This is a guest post by Bryan Christiansen from Limble CMMS – a modern and easy to use mobile maintenance software. Over the years Bryan evolved from a simple software engineer with a spark of entrepreneurial spirit into a confident leader that manages a whole team of people, moving the maintenance industry forward.
When production is expanding, it’s great news for the business. However, this rapid expansion brings many challenges. Properly preparing for each challenge will be important so that production processes run smoothly.
The maintenance department is no exception. As your operation grows, there will always be some difficulties adjusting to the increased maintenance load. This is where maintenance management as a discipline comes in.
Despite its importance for efficient expansion, a HubSpot survey found only 6% of respondents considered their maintenance department well-established.
Maintenance management looks at the steps you can take to prepare and scale your maintenance capacity.
In this Process Street article, we will present to you our 6 top strategies you can implement for efficient maintenance management.
Click on the relevant subheaders below to jump to that section. Alternatively, scroll down to read all we have to say regarding the topic of maintenance management.
With process automation and cloud process documentation solutions, Process Street has allowed LA Creative Technologies to productively, effectively and efficiently manage their remote team, and complex procedures.
We spoke with LA Creative’s Founder and CIO Josh Weiss to find out how they are using Process Street for client onboarding, offboarding and project management. We then opened the floor, accepting questions brought forth by our webinar listeners. Here’s what we found out.
Click on the relevant subheader below to jump to that section. Alternatively, scroll down to find out all Process Street and LA Creative Technologies have to say.
This is a guest post written by Alexis Humphrey. Agency owner turned business coach, Alexis Humphrey is on a mission to help freelancers and agency owners maximize their potential by showing them how they can earn more and work less so they can create a life they love. Connect with her on Linkedin or join her private Facebook group.
Steve Jobs built his empire around one clear principle – simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
In his own words:
“Simple can be harder than complex: you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.” – Steve Jobs, Apple’s Steve Jobs
What does Buffet look for when he invests in a business?
The answer: Something that is simple and reproducible, like Coca Cola, McDonalds or Gillette. These businesses work like machines – the production process is repeatable, and the output is always the same.
In this Process Street article, you will learn how to fine-tune your service-based business into simple and reproducible processes, building a remote agency machine.
This transformation requires consistency and the consistency of processes. With Process Street, this consistency becomes easily attainable. Learn how to set up Process Street processes and establish a solid ground to build your remote agency machine. A remote agency that works on automation, documented processes and requires very little of your time. A remote agency that brings in money, whilst you lay back sipping pina colada’s on a Brazilian beach.
Sound appealing?
Of course it does.
Click on the relevant subheaders below to jump to that section. Alternatively, scroll down to read all we have to say.
1 in 5 adults in the U.S. will experience a mental health issue each year, with 1 in 6.8 people experiencing mental health problems in the workplace on a weekly timescale.
Work anxiety is one such mental health condition which evokes a sizable economic cost from lowered employee wellbeing and sick leave.
In this Process Street article we explain what work anxiety is – and in that sense, anxiety in general. We then provide information on how you can take action on anxiety from a personal level and at a company-wide level.
Click on the relevant subheaders below to jump to that section. Alternatively, scroll down and read all we have to say.
This is a guest post by Kristen McCabe, a global marketer. She has marketing experience extending from Australia to Chicago with expertise in both B2B and B2C industries, specializing in content, SEO, and events. Kristen spends her time outside of work acting, learning nature photography and joining in the #instadog fun with her Pug/JackRussell, Bella.
We have one reason marketers host and sponsor events.
Whether you want to get more leads, increase brand awareness, or meet with current customers to upsell and build customer lifetime value, marketing events ultimately leads to the same destination: increased revenue for a greater Return On Investment (ROI).
Notice here that we say can rather than do track ROI, making these results even more concerning and surprising.
So our question to is this: How will you ensure you’re in the elite group of marketers who:
Can track the success of their event sponsorship?
Regularly track event results, and improve their strategy as needed?
In this Process Street article we will answer these two questions, and walk you through the steps that ensure you aren’t throwing your previous marketing dollars down the drain.
To start at the beginning, we find our selves before the day of the event.
With that, let’s not waste any more time, and get straight to it. Click on the subheaders below to jump to the relevant section. Alternatively, scroll down to read all.
This is a guest post from Stella Lincoln who works as a Business Executive at Academist Help. She is a passionate blogger and owns the blog Educator House. Lincoln has many years of experience in digital marketing and specializes in search engine optimization (SEO).
