How Does Project Management Help Your Business?
Project management refers to the planning, preparation and execution of a project so as to achieve the desired goals or target in the specified time. It involves the best utilization of human resources, material resources, technology, money and time. In a competitive globalized market, companies can ignore project management only at their peril. For companies to attain growth and stability, project management is indeed vital.
Contrary to popular belief, project management is not only applicable to big manufacturing or multi-locational companies, but it is vital for small and medium businesses as well.
Here are 6 reasons why project management helps your business to grow
1. It Helps Us Understand Project Aims and Objectives
At the outset, project planning helps the team to have a clear idea of what is expected of them and the goals to be achieved by the team. It could be designing a new turbo technology for 2.1-litre diesel or a new power supply for a consumer electronics gadget. Or it could be about making delivery changes for equipment spares in an area.
2. Help Us Prioritize Tasks
Project management helps in prioritizing tasks so that different departments involved are assigned the tasks as per deadline or delivery schedule committed to customers. If the design team has to be devoted to an important project, all their less important activities can be rescheduled to focus on the urgent one. The fabrication and production teams can be kept ready before hand for rolling out the product so that there is no delay in delivery of the product.
3. Helps in keeping Costs Under Control
If costs involved in the project are estimated beforehand, new purchases, recruitments or rentals can be arranged beforehand rather than on an ad-hoc basis which will entail higher costs. If it involves the purchase of new raw materials or tools, then the more time you get, the more you can negotiate with vendors. If the project requires more manpower, the earlier you estimate the requirement and inform the HR department, the easier it will be to get the skilled people on time.
4. Helps Dealing with Unforeseen Emergencies
When working on tight deadlines and schedules, it is easier to overlook emergencies or crises occurring unexpectedly. If power failures are common in the production area, perhaps keeping a DG set ready and factoring in that cost would be beneficial. If a particular equipment is prone to failure, keeping a standby machine or having technicians ready will save the company from making losses due to downtime.
5. Helps in Meeting Deadlines and Customer Satisfaction
Proper project management helps in meeting project deadlines or delivery schedules which are vital for customer satisfaction. It also helps your company meet the service-level-agreements and avoid bad publicity or penalties in this regard on violation of terms.
6. It Helps in Proper Exchange of Information
A project requires the co-ordination of different departments including production, HR, Finance, inventory, legal, administration and also the director board. Proper project management ensures that each stakeholder in the project comes to know the progress and also the role they are expected to do at each stage. It also helps to have proper check and balances in place. For eg. Finance department can monitor if spending is going beyond approved limits or HR can keep a check on employee utilization and so on.
Project management is vital for your enterprise to remain competitive and it helps to execute projects on time and as per requirements of the customer. Without project management, delays, inefficiencies, lower productivity, lower customer satisfaction and consequently lower profits can put your firm into crisis.
