected in a central database and published in real time, ensuring that all team members and executive management can see the latest available information about the task.

A web-based project management software solution has the advantage of storing all projects, resources, and their assignments in one central place. Unfortunately, not all web-based software is created equal. Many low-end solutions and even mid-market project software can’t do resource allocation correctly. Therefore, when you are evaluating systems, be sure to check and see if the solution can perform these functions:

o Display a cross-project resource allocation report or grid with all resources, projects, and tasks in the system.
o Drill down into the report to see the projects and tasks that are causing the overallocation.
o Show all the work and effort of a project team, member or resource assigned to it.
o Post non-working time globally, such as weekends and company holidays.
o Post non-working time for resources, such as vacation time.
o Record the hours of part-time employees or subcontractors.