Managing a project without the right tools can be kind of a pain.
Like trying to cook a “Beef Wellington” without kitchen utensils or baking a cake without an oven.
According to the International Project Management Association (IPMA), 71% of teams use digital workspaces to improve the control of projects. If you don’t want to get left in the shade, you better find a platform that meets your needs.
But, with so many tools available, the question is:
How can I choose the right one?
To help you out, we’ve put together this guide. We’ll cover 5 different types of tracking software available, and how to choose the right one.
Let’s cover the basics first.
What is a tracking software?
Quick analogy:
Let’s assume your doctor says you need to lose 20 pounds over the next 60 days so you start a rigorous health plan.
Every day, you wake up early in the morning and run for 60 minutes. After that, you prepare healthy, vegetable-rich meals for the day and go to work.
Now, let’s say you’ve been doing this for 2 weeks straight.
How could you measure progress?
Well, a simple bathroom scale would be enough to see how many pounds you’ve burned so far, assuming you remember your starting weight.
When you’re in charge of a project, a tracking platform becomes your bathroom scale. You use it to compare your progress against your start point, goals, and KPIs (key performance indicators).
In other words, you can’t grow what you can’t measure. And to measure right, project managers use software to keep an eye on different elements like: budget, people, tasks, schedule, and more.
But not all tracking software is designed for the same purpose. Tracking tools tend to fit into 5 categories.
The 5 types of tracking software
1. Time tracking software
Time is one of your most valuable assets, on projects, and in life.
Sadly, roughly 60% of teams don’t complete projects on time.
Why?
Because many of them waste so much time on tasks and activities that don’t contribute to the greater good.
Time tracking platforms solve this problem by telling you exactly where you’re spending your time and how to optimize it. Through data dashboards and graphs, you can manage and view all your projects in one place.
This type of software is especially helpful for employee monitoring, calculating billable hours, invoicing, and managing workflow distribution.
Examples:
- monday.com: An everything app that supports time management and tracking across all work, teams, projects, and departments.
- Tempo: an automated time tracking app that supports greater productivity and easier billing using data-driven insights and in-depth reporting
- Time Doctor: A time management app that helps businesses and individuals reduce time on distractions.
- Clockify: A timesheet app that lets your team track work hours across single or multiple projects.
- Timecamp: A simple productivity tracking platform designed for professionals across all industries.
- Toggl: A time management and productivity app that syncs across all apps and devices.
- BeeBole: A time management solution for companies in need of employee time clocks and project time trackers.
2. Budget tracking software
Like time, money is one of your most valuable resources.
If you don’t manage it right, you’ll end up like the 47% of companies that don’t finish projects within budget.
And no matter how of a “breakthrough” your project is, if you overrun estimated costs, stakeholders won’t be happy.
Budgeting software helps you prevent costly mistakes by taking more control over your expenses and visualize your most crucial metrics through dashboards and charts.
Examples:
- monday.com: A full Work OS that includes budget and expense tracking capabilities.
- Budgyt: A simple platform that helps you plan project budgets without needing stone-age spreadsheets.
- Price&Cost: A powerful project management solution to plan, track, and improve everything related to money.
Note: With our free budget tracking template, you can start planning, organizing, and tracking your team’s budget with ease.
3. Bug tracking software
If you’ve ever fallen in love, then you know how it goes.
The first few months, your partner is perfect, right? Even if you try, you won’t spot a single shortcoming.
But as you spend more and more time with that person, you start noticing flaws.
Well, the same happens with software development. Eventually, you’ll discover a flaw. But in this case, the defects don’t just add to their charm.
That’s why developers rely on systems that help them spot and track errors (called “bugs”) during testing.
The more complex the project, the more bugs they’ll probably need to resolve. So this kind of bug tracker allows them to identify, track, assign, and solve these bugs much faster.
Examples:
- monday.com: An all-in-1 platform that tackles bug tracking (along with a host of other functions).
- Jira Software: A powerful bug tracking system focused on agile-based software teams.
- Backlog: A simple platform to capture, prioritize, and solve bugs with speed.
- BugZilla: A cloud-based error tracking tool developed by Mozilla.
- Mantis: A free and open source bug tracking software.
