Task Management Apps and Teams – Better than Emails and Inboxes

Do you send out flurries of emails about jobs to be done – and hope that somebody somewhere is keeping track of them? Does your own inbox fill up with instructions that you can only sort by date or by sender, but never by priority? In either case, you may have realized that it doesn’t take many tasks – handed out or received – before you need something better than just your webmail to organize your work.

What Task Management Software Does

Task management apps put into a logical, automated format the tasks and priorities you would otherwise have to wrestle with manually. They can assist you with:

• Individual and group achievement of goals (like Natural Insight and Sellsy Teamwork for enterprise revenue generation)


• Task capture on the go (such as Evernote)


• Task phases of planning, execution, tracking and reporting (for instance, Confluence from Atlassian, or ProjectPlace)


• Management of task duration, notification, priority, recurrence, resources and status (Deputy for workforce management is one example).

Matching Task Management Apps and Personality

Task management may sound cut and dried, but personalities can play a big role in how it is handled:

• Task oriented. Schedule and status are priority items, even if you recognize the importance of fostering good working relations with the task assignees. You want to move as many tasks as possible from planned to finished, as soon as possible.


• Relationship oriented. For you, people are the main focus, because that’s how tasks get done. Communication and collaboration are uppermost in your mind, even though you also want to make sure that tasks get done by their individual deadlines.

So pick the task management app that suits your personality and approach.

Email as an Entry Point to Task Management

Email alone may not be powerful enough for task management, but email is known to everyone. It’s not surprising then that some task management software leverages the popularity of email as an interface. Wrike for example is a project management application with a strong focus on task management, and was first developed as an extension from email systems.

Meet the Neighbors!

Task management software may have elements in common or be used with apps for:

• Calendaring . Scheduling of events and appointments, collaborative scheduling, automatic notification of appointments (Sellsy Teamwork offers this in combination with CRM functionality.)


• Collaboration . Communications and social networking tools to enhance collaboration between local or remote teams. Evernote is an example of how informality and efficiency can be blended together.


• Process management (workflow). Allows processes to be defined and automated, automatically routing the output of a previous phase of a process to the next phase (such as Confluence.)


• Project management . Uses task management as a basis for aligning priorities, organizing overall schedules, assigning resources and resolving potential conflicts, for instance in ProjectPlace.


• Time tracking . Tracks time spent on tasks to generate reports and timesheets, and possibly integrate with accountancy or billing applications to generate invoices to customers (Deputy and Natural Insight.)

Steps to Enhancing Your Task Management

Task management can often be improved by focusing on certain key aspects:

• Clear description of the type of work so that both assignees and ‘interested parties’ (stakeholders) can see at a glance what is to be done. Evernote provides a quick, effective tool for this.


• Mapping of tasks onto overall plans. Some tasks that are essential for progress to an overall goal may only be truly meaningful when viewed in that global context. For example, a task to reserve a stand at a trade show, in the context of an overall sales and marketing plan, or product launch plan (using ProjectPlace for example.)


• Prioritization. Using a common system understood by all users, tasks are assigned priorities to help allocate resources and make decisions in case of resource or timing conflicts. When tasks arrive ad hoc, Confluence is one app that can help users to integrate and make sense of them within the existing operational framework.


• Collaboration. Some tasks require the efforts or contributions of more than one person. Task ownership still needs to be clear and unambiguous.


• Monitoring. Up-to-date task status information should be easily and immediately obtainable.


• Compliance. For tasks that require a documented history for compliance (health and safety regulations, for instance), keep full data on what has been done. This also helps to identify any outstanding actions or any changes that should be made in processes linked to the tasks.

Task Management for Handling Distributed Workloads

A specific yet sizable area of application for task management applications is in managing distributed workloads. This may be between the headquarters and branch operations of the same enterprise. Or it might also be between business partners – for example, a central manufacturer and independent retail outlets.

The central entity often needs the assistance of the remote offices or outlets to accomplish different tasks such as offering temporary sales promotions or updating prices on merchandise in stock. The hours of work required can be considerable. Task management with functionality to define task duration and track time spent helps both parties to budget for the time needed. It also helps them to see whether employees are efficient when performing the tasks. Natural Insight offers a number of examples of use specifically for this kind of requirement. Deputy and Sellsy Teamwork also have income generation-oriented functionality built in.

Advantages to the central and branch organizations include:

• Being able to send tasks to employees or roles at specific locations


• Matching tasks with work shifts to monitor the percentage of time spent on tasks


• Track with different levels of granularity down to specific task, assignee and status


• Capture and share data, feedback and if appropriate images on tasks in real time

Whatever the size of your business, it’s likely that you’ll quickly outgrow email alone as a task management system – or perhaps you’ve already bumped up against its limits. In that case, see what SMB task management apps or mid-size enterprise task management apps might suit you. And check out the possibilities of freemium task management apps to explore entry-level services at no cost and decide on an upgrade afterwards.

Task Management Apps and Teams – Better than Emails and Inboxes