In this era of globalization and digitization, marketing takes many forms. We at Process Street recommend one marketing strategy: Make sure you strongly focus on email marketing, or more specifically, your email conversion rates.
Why?
Email marketing is a successful strategy. Done correctly it can bring in the highest Return On Investment (ROI) relative to other marketing channels. Email marketing offers a return of 30x your initial investment.
Wow.
But let me emphasize, such a high ROI is only possible if you get your email marketing right.
How do you get your email marketing strategy right?
One aspect is through email Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO).
Through intuition, I am guessing you are ready to optimize your email conversion rates – after all, you came here. Well, reader, you can use this article as your top-tip list for all things CR and email optimization.
In this article, we give you our 12 top ranking tips to optimize your email conversion rates. You can click on the relevant subheaders below to jump to that given section. Alternatively, scroll down and read all we have to say.
82% of companies are still spending billions on remaining paper-based companies, with 1/3 upping their paper usage in recent years.
Why, oh why are businesses still relying on a technology that was invented around 100BC when we have entered an era of artificial intelligence, 3D printing, and digitized documentation?
If you want effective Enterprise Document Management (EDM) strategies, you need to scrap the paper and go paperless.
A bold statement, but a statement that is not unfounded.
Paper is costly – costing an average of ~$8 billion annually in management.
Paper is wasteful – paper usage does not support the global paradigm shift towards vital sustainability efforts.
Paper is difficult to manage – workers spend almost half their time looking for information stored in paper documents.
What you need are digitized methods to store important business information. What you need is an electronic way to manage this.
What you need is a digitized Enterprise Document Management system, and we at Process Street are here to help.
Find out what Enterprise Document Management is, and why Electronic Document Management Systems (EDMS’s) serve as good EDM tools. We present to you our top 5 EDMS tools which you can use alongside Process Street for ultimate document control.
Ready to terminate your paper towers? Click on the relevant subheaders below to jump to that section, alternatively scroll down to read all we at Process Street have to say about digital Enterprise Document Management systems.
This is a guest post by Nandini Sharma, an Assistant Marketing Manager at ProofHub – a leading collaboration software. With years of experience in marketing, she has found some amazing ways to reach a large audience and create a connection.
The term team management isn’t just about allocating tasks to be checked off by your team before the end of the day. Key factors that contribute to the concept of effective team management are teamwork, collaboration, and recognition. Without them, a company’s overall performance is at risk. This is where team management tools come into play.
Unfortunately, no matter how hard a project manager tries or how many expensive tools she/he invests in, something or someone is often left behind. And here in-lies our problem…
…and where there is a business-related problem, there is a Process Street solution.
You see, not all team management tools are meant for you. Without the right approach and the right tool, your chances of keeping each team member productive and satisfied, are next to impossible.
You need to find a tool that works best for you and your team and you need to find it soon.
In this article, we will explain the importance of effective team management. We will then present you with our 14 top team management tools so that you can find the right one for you.
Click on the relevant subheader below to jump to that section. Alternatively, scroll down to find the information you need to evaluate the best team management tool for you.
Team management: What it is and why it is important?
Team management is the coordination of a group of individuals to perform a specific task. Team management is a subset of the broader discipline: project management.
Project management versus team management
Project management explains how the resources of a project are organized and implemented for successful project completion.
With successful project management comes the delivery of expectations: what can be delivered, when this can be delivered, and the cost of delivery. Resources are maximized, the project cost is controlled, change is managed, and teamwork and collaboration are enforced.
Drawing on the latter point – teamwork and collaboration are enforced – it is clear that team management is a management skill vital for project success.
Team management: An essential management skill
Management skills are certain attributes or abilities a manager should possess to be effectual in their duties and to deliver the needed project results.
A team that goes through the motions, will not care for the success of your project or even your company. Effective team management is essential in maintaining a positive company culture, an environment that promotes project completion and to retain employee engagement.
With this in mind, it can be difficult to select the right tool for you. However, with our list of 14 top team management tools, choosing just got a lot easier.
Team management tools: Our top 14 picks
In this article, we present our top 14 team management software picks. We summarize the pros and cons of each tool so that choosing the right tool is easier for you.
Best team management tool for process management: Process Street
With Process Street, you can create recurring checklists, collaborate around them, track their progress, and complete projects as planned.