Note: With our free bug tracking template, you can start tracking software bugs fast.
4. CRM
Next on this list we have CRMs (Customer Relationship Managers).
As the name suggests, a CRM is a platform that helps you manage relationships with clients and prospects. Basically, you can track everything from a client’s previous history with your company to their current status (active lead, lost sale, etc.), and any customer support issues.
This kind of software is perfect to tackle business and sales related projects.
Examples:
- monday.com: A complete Work OS that includes customer relationship management.
- Salesforce: An advanced platform that helps you track customers’ information across your departments (sales, marketing, HR, etc.)
- Zoho CRM: An effective tool to keep on track of your customer communication.
- Keap: An intuitive CRM system suitable for large teams.
Note: With our free CRM template, you can start monitoring your company’s relationships in minutes.
5. Project tracking software
Picture this: You’re a parent of 4 children: a newborn, 2 toddlers, and a 7-year-old son.
And here’s your usual evening schedule:
- Feed your newborn
- Entertain your toddlers so they don’t burn the house
- Help your older son with his homework
- Cook dinner
But here’s the problem: You’ve to do it all at once.
Well, as a project manager, you face a similar challenge.
But instead of kids, you deal with teammates. Instead of toys, homework, and dinners, you deal with tasks, deadlines, and budgets.
Try to do all that with spreadsheets alone and you’ll have a hard time.
Well, project management platforms make your life easier by allowing you to oversee projects from start to finish in a more simple, intuitive way. You can manage tasks, collaborate with team members, allocate resources, and even map timelines all under one roof.
This kind of software is ideal for teams that aren’t just looking for a specific functionality (like time tracking or budgeting), but rather an all-in-1 project management solution.
Examples:
- monday.com: A powerful all-in-1 solution to tackle projects of all sizes in any industry.
- Trello: A Kanban-based tracking system suitable for task management.
- Asana: A simple task management solution to keep an eye on your team’s progress and workload.
- Zoho projects: A cloud-based project management suitable for construction projects.
Note: With our project tracker, you can handle your project from start to finish and save yourself from tons of headaches.
How to choose the right tracking software?
Picking the right tracking tool is like online dating: you need to clearly define what you’re looking for.
Before you pick a specific software, you need to understand the job you’re trying to get done. What are you trying to accomplish? Save time? Reduce costs? Improve a product? Or fully handle a project?
With that in mind, other helpful questions are:
- Does the tool provide you with all the features you need to accomplish your goal?
- Is the software within your estimated budget? Is it cost-effective?
- Is the software simple enough? Does it require training? Will your team really use it?
- Is it capable of organization-wide use?
- Is it able to fully integrate with your data & other apps?
These are not, by no means, the only questions you should consider, but they’ll offer great insights to improve your decision-making.
Why is monday.com different from many platforms out there?
Let’s get clear:
We’re not a “tracking” software per se.
monday.com is an all-in-1 project management solution — trusted by Uber, Costco, Adobe, and more than 100,000 businesses — that helps you plan, organize, and track projects of all sizes in any industry.Of course we provide you with tracking features (you may have noticed our name on every list…), but that’s just peeling the first layer of the onion.
Some of our top features are:
- Time management: Figure out exactly how much time is spent on projects (and how to boost performance).
- Team management: Track who’s working on what, who’s on vacation, and everything related to your team.
- Workload distribution: Make sure work is evenly distributed across your team and no one is under or overloaded.
- Tasks management: Plan, assign, and organize tasks across your team.
- Budgeting: Using our budget tracking template, you can get started in minutes.
- Bug tracking: Track issues and software bugs with ease.
- Data visuals: Schedule your workload and visualize it through beautiful gantt chart views and 8 different data dashboard options.
To get a complete view of all we offer, check out our product overview page.
Conclusion
Whenever you have a project with specific goals, you need something to measure progress.
Parents use wall rulers to measure their children’s growth. Nutritionists use scales to measure lost weight. And project managers use tracking software to compare their progress against goals and KPIs.
monday.com offers all the functionalities you need to not only measure your project’s growth, but to improve every other aspect related to it.
If you’re ready to start off on the right foot, why don’t you check out our project tracking template?
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