Project management (PM) software might be on its way to becoming an underappreciated technology gem across industries and enterprise environments. Analysts expect that by 2030, the market will exceed US$15.08 billion with a compound average growth rate of 10.68%.
PM software helps organize time and resource management, creates business and employee performance reports, and better connects managers and leaders with strategy effectiveness. These platforms can also facilitate team collaboration.
Not all PM platforms, however, are the same. Coordinate developed its product CoordinateHQ to deliver project management and universal collaboration through a simple client portal experience. The software removes the complexity and inefficiencies inherent in established PM solutions, making it easier for hybrid teams and their clients to work together.
CoordinateHQ does this by eliminating the friction of communicating with a client through a mix of email, spreadsheets, and messaging tools while trying to ensure teams execute and deliver. It also streamlines communication and automates processes for client service organizations to drive alignment and scale. In addition, CoordinateHQ integrates with other software like HubSpot.
The project management market will continue to evolve in 2024 and beyond. It will produce innovations and new products that help companies break through the noise instead of adding to it, according to Rick Morrison, co-founder and CEO of CoordinateHQ.
“It will continue to be noisy. We’re going to see tools arise that help teams work better together, especially across organizations, functional areas, and geographies,” Morrison told TechNewsWorld.
Upstart Innovator on the Move
Morrison started his company to address a need he had personally experienced. Initially, the startup over-indexed on helping companies keep their clients’ goals a key priority. The founders then expanded into project management between clients and their customers.
“The first live customers came in 2021. We have customers that have grown 10 times the size of their team, enabled by CoordinateHQ,” offered Morrison.
In 2023, the company added features to help entire teams. These included automation via templates and workflows, improved UI, forms, time tracking, white label capabilities, e-signatures, and many more, all driven by its customers.
“We started seeing real customer growth by revenue and customer count in 2022. We 4x’d revenue in 2023. In 2024, we’re continuing to partner with our customers to dictate product direction to make their lives easier,” said Morrison.
Peeling Back the Project Management Curtain
We asked Morrison to share his insight into what awaits around the corner and why project management can be an organization’s secret weapon.
TechNewsWorld: Why have some project management solutions failed to gain traction more rapidly?
at Coordinate
Rick Morrison: Many project management tools are very interchangeable. We all have to-do lists that we use personally; coming up with a communal to-do list across team members or organizations is challenging.
One fundamental problem with adding another PM tool to the mix is the chance that workers will not be comfortable using it.
For example, if you adapt to using new processes, then it works. But if you don’t, then it won’t. If you need to adapt to the tool and its processes, it will fail to be adopted, as no one has time for that.
What is driving the growth of the project management market?
Morrison: People are inundated with tools, emails, etc. However, they still have work they need to do. The current generation of tools makes things more difficult by being just one more thing that people need to do. Smarter tooling is becoming available to handle more heavy lifting than previous generations of PM tools. These new tools help streamline an organization’s tech stack and drive growth.
How should organizations evaluate PM software to ensure it helps your business scale?
Morrison: It’s not just about having features. It is about how the software will be used practically. This is especially true considering everybody already uses many tools and project management processes.
The key to ensuring that a new PM tool will help your business scale is that it makes everybody’s life easier. If it adds complexity, it will fail to be adopted.
How can PM software help organizations that increasingly rely on a mix of employees and contractors?
Morrison: This is the key. You want your employees to be able to oversee all of their projects seamlessly. The same is the goal for clients. You want them to understand where they are and what they need to do, but ideally without needing to remember anything.
For contractors, you need their help, but they will be involved at different levels. This goal is different for each contractor. If you just need contractor A to complete a task, then your PM tool should follow up with them in a simple way that is very easy for them to engage.
The software should simplify reminders and automation for them. As they get more involved in projects, then you can start increasing their access to the tools to make them more efficient and bring them in.
PM tools that can handle a global workforce can be very helpful here. Contractors are often located in various countries and time zones.
How can PM solutions solve hybrid working situations in terms of functionality to accommodate a distributed team?
Morrison: When teams work remotely, they need better communication and collaboration. There are no water cooler conversations happening. Tools that help the team work asynchronously are vital with distributed teams.
Is artificial intelligence essential to PM/collaboration software?
Morrison: AI will help make everybody’s lives easier. However, it faces the risk of “garbage in, garbage out.” If you just blindly use AI’s output, it won’t be super useful. It’ll be very powerful for helping project managers be more effective when done right.
How does CoordinateHQ’s PM platform differ from other project management options like HubSpot, Monday.com, Smartsheet, Wrike, and Miro?
Morrison: Ours [CoordinateHQ] is meant for projects that span organizations, teams, and such. It makes everybody’s life easier without forcing them to remember processes, passwords, etc. It seamlessly integrates with everybody’s workflows to help the project get done quicker and easier.
Our software integrates with the existing tech stack versus the other tools mentioned. If you were going to invite your biggest client to collaborate with you on one of the above, you would have to train them on how to use that tool, or at least your processes and expectations. They will need to remember this for it to be useful. Otherwise, it’s more trouble than it’s worth.
For example, if you share Asana with your customers, you are going to spend a lot of time with each client teaching them Asana. Then, they have to remember how you specifically utilize Asana. This results in a lot of time being wasted. Additionally, Asana will be marketing itself to your clients.
Editor’s Note: Asana is a web service and mobile work management platform designed to help teams organize, track, and manage their work.
What are the biggest challenges facing the growth of PM software?
Morrison: There is way too much noise. Something like traditional Asana, Monday, etc., may work well for your team, but the process completely breaks down as soon as you start working with other organizations and clients. If you’re resorting to sending emails or highlighting bits of previous emails to respond to them, then it is not helping you.
As another example, if you cannot go on vacation without a major headache caused by handing over to-dos to your coworkers, or if you go on vacation and are getting interrupted while on the beach to help your team put out fires, there is a better way. This is what we have built CoordinateHQ for.
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