What the users like:
With Process Street, process and team management become a breeze. Simply:
Document every step of your project.
Transfer your documented process into a Process Street template.
Add features such as task due dates, stop tasks and role assignments to adapt and refine the management of your project and team.
Activate the template once the project commences. Once activated the template is termed as a checklist. You can have more than one checklist running from the same template at a time.
Track the progress of your team members in terms of their assigned tasks.
Receive regular email updates for each project, keeping you in the loop.
Collaborate with project members in one space.
At Process Street, we have a wealth of free template resources stored in our template library.
Approvals, to sign tasks off within your team. Tasks can be assessed by the relevant team member/s. The assigned approver can easily open the checklist. Information from the tasks is then used to either approve or reject, or reject with a comment.
It is with these features that Process Street checklists are deemed to be superpowered, and can superpower the management of your team.
What the users dislike:
Process Street is a great tool, but there’s no mobile app yet.
Pricing:
Process Street Business – $12 .50 per user per month
Process Street Business Pro – $25 per user per month
Best team management tool for scalable remote collaboration: Proofhub
ProofHub is an online project management and team management software that helps businesses organize projects, people and get work done. The software delivers basic and advanced features for refined project or team management under one roof. This includes:
What the users like:
ProofHub is an all-in-one solution. That is, every tool you need to manage a team, deliver a project or run a business is available in one place. Unlike other tools, ProofHub pricing doesn’t support any per-user or per-project terms and conditions.
What the users dislike:
ProofHub offers easy access to:
Best comprehensive all-in-one team management tool: Scoro
Scoro is an end-to-end project and business management solution which lets you control your entire business from one place. Scoro offers almost every feature that you need to fully manage your teams and workflows – including:
Task scheduling
Task tracking
Collaboration
CRM
Advanced reporting
Real-time dashboards
…and more.
What the users like:
Scoro is one of the most agile and flexible tools in the market, and it saves teams a lot of time whilst communicating on tasks.
What the users dislike:
Scoro doesn’t stick with all team types. For example, it doesn’t offer any on-premise solution for enterprises.
Best team management tool for remote communications: Slack
Slack is a cloud-based collaboration tool specifically designed to improve communication across organizations. Slack is a platform for teams to converse and share files (PDFs, images, documents, and spreadsheets) with easy drag and drop.
What the users like:
In addition to chat, Slack provides shortcuts and hacks for effective team collaboration to support enhanced productivity levels.
What the users dislike:
Slack offers limited integrations in the free version, and it lacks video/audio chat options.
Pricing:
Slack Standard – $6.67 per user per month (billed annually) or $8 per user per month (billed monthly)
Slack Plus – $12.50 per user per month (billed annually)
Podio is a team collaboration software that helps keep processes organized and facilitates effective communication. The core purpose of this software is to ease team collaboration and reduce team confusion, improving clarity.
What the users like:
Podio is flexible, customizable, and user-friendly – perfect for growing businesses.
What the users dislike:
Many users have said that Podio is extremely difficult to set up and that they require additional help to do it.
Pricing:
Podio Basic – $9 per month or $ 7.20 per month (billed annually)
Podio Plus – $14 per month or $11.20 per month (billed annually)
Podio Premium – $24 per month or $19.20 per month (billed annually)
Zapier is a web-based service that connects various apps to automate workflows and elevate productivity levels. This powerful technology is designed to automate your business tasks better and help your teams accomplish more with 10x the impact.
What the users like:
Zapier connects all the different apps a team uses. It makes tasks easier for everyone in the team and frees up their time to do other important jobs.
What the users dislike:
Zapier gets expensive when you use too many of its zaps.
Best team management tool for productivity: Clickup
ClickUp is an online work management solution or productivity software. It helps individuals and teams tune tasks and manages workflows in a more collaborative, efficient manner. It’s one tool for all, from task management, collaboration, reporting/project tracking, time tracking to Gantt charts – ClickUp offers all the features you need in one place.
What the users like:
ClickUp offers great discounts on annual subscriptions – you can save 45%. Compare this to tools where savings are limited to 15% – 20%.
What the users dislike:
ClickUp limits storage in a free plan (100 MB) and it does not include integrations with Google Drive and DropBox.
