You might not think you are a project manager, but project management is a crucial element of your small business. Planning your activities with a strong focus on project management will help you boost your product quality -- because every good project manager should allocate budget, resources and testing methods to get the maximum out of production.

Having a project management mindset will also help you reduce the risk of unwanted or unexpected events. But trying to navigate the maze of available project management tools can be confusing. How do you choose? There are some solutions that stand out from the mass of software offerings. This article introduces you to five online project management software solutions and identifies each of their strongest points.

The Ultimate List of the 5 Best Value Project Management Applications You Should Test

1) AtTask
If you are in need of an online collaboration tool that provides a 360-degree view of all project activities, you might want to get a free trial of AtTask. With this web-based project management software, you can evaluate current projects, set financial objectives and identify the highest possible business value.
Why you should try AtTask: There are four different license types which will help you choose just the right option for your budget.

The ability to change in business today is inevitable reality. End-user adoption is key to a successful CRM initiative. Over the years we have found several helpful hints for promoting CRM as a business culture and actions to achieve better user adoption.

Typically, employees feel uncomfortable with the idea of having to change thier routines and adjust to an unfamiliar application such as CRM. Consider how to minimize the risks to end-users.

Does anyone else remember what life was like as a salesperson before smartphones? I do, and it wasn’t pretty. In 1998, I covered a pretty big territory, including all of England and Scotland. I would regularly drive 400 to 500 miles a day, and after each appointment, I’d be frantically pulling out maps, organizing my notes and trying to make phone calls to keep things moving. Of course, details would inevitably get lost in the shuffle, and there was always this sense of bouncing around and never having complete control over my time. No matter how much I planned in advance, it couldn’t make up for the fact that I was disconnected.

When technologies like the Compaq iPAQ came along, we thought we had it pretty good, but that mobile experience pales in comparison with today’s widespread wireless coverage, ability to access corporate applications and fast download rates.

As you can imagine, we often integrate our customized sales training processes into CRM tools (Customer Relationship Managers).

We often hear a familiar question:

• "How can I get my team to use the CRM?"

As one VP of Sales said to me, "I know it will be successful when my team uses CRM as consistently as they use their paper calendars."

Getting your salespeople to use CRM in their day-to-day routine requires them to make it a habit. Here are a few best-practices we've seen smart companies use to get a kick-start:

IF ONLY IT IMPLEMENTATIONS WERE JUST THIS EASY

In the days of yore, Ron Popeil, infomercial pioneer, made it look easy.
He invented a kitchen gadget to make our lives easier, and the only direction he gave was ‘set it and forget it’. One step to make a “delicious six lb. chicken!” or “not one but two delicious rotisserie chickens!” How much simpler is that than the way our moms and grandmothers cooked chicken?

Watch where you learn your leadership lessons.

What’s with the canonization of Steve Jobs?

Without a doubt, many have been lauding his abusive management style. Efforts are no doubt already underway to create a Steve Jobs School of Management. My understanding is that any day now, Pope Benedict XVI is set to announce that Jobs, may he rest in peace, has demonstrated the requisite three miracles to become a full-fledged saint.

Photograph courtesy of Klearchos Kapoutsis

The last six weeks or so have reinforced just how important it is to be on the front-line when a CRM system is rolled out. We’re in the process of going live on an initial deployment to a few hundred users spread across multiple locations, and sitting through training and go live has been particularly insightful.

There’s a lot that can and should be done to minimise the unexpected when you give live. Effective requirements definition, extensive user involvement, agile development, well written and managed user acceptance testing programmes, and well run pilot deployments, will go a long way to ensure that a design stands up in the real world. Nonetheless, no matter how thorough these activities may be, one thing you can be absolutely sure of is that users will surprise you with previously undiscovered bugs, usability problems, misunderstood processes, missing and incorrect data and various other assorted gremlins and omissions.

I am passionate about fusing innovative business processes with technology. I have to be: that’s the only way the sales warriors of the 21st century can win.

Think about it: Sales has become a very complex activity in the 21st century. More competitors, both local and foreign, are battling for the same deals. Buying centers are enlarging; decision makers and influencers are spread across geographies. Increasingly, your sales teams are pitching an ever-expanding range of products and services to a customer base that is more well-informed than at any time in history.

All this complexity translates into huge volumes of information that your sales representatives need to consume—about products, about customer needs, about the strengths and weaknesses of competitive offerings, and more. There’s information on LinkedIn, in notes on a smartphone, in a CRM system halfway around the world, in half a dozen blogs, and more. Always more.

Assuming you want your sales warriors to have a life outside of work (or, at least, to sleep), how can you empower them to win in this environment?

From my point of view, which is that of a sales executive who started in sales back when we used to rely on this stuff called paper (maybe you’ve heard of it), the answer has two parts: