You may have a business that focuses on project work or you may actually consider your business a project. Either way you need the tools to manage it effectively. There’s an interesting commercial out where individuals satirically talk about how they prefer doing their accounting or payroll to actually doing the things they went into business to do. That theme of doing what you do applies to the use of certain business management tools.

The expense of establishing a department to manage projects may prove exorbitant for your size company or you may only need this management tool for one project. You should consider an application service provider or ASP. These are sometimes called “on-demand software” or “software as a service”.

Online Services and Business Management Tools

These on-line services provide access to particular application programs and use standard protocols such as HTML. They can provide the small business with an affordable system of technical support for collaborating with project managers, tracking project development, scheduling, portfolio, resource, and document management, as well as workflow system reporting and analysis. They make these services available through the internet.

You can pick and choose the business management tools you need. For example you can use an ASP functionally for cost accounting or vertical businesses. You may also need to manage solutions for a diversity of business activities or alternatively, need to manage a business in a localized arena. Keep in mind that these internet services provide a secure environment with built in support for continuity and flexibility.

Business Management Tools Moving Ahead

Many years ago businesses that had outside sales people spread out over a wide territory or with remote construction projects faced managing these operations many times sight unseen. Obviously, they had to rely heavily on the local management for specific control. Over time businesses developed systems that helped with these issues. Some included providing laptops to their field operations people including requiring specific reporting forms and times. Since then, due to market demand, these on-line services have come into use.

Finally, let’s take a look at the downside risks. Those include, in no particular order, the following: you may need to accept a predesigned package; you may turn a critical business function over to an independent contractor and the ASP market demands could change causing an evolution of availability; and, you may have difficulty integrating the ASP systems with your own. Select the right programs for your business management tools.

Since services are moving to an online format using browser based apps, it is a lot easier to get out of being “stuck” with a program that you can’t use. When selecting your management software, make certain that there is a flexible option for payments. It is also ideal to go with a service that offers a trial period with no payment necessary. This gives you the opportunity to try out the software and decide before you buy.