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Zoho Projects and Wrike- which is the better project management solution for your requirements? If that is a question that concerns you, then, we invite you to read the following comparison, to arrive at the right answer. 

Zoho Projects

Useful for project managers/team leaders

One of the fundamental aspects of Zoho Projects that endears it to project managers and team leaders is that it helps you thoroughly plan a project from top to bottom. No matter how complex or long-winded a project is, you have more than a fair chance of planning for every sequence using this project management tool. For instance, you could create not only tasks but also subtasks for each task. And of course, you could assign them to the different team members as applicable.

Another endearing aspect of the project management tool is that you could automate recurring tasks so that you would be freed from having to perform redundant tasks. Almost all projects come with a fair share of redundant tasks; so, you know this is one feature that you would love about the project management tool.

Useful for teams

Zoho Project is not just useful for individual team leaders and project managers in task management. It also helps team members communicate effectively with each other. And as anyone who has guided or been a part of a project could tell you, without efficient communication, the progress of a project is bound to be bumpy, to say the least.

With Zoho Projects, you get more than just one channel for communication. You can use activity stream, wiki, feeds, forum and chat for communication. Each of these could be used for distinct purposes. For instance, a chat room is where you hold conversations with relevant team members exclusively on a particular topic. Feeds meanwhile can be used for staying updated about the newest project-related developments that are relevant to you, like any new announcements or proposals. The presence of such features shows that Zoho Projects is more than just a tool that can be used for basic task management.

Staying on the topic of teams and how they function in the context of a project, we should also talk about team productivity- for that’s something which Zoho Projects helps enhance. The project management tool uses multiple tools to this end, including resource utilization charts, timesheets and global timers.  And so that you could be sure that productivity is suitably rewarded, the platform also has invoice software integrated into it which could record both the billable and non-billable hours that someone may have worked.

We would be remiss not to talk about the options for knowledge sharing in Zoho Projects. You could create a page where can be saved documents and other information which may be useful in the course of working on a project.

Team members could then easily access these resources. Needless to say, creating these pages, adding the resources and granting the required permissions for team members can all be done with ease on this project management software.

Robust software infrastructure

The project management tool, while providing highly useful features for task management, also doesn’t suffer from the plight of too much downtime. The online software which is used for automation is robust. This in turn means that you could get more work done using the project management software with the least hiccups. Further, the platform is continually updated so that the features remain easy to use, even as you get to experience the most intuitive and cutting-edge interfaces.

Yet another reason why you may want to check out this project management software is the excellent customer support that you receive. It is an unfortunate yet common reality that when a customer has a query, it goes without getting a response for long or forever. But that is not the case with Zoho Projects. This means, that if you face problems with the system, you have a higher chance of resolving them soon and moving on with your tasks.

Having given you an idea of what makes this project management software compelling, it should also be added that the tasks management tool is not without disadvantages. Perhaps, the most important of these is that it’s not easy to search out a task in the tool. If you are within a project, then you could find tasks that are only attached to that specific project.

Another problem area is bug reporting. Though the project management software has a largely bug-free software infrastructure, one does encounter bugs from time to time. However, the bug tracking and reporting process in the tasks management tool is not up to the mark. For instance, a common complaint among users is that while you are reporting a bug, you may have to upload a screenshot of the problem. Fair enough. Only, when you try to do that, the screenshot doesn’t always get uploaded properly.

The dashboard in Zoho Projects also could have been better. But it is patchy when it comes to letting you add the contact information of a client. Not that you couldn’t do it, but not easily. The same holds with ordering the names of clients alphabetically. This might seem like a small problem to contend with. And that is true, but not if you are trying to find a specific name from a long list.

The project management software also poses a problem in terms of learning how to use it. If you are new to the tasks management tool, then you would have a hard time familiarizing yourself with the different features, let alone mastering them. You do get access to handy tutorials but you would need to spend some extra time perusing them before you could use the tool.

Finally, the project management software doesn’t have a recommendation system by which you could know of more features you could explore for efficiently managing a project. Such a feature would have been useful, especially for agile project management, which usually entails using various tools that support specific purposes.

 Wrike

Unique features

Earlier, we discussed the aspects that make Zoho Projects an effective tool for agile software management and more. But among its drawbacks, we saw, was a dashboard that’s not exactly at the cutting edge. However, in Wrike, the opposite is true. Wrike’s dashboard is not just used it is also unique.