Pricing:
ClickUp Free – $0 per user per month for 1 project
ClickUp Business – $9 per user per month or $5 per user per month (annual billing)
Best team management tool for agile project management: Airtable
Airtable is a collaborative work management solution. The solution allows organizations to manage and organize everything, including projects, tasks, teams, and team communication. The key features of Airtable include:
Calendar
Kanban board
Task management
Collaboration
Reporting
Project tracking
What the users like:
Airtable has pre-built templates for multiple use cases. For instance: content development, HR, digital marketing, and more.
What the users dislike:
The task management and project management features are limited. For example, Airtable has no time tracking option for projects/tasks.
Pricing:
Airtable Plus – $10 per user per month (billed annually)
Airtable Pro – $20 per user per month (billed annually)
Best team management tool for freelancers and SMBs: Paymo
Paymo is a project and team management app for freelancers and SMBs. The app is designed to help teams with everyday work processes, such as project management, task management, resource scheduling, collaboration, time management, and project accounting.
What the users like:
Paymo has a great customer service and support team.
What the users dislike:
Users need to purchase paid plans to access basic task management functionalities like Gantt charts and resource management.
Pricing:
Small Office Plan – $11.95/user/month (or $9.56/user/month if billed annually)
Business Plan – $18.95/user/month (or $15.16/user/month if billed annually)
Best meeting software for high performing teams: Hypercontext
Hypercontext enables managers and their teams to be high-performing by combining quarterly priorities, recurring meetings, and engagement measures, all in one place.
With their collaborative agenda software, teams can close the feedback loop orgwide, hold one another accountable, and eliminate bad meetings. With Hypercontext, teams can:
Build collaborative meeting agendas that hold the team accountable for contributing to conversations and showing up prepared to every meeting
Automatically send meeting notes to participants
Collect real-time employee feedback to improve meeting quality and keep a pulse on employee engagement
Hold your team and self accountable for the things you agree to during meetings with their Next Steps tracker
Access a massive library of resources including 500+ conversation starters, 60+ agenda templates, and 250+ goal examples across every role in tech
…And so much more!
What the users like:
Hypercontext makes it easier for managers and employees to have productive conversations when they meet, especially in the context of 1:1 meetings. It’s also a great accountability partner for teams, ensuring that nothing falls through the cracks week-over-week. Hypercontext customers love that they can have discussions, brainstorming sessions, and prioritization exercises asynchronously.
What the users dislike:
There’s always room for improvement when it comes to some UX quirks that can occur within the app. However, the Hypercontext is the gold standard for frequently releasing feature improvements and UX/bug fixes so any quirks that surface typically go away within a week.
Pricing:
Basic – Free forever with no limits on users
Pro – $7 per user per month
Business – $11 per user per month
Hypercontext also has a small team discount for Pro accounts. Teams of up to 5 users only have to pay $5 per month total.
Best team management tool for simple asynchronous communications: Chanty
Chanty is an AI-powered team chat app designed to simplify and streamline communication between teams, irrespective of their actual geographical location. The application provides features to help teams with everyday work processes like collaboration, messaging, file sharing, workflows, and task management.
What the users like:
Overall, Chanty is one of the most intuitive and easy-to-use team chat apps. The biggest plus point of this tool is that it doesn’t burden teams with unnecessary functionalities – it simply provides features/tools that support work and workplace communication.
What the users dislike:
Chanty users often state that they wish to see more powerful third-party integrations and a few advanced communication features. But their wishes didn’t come true, yet.
Pricing:
Free plan – $0 per user per month for teams with up to 10 members
Business plan – Starts at $3 per user per month (annually billed)
Best team management tool for timekeeping & timesheets: Harvest
Harvest is an online business management tool. Businesses and individuals can use this tool to track time, generate professional looking invoices, communicate with clients, and update time/data on the weekly timesheet with a click of a button.
What the users like:
It’s a money-saving investment. With Harvest, teams can manage time tracking, oversee/update timesheets, create/mail invoices, access many integrations, plus more with a few clicks – and with good pricing.
What the users dislike:
Lack of permission sets often upset Harvest users. The tool can seriously do better in terms of customizable permissions.
Pricing:
Free Plan – $0 for 1 person and 2 projects
Solo Plan – $12 per month for 1 person and unlimited projects (annually billed)
Team Plan – $12 per person per month for 2+ people and unlimited projects (annually billed)
Best team management tool for staff management: Hubstaff
Hubstaff is a time tracking software, but it acts more than that. In addition to tracking time during business hours, Hubstaff allows teams to access advanced capabilities like:
Automatic payroll
Online timesheets
GPS
API
Client invoicing
Advanced reporting
Automatic payroll
…and more.
