Remote work is the new norm in the modern business industry, and it has generated a high demand for reliable remote team management software. It is unlike what has happened yet. And why wouldn’t it be? These remote management tools have so much to offer as they claim to foster efficient team collaborations, productivity among remote teams, and streamlined communications.
However, managing a remote workforce requires more than a generic approach. Personalising your business’s remote team management software to suit unique needs is vital to maximising team performance and overall success. Follow the article to get an idea of how you can customise the software.
Assess your team’s unique needs.
The first step is thoroughly analysing and understanding your team’s unique requirements for customising remote team management software. You can consider factors like:
- Team size and structure: What is the total number of remote employees or teams you manage? Are they working at the same workplace or dispersed across varied locations and time zones?
- Desired functionalities: Which critical software features are the most needed for your team – project management, communication channel, time tracking, or a combination?
- Integration needs: Does the remote team management software need to integrate with your current business applications and systems, such as CRM, payroll, or HR?
By figuring out these fundamental aspects of your business and team, you can start prioritising the software attributes and capabilities that will most impact the team’s collaboration, performance, and overall productivity.
Prioritise essential attributes
Once you have a better and more precise understanding of your team’s needs, it is time to move on with the necessary features of the software. Some of the key functionalities to look for include:
Communication and Collaboration
A proper channel and quality communication are essential for remote teams. This ensures that every member has the same understanding about something. Hence, remote team management software must have these essential tools: instant messaging, video conferencing, file sharing, and document collaboration. Taking advantage of these tools will aid the team in working well collaboratively, even if working remotely.
Project management
Misunderstandings and miscalculations often arise when managing remote teams. That is why it is a must for managers or employers to ensure that everyone is on the same page. This requires finding management software with unique attributes like Gantt charts, progress reporting, Kanban boards, and task assignments. These tools or features update everyone about their assigned tasks, deadlines, and overall project status.
Time tracking and productivity monitoring
Monitoring and tracking employees’ activities and performance can be challenging if the workforce is vast. However, with suitable remote team management software that includes features such as activity logging, productivity analyses, time tracking, and attendance monitoring, you can achieve useful insights into your team’s work habits that will help curate a better work-focused schedule.
Security and compliance
Data security and adherence to it should always be one of the top priorities of any organisation. The same is true for remote workforce management. So, your remote team management software must offer robust security features such as access controls, data backup, encryption, and recovery. This is to safeguard sensitive and confidential information vital for cultivating trust and risk minimisation.
Customise and integrate
Once you have figured out the essential attributes of remote team management software for your business, the next step is customisation to make it fit your team’s and business’s unique workflows and systems. This step may require:
Configure use roles and permissions.
The manager or employer is responsible for ensuring that each team member obtains only the required level of accessibility by configuring user roles and permissions. This may involve setting up who can view, read, edit, and manage various software parts.
Integrate with existing systems.
Connect the chosen remote team management software with your existing business tools like accounting software, HR, and CRM to simplify your team’s workflow. A successful and viable integration of the systems will guarantee a smooth data flow that removes the need for manual work.
Automate workflows
Automating repetitive activities like report generation, time tracking, and updating project statuses saves time and effort as the need for manual work decreases. This allows employees to focus their time on more critical work aspects.
Customise reporting and analytics
If you require unique insights from the software’s data, you can customise its reporting and analytics features, such as the generation of specific reports, personalised dashboards, and alerts for urgent and vital updates.
Continuously optimise
Software is not a one-time investment. You have to continuously update and optimise it to fit the organisation’s and employees’ evolving demands. After incorporating remote team management software into your business’s workflow, you must regularly review, collect feedback, assess the software’s performance, and then make adjustments as necessary.
Stay agile and adaptable.
As the business needs change and the remote team grows, the remote team management software and other systems should adapt accordingly. This may require you to find platforms that provide scalable yet flexible solutions, allowing you to add or remove software features, integrations, and users as needed.
Foster user adoption
While continuous updates and optimisation are all good, a thoroughly successful software implementation also depends largely on user adoption at the workplace. For that, you must organise strategies to offer comprehensive training and support to the teams to ensure that everyone understands the software’s usability and capabilities and to leverage them effectively as needed. You must encourage and gather feedback to find any concerns regarding the software that needs to be resolved. All these will result in a high level of user engagement and productivity.
Evaluate the effectiveness
After you are done with all the customisation and implementation of the remote team management software, make sure to evaluate its effectiveness periodically. You can watch out for metrics like:
- Productivity metrics: Apply various productivity metrics to track employees’ performance levels and check for improvements in efficiency and output since then.
- User satisfaction: Conduct anonymous surveys and polls to gauge the team members’ satisfaction with the management software and its customised features.
- Goal achievement: Analyse using various metrics to assess whether the customised software is helping the teams attain their goals.
All in all, customised remote team management software has greater advantages in optimising remote work productivity and collaboration, empowering the remote workforce and driving the business ahead.