The dashboard is an amalgamation of three different panes, which brings you a clear overview of the whole workflow that constitutes the project. While project charts may be a good way to gain a view of things, this dashboard is even better- thanks to its comprehensive nature as also the intuitive design. The biggest advantage is that you wouldn’t have to move to multiple places on the platform to view details about the project. Compared to conventional project charts, this simplifies project management.  

The first pane in the dashboard is the one you use to access the different projects you may be involved in, as also teams and financials. Needless to say, that sort of comprehensiveness is simply not possible with conventional project charts. The second of the panes helps you create and assign tasks to different team members as per the requirements. You could also set due dates for the tasks that you create, using this pane. The third pane, meanwhile, consolidates all the current tasks and subtasks. In other words, Wrike’s dashboard gives you a holistic view of just about everything related to the project, unlike traditional project charts.

Almost as useful as its dashboard is the real-time analytics which Wrike brings. Be it reports or infographics or charts, what you access gets updated about every fifteen minutes. This ensures that the metrics you view- and possibly present to someone- are never outdated. Among the metrics, you could access are task statuses, approvals, team performance, workload and more. Such frequently updated values are of particular importance in agile project management, given how multiple teams often need to access data for successfully running projects. The feature is equally important when you manage multiple projects at the same time.  

Versatile platform

Yet another way in which Wrike becomes a great choice for agile project management- or for managing any sort of project, for that matter is by its versatility. More precisely, how it can be used to meet the requirements of just about all the departments in an organization. Be it HR, sales, content management or research that your department is involved in, you are bound to find Wrike ideal for your purposes. The tool brings you distinct templates that could be used by different departments. Having an enterprise-wide solution like this, needless to say, could help bring down the cost. After all, you wouldn’t have to invest in multiple platforms for different departments.

Wrike simplifies the job of project managers even more by the inclusion of custom request forms.  You could use the form builder in such a way that many of your tasks can be automated. These tasks could include assigning projects to team members, populating subtasks and more. You could use custom rules that the system will follow so that you wouldn’t have to manually interfere every time. You could surely see why such a time-saving feature could be useful, not just in agile project management.

Talking about automation, Wrike helps you automate the workflow too. The project management system integrates with more than four hundred third-party tools, all of which could be used in managing a workflow. The automation process also affords commendable depth- for instance, you could even automate the approval process if you so wish. Such savvy features seem to proclaim that the age of relying solely on things like traditional project charts for project management is over.

The idea of Wrike being a progressive project management system is further reflected in the many tools which aid collaboration. The old-fashioned way of collaborating entailed using such communication channels as messages, email threads and phone calls. But Wrike ensures you have more efficient tools for communication at your disposal. These tools support dynamic reports, real-time comments, notifications and live editing among others. Also, you can share information pertinent to a shareholder from Wrike itself.

Future-oriented

Any discussion about Wrike’s usefulness as a project management software is incomplete without talking about how robust the system is. The idea of robustness relates to two fundamental aspects of the software- one is how smoothly it runs and the second is how it can accommodate a large number of features without significant updates. Wrike scores high on both these fronts.

As discussed earlier, many are the meaningful actions that you can perform using the tool- from creating tasks to publishing assets to sharing files and tracking time across projects. Wrike functions flawlessly more often than not, allowing you to perform your tasks without having to frequently update to make use of all its features. The expansive features list means that even as you use the basic features, you could learn other-more advanced- features, which in turn could help you manage projects even better.

Should you choose Wrike or Zoho Projects?

A particularly complex project involving a large number of tasks and subtasks stands to benefit from using Zoho Projects. For others, the expansive features of Wrike would be more than enough.

What do Zoho Projects and Wrike lack?

Both the project management systems discussed here are robust when it comes to supporting collaboration among team members and also with helping you track task progress. Those are two key attributes of a good workflow management system. Given that, there is no reason to dismiss these tools.

However, there is one function which almost all project managers worry about more than anything else- accurately defining when they could deliver a project. Both the tools lack a feature to help you do that. And the reason for that is that neither of the tools has a means to accurately measure the time someone spends on a task, without counting break time and the like. Without that metric, you simply cannot predict project delivery time.

This is why the project management software, I’m Productive becomes a significant alternative. Not only does the tool capture time spent on a task accurately, it even employs an AI which lets you predict project delivery time with just a click of a button.

 

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