Today, we would like to tell you which programs are worth using to manage a company or a team. In principle, it is not important in what industry you operate – tools supporting management should be used for organizing congresses, conferences, training courses or other events, as well as conducting construction or internet projects, etc. The principle is the same – the goal is to better organize and increase the work efficiency of all team members.
IT solutions don’t have to be complicated and tailored specifically to the needs of your industry. All you need is to match existing programs with the specificity of your organization or work. For example, at Konfeo we have identified four main business processes:
- product development process (implementation of new solutions and improvement of existing functions, etc.)
- infrastructure maintenance process (server and software updates, monitoring of system performance, security updates, etc.)
- customer service process (commercial activities, technical support, etc.)
- marketing process (PR activities, advertising, sponsorship, SEO, etc.)
Each of the above processes can be divided into smaller ones, but from our perspective these are the most important elements of Konfeo’s business, requiring efficient management. During the development of the company, we tested various solutions and at the current stage of activity we use three tools supporting company management:
- Konfeo Manager – our custom application that processes data from the system. The app shows us business information on a daily, monthly and annual basis. It allows you to review various sales and statistical information
- Trello – used by many organizations in the world, a brilliantly simple online program based on boards and cards. In other words, it is an app enables you to stick “yellow” sticky notes to the virtual board
- Slack – business communicator, allowing direct text and voice communication, file sharing, etc.
We will not describe the functionality of Konfeo Manager due to the fact that it is an internal tool developed for our use only. We will focus instead on the other two programs.
Trello
As we have already mentioned, Trello allows you to create a virtual board where you can place cards with different content. It sounds simple and that’s how it is. Sounds too simple? Don’t be fooled by appearances – Trello enables, among others:
- launching of multiple boards assigned to various teams and/or projects
- creating various lists within the table, to which you can “stick” tasks (cards)
- adding attachments, descriptions, comments in the card and – an extremely useful option – checklists
- assigning tables and tasks to appropriate users
- assigning dates and priorities to specific tasks
Using the options mentioned above, you can successfully manage the whole project, divide it into appropriate processes and track the progress of tasks. The application, in particular, allows the use of Kanban method if it applies to your business.
In the course of Konfeo’s development, we use Trello to manage all business processes in the company using only one board and four lists. The lists are subordinated to tasks related to processes, and one person can be assigned to tasks from different lists/processes.
The tasks are set on the list according to the given priority or deadline. We often use checklists to manage more complex tasks. We use screenshots and other files to visualize tasks. In this way, we follow the progress of work on an ongoing basis, we see planned tasks and make sure that they are carried out.
Our clients often ask us about the different solutions and additional options they need in Konfeo. If the system doesn’t have the proper feature – and its implementation seems to be rational from the system architecture point of view – we usually inform the client that the task is added to our board. By implication, this means that it appeared as another task to be performed on the Trello board.
Slack
Slack is, first of all, a business communicator designed for various types of organizations. Due to its character, it is used primarily by programmers, because it enables integration with other applications necessary for software development. At Konfeo, we use this program for integration with Bitbucket, Rollbar or MailChimp apps. This allows us to easily monitor the performance of the system.
We use Slack only for the textual exchange of information and questions/answers, usually asynchronously. If the exchange results in a task that needs to be done, it goes as an appropriately described card on the board in Trello. We don’t use the messenger to plan tasks or solve more advanced problems. Our Monday and Friday meetings are used to determine the priorities of tasks and long-term strategy.
When managing a team, consider using the Abot plugin that allows users to post anonymous comments or to conduct polls among them and gather honest opinions.
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The effectiveness of your project depends on the tools you use to plan and supervise the execution of tasks.
At Konfeo, we use simple and proven methods to maximize the time spent on tasks. In practice, we implement the “less is more”philosophy – we don’t complicate the operation of the system for its users, nor do we complicate the management of our business. We get the impression that this is the right way.