Project Management Made Simple With Salesforce

Salesforce is primarily considered a tool to manage customer relationships. Project management is probably not something that comes to mind when talking about Salesforce. While it is true that Salesforce mainly focuses on customer relationship management, it is capable of doing a lot more. Its suite of features can be used to help out in several areas of project management. And with the addition of AppExchange, it can turn into a complete and robust project management tool.

Project management in Salesforce is possible due to its out-of-box capabilities. While there are plenty of features in Salesforce itself, you can also use it with some third-party solutions to make it even more capable. Let’s take a look at some of its native features that can be used for project management. 

This feature, as the name suggests, is used to assign tasks to various members of your team. You can set reminders on them to make sure that the task gets finished on time. The assigned tasks can be viewed on individual records or in the form of a list. Salesforce tasks are a great way to delegate responsibilities to the team and let them know what needs to be done. And while the tasks don’t support dependencies, it is possible to use a process builder to set up customer workflows.

Good communication is the key to the success of any project. For this, Salesforce has a built-in communication tool called Chatter. This allows the team to directly communicate on chatter groups or Salesforce records. Chatter allows the teams working on the project to stay updated regarding it in the same environment they’re working in. It has several customizable features that make it even more useful.

• Can create and assign tasks directly from the feed.
• External stakeholders can chime in on a project with an external license.
• Feed tracking enables notification when records change.
• Chatter approvals are used to reject or approve a record change from the feed.

Smooth and seamless work between different team members is one of the major responsibilities of a project manager. Salesforce assists in this through its Account Teams features. Account Teams consist of users who have access to account records and related opportunities, contacts, and cases. The account owner gives a specific role to the team member and defines the level of access they have. 

This ensures that all team members stay informed of their responsibilities and that they have enough access to information to get the work done. Account teams can be used with Salesforce opportunities. However, it cannot be used with other objects, which is its main drawback.

Having proper and regular reports are essential to ensure that the project is on track to completion. Salesforce has a powerful report and dashboard builder. It works on a drag and drop principle and is easy to use. This allows the team to organize the data that needs to be seen. Reports and Dashboards can be customized to show relevant information readily related to the project management. Information like timelines, budgets, and overdue tasks can be represented in the form of bars and graphs, making it easy to absorb information. Reports can also be used to keep the project manager and executive up to date regarding the project. This ensures that they make intelligent business decisions regarding the project.

While Salesforce’s native out-of-box features are pretty great, they can be augmented by third-party solutions to increase their capabilities. The best way to do this is through the Salesforce AppExchange. There are thousands of custom-built solutions for Salesforce that truly turn Salesforce into a project management tool. Let’s take a look at some of the common features of the solutions available on the Salesforce AppExchange.

Gantt charts are extremely useful to get the overall view of the project. They make it easy to see the entire scope of the project in a single glance. A Gantt chart includes task timelines and dependencies so that the project manager can make appropriate data-driven decisions. Updating dependency and tasks on a Gantt chart takes no time at all, making it an essential tool. 

This feature allows project managers to keep track of the time spent on tasks. This is important to make sure that the timelines are planned out as they are supposed to be and that the project keeps on its schedule. Time Tracker allows managers to see how different long tasks take and time comparison between different tasks so that adjustments can be made accordingly. 

For a project manager, the ability to see where and how a team’s resources are being used is critical. Most apps on AppExchange give this resource allocation feature that is used to see exactly where the resources are being funneled. This allows you to allocate tasks more efficiently between team members and relocate them as and when necessary.

A crucial feature of any project management app is saving project templates. This allows them to be reused for projects of similar nature in the future. For repetitive projects, having a project template can save a lot of time and cost in the long run. This time can be spent more efficiently on more important things to deliver better results.

Managing a project is no easy thing. It needs excellent organizational skills and proper communication. For this, Salesforce is the perfect solution to facilitate these complex tasks. By managing projects within a single unified environment that also deals with customers, businesses get higher data accuracy and easier communication. Salesforce allows you to follow your project with your other company goals and process any work seamlessly. Better yet, it also works with other project management solutions that you may be using. 

Manras, with its top Salesforce consultant, is one of the best platforms to go for your Salesforce solutions. With years of experience in delivering solutions that match the needs of our customers, our experts know all the ins and outs of your problems. Manras enables you to maximize your investment with the Salesforce solution and our experts who are available around the clock for your needs. Deploy Salesforce for project management and leverage its power in your business.