One of the great challenges faced by managers in organizations, of any kind, is to follow the projects, from the idea to its execution and closure. There are several tools on the market that are useful to make this challenge simpler, faster, and more effective. Among them, we will highlight Microsoft Project Online.
Microsoft Project Online can be of great importance to your company, and integrating it with other solutions, such as ERP and Microsoft Teams, can further improve the work management efficiency, of projects and portfolios.
What is Microsoft Project Online?
Microsoft Project Online is an online solution for Project and Portfolio Management (PPM). It has advanced features for planning, selecting, and prioritizing projects, managing corporate resources, as well as allowing managers to plan the execution of a project from start to finish, separating tasks in stages, delegating activities, and improving communication between teams within a company or department.
Using the MS Project Online software, it is possible to carry out detailed project planning, establish calendars, schedule delivery times, and set notifications.
When publishing a project on Project Online, it is possible to automatically distribute tasks to team members, optimizing time and benefiting from a collaborative and integrated work environment.
MS Project Online also allows management to select and prioritize which projects will be executed and have a wide view of data, with the generation of reports and dashboards that provide detailed tracking information for each project and a unified view of the entire portfolio.
How does Microsoft Project Online Work?
One of the most important phases in transforming an idea into a project is the business case, where the manager must create a proposal and carry out the preliminary planning, define tasks, deadlines, and resources. All of this is added into a workflow, which joins several other proposals to be submitted for approval by an executive committee.
This will define which projects will be executed and which will be rejected based on objective criteria such as strategic alignment, availability of resources, and legal obligations. This is the first major contribution of Microsoft Project Online in an organization; it allows the automation and standardization of the process of selecting and prioritizing projects in the portfolio.
With the project approved, it is necessary to detail all the planning. In this phase, new tasks will be added, stipulating all the necessary and important information for that stage.
It is possible, through Microsoft Project Online, to designate resources for the project, determine delivery times, establish costs, specify the importance of each stage, as well as the timeline and its baselines, which will be the references to show the path the project should take.
Team members will be able to access the tasks assigned to them and have various information related to the workflow at hand, such as execution priorities, planned effort, deadlines, complementary materials, expenses, etc.
The use of this tool optimizes working time, avoiding long and often unnecessary meetings, making it easier for project managers and executives to have all the information available and to better use their management efforts to resolve issues that block work progress.
Project Online also offers the possibility of creating reports, graphs, spreadsheets, which allow analysis from different angles, focusing on what really matters. Additionally, it provides a complete and detailed view of the use of resources over time, having a complete map of allocation and availability of each company resource.
Who Uses Microsoft Project Online?
MS Project Online is a solution that fits any project, portfolio, and job management need. However, its great differential is its ability to manage the entire portfolio, allowing executives to have greater control over all projects that are under development.
Companies and professionals from all segments can use MS Project Online, making its use an important tool for controlling productivity and efficiency.
Even freelancers can benefit from this type of management tool, creating a collaborative and organized work environment. Being able, for example, to share with the client information about the progress of the activities of a given project in real-time.
Nowadays, it is no longer necessary to be a Professional Project Manager, or PMP, to manage or be a project team member. Microsoft understood this and created a flexible and robust solution that fits the most diverse needs of work, project, or portfolio management.
Companies have different needs and execute several simultaneous projects, making it necessary to adopt robust solutions that provide governance over the entire portfolio, and that enable integration with business and collaboration solutions. In this sense, Project Online is the right tool for traditional, agile projects, or for portfolio management.
Integration with Microsoft Project Online
The integration of tools is a reality and a necessity, allowing different programs to talk and make life easier for users. Microsoft Teams is a communication tool developed by Microsoft that allows integration with Project Online.
Through Teams, it is possible for communication to be even more efficient, using all the benefits already offered by Project Online and connecting it to one of the most used communication tools in the world, without the need for the user to change the workspace.
Integration enhances collaboration by incorporating chat, video, email, and even integrated phone calls, but integration with MS Teams also allows for mirroring of screens, file sharing, workflow tracking, and many other benefits.
Another important integration is with ERP solutions, particularly SAP, one of the ERP software most used by large companies. Project management software is a tool to support managers in management tasks, so they need to be flexible and easy to use.
ERP systems are integrated solutions for the control of all business resources, it is where all the detailed information on payments, budget, chart of accounts, personnel, materials, and others are. In general, these solutions are more robust and difficult to use.
The integration of Project Online with the ERP allows a view of the physical and financial progress of the projects in a unified way, giving the project manager and executives accurate, automated information to improve the quality of decision making.
How to Deploy Microsoft Project Online?
Implementing a Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) solution requires a little more in-depth knowledge of project management processes with the use of technology. Although its use is quite intuitive, the implementation is not so trivial. Having a Microsoft partner in the implementation of Project Online can be of great help to get the most out of the potential that the tool offers and accelerate obtaining the benefits that it provides.
In addition, a qualified and experienced professional can be of great help in integrating MS Project Online with other tools, such as Microsoft Teams and ERP, for example.
In this way, project management and communication between team collaborators will be increasingly efficient, impacting the results of the implementation process, allowing the team to adopt the tool not gradually, but quickly.
Prosperi is the most awarded partner of Microsoft in Latin America in the implementation of solutions based on Project Online and in the development of Microsoft Teams Apps.
Teams Ideas PROJECTS is an accelerator designed to reduce deployment time and add customized functionality through applications, such as the Kanban Board, which allows you to work in a hybrid way, and Financial, a manager for the financial monitoring of projects.
Are you interested in Microsoft Project Online? Get in touch with us and learn more about how we can help to implement in your company! Learn more about Teams Ideas PROJECTS.