What the users like:
Hubstaff is great for remote teams. It makes time tracking, progress monitoring, and task management super easy.
What the users dislike:
Hubstaff users have stated that sometimes when they’re watching a video, reading or having a video call, the tool marks them idle. They all wish Hubstaff could measure activity even when still.
Pricing:
Free Plan – $0 for 1 user
Basic Plan – Starts at $7 per user per month
Premium Plan – Starts at $10 per user per month
Enterprise Plan – Starts at $20 per user per month
Best comprehensive all-in-one project management tool: nTask
nTask is an all-in-one project management tool that allows all of the project managers and their project development team members to track and manage the tasks and activities that they have to perform regarding the project development process.
Some of the other features that this amazing application has to offer are as follows:
Task management
Team collaboration
Risk management
Time management
Meeting management
Bug tracking
Issue management
Kanban boarding
Gantt charting
….and much more.
What the users like: nTask became an immediate favourite of its users because of its remote effectiveness. The application has incredible team collaboration and task management features that let the project managers know exactly what their team is doing, so they can call them up for immediate feedback.
What the users dislike:
Most of the users that used the software complained that there should be more templates to get them started.
Superpower your team management processes with Process Street
We have already introduced Process Street as a top business process management tool. Process Street is superpowered checklists, and it is with Process Street checklists that you can superpower your team management processes.
For those of you that are unfamiliar with Process Street and our offerings, check out our Monthly Webinar: An Introduction to Process Street below, for further insight.
Process Street can integrate with many other top project and team management applications. This is a key and rare feature.
This is done through integrations using Zapier (already mentioned above ).
You need to choose a tool that is right for you. But, as often is the case, there could be 1,2,3 or more tools working in collaboration to fit your needs. With Process Street, and our available integrations, you can link your team and project management tools together, creating an all-in-one collaborative management software. Play around with these 14 top tools we have presented to you today, and see what works for you.
Choose the right team management tool for you and your business
It’s no secret that when it comes to managing teams and ensuring teamwork, you, as a project manager, have to work twice as hard than others. You perform and oversee so many different aspects – from tracking the overall project progress to tracking each individual’s time and performance. Moreover, it is also you who has to make teams feel more comfortable and reduce work-related stress.
That means you’ll need help.
We have listed our top team management tools in detail.
Use this list so that you don’t waste time and get all the help you need to make team management trouble-free.
Are you already using team management software? Is it included in our list? If not, then tell us all about it in the comments section below. We would love to hear about your favorite team management tool/s, and how these tools make your job easier.
This is a guest post by Sarabeth Lewis, a freelance SaaS copywriter and UX writer based in Austin, Texas. Lewis regularly writes for AppSumo, a team of amazing folks who run insane lifetime deals on the best software tools in the world… while eating an impressive number of tacos.
Email. What a blessing (and a curse).
If you’re anything like me, you’ve let your inbox get away with far too many shenanigans. You want to take back control and organize your Gmail. But how?
At Process Street we understand that email is ubiquitous for working professionals. Despite its ubiquitous use, many complain email has a central flaw: a tendency to become your to-do list.
Am I wrong?
This usually occurs passively, inadvertently causing you to lose control of your own time.
When your day is commandeered by your inbox, it means that other people are controlling your calendar.
In this article, you will find out how to take back control and organize your Gmail. Click on the links below to jump to the relevant section, or scroll down to keep reading.
70% of all businesses fail within the first 10 years.
Business owners reading this: for every ten of you, 7 will fold.
Despite that morbid start, I begin this Process Street article looking at the operational audit. I will demonstrate how using an operational audit can refine, improve, and evolve your business operations, setting you up for business prosperity. Wouldn’t it be nice to alter the above stat to 100% business success?
A tall order but, as the Westlife song goes, Nothing is impossible – apologies if you are not a Westlife fan. I believe that optimized operational audits play a significant role in driving business success. In this article, I will explain why. You will also find out:
What an operational audit is
The benefits operational audits bring to Business
Operational audit best practices
How you can implement internal operational audits with Process Street. These will be recurring processes within your business
To jump to the relevant section, click on the links below. Alternatively, scroll down and read all to become an expert in the auditing world.
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This is a guest post from Stella Lincoln who works as a Business Executive at 
