You Need More Than Project Management to Grow Rapidly

Chirag Ahuja, the Head of Marketing at WorkflowMax, was a recent guest on the TechnologyAdvice Expert Interview Series to share his insight on ways to identify your workflow before implementing project management software. The series, which is hosted by TechnologyAdvice’s Clark Buckner, explores a variety of business and technology landscapes through conversations with industry leaders.

Below are a few highlights from the conversation:

TECHNOLOGYADVICE: What trends are you seeing in project management and how do they impact the unique approach of WorkflowMax?

Chirag: We’re seeing that different software vendors are really good at what they do, but they're not necessarily giving you the overall picture of running a profitable business.

TA: There are aspects of managing projects that are vital to running a small business, but are often excluded from software. What I’m hearing from you, is vendors need to include CRM, lead management modules, and other tools in their project management solutions.

Chirag: When you’re trying to run a new business— whether you’re an architect, engineer, an agency, or any kind of service business—  you need to send out quotes and estimates based on your hourly rates, fixed price billing, and all that sort of important financial stuff. And that doesn't really come under project management. Project management software doesn't really help you out with that.

There are inefficiencies with double entry happening when you have a Word document you're using for sending out information. And then once that information is accepted, you again put that data into project management software, assign people, and do the same stuff. Then at the end of it, if you want to send out invoices and do reporting and do purchase orders, what about the accounting side of things?

So project management is sort of really a very narrow picture of the entire business. It doesn't really talk about all the other very, very important stuff which comes before and after that.

TA: “Your business doesn't grow when you manage projects.” Why is that an important statement to you?

Chirag: As I said, there's a lot of focus around businesses focusing on managing projects. But the problem is when only that occurs, you don't grow a business. You don't become a wealthy business owner or lifestyle business owner by managing projects better. You make it successful when you actually manage projects profitably. And to know if your projects are profitable, that's a very, very basic foundation of any business.

TA: It’s important for businesses to understand their process, understand their workflow, and then adjust accordingly based on the data and what works, so they don't repeat mistakes and errors. How can people find technology that provides an integrated view of their projects and helps their business grow?

Chirag: Project management or workflow management it's more of a terminology; it's a methodology; it's a way of thinking. The way you implement a software, whatever software you use, that depends on your particular business, what kind of needs you have. You're sort of going into the aspect of what does your business do? In talking about solutions, you need to look at what your business requires and then find the solution for it.

Listen to the entire show above in order to hear our full conversation, or download the show to listen later. You can subscribe to the TA Expert Interview Series via Soundcloud, in order to get alerts about new episodes. You can also subscribe to just the project management category. This podcast was created and published by TechnologyAdvice. Interview conducted by Clark Buckner.