Key Factors to Consider as Your Business Grows
Choosing the right project management tool is essential for ensuring efficiency, organisation, and control throughout the lifecycle of your projects. Many start with Excel because it’s accessible and flexible, but as the business grows, it might be worth reconsidering whether Excel is still sufficient or if it’s time to upgrade to a dedicated project management system.
In this article, we’ll explore the key factors to consider when assessing whether Excel still meets your needs, and when it might be time to switch to a more advanced tool.
Who is Excel best suited for?
Excel is a powerful tool that can be sufficient in certain situations. It's particularly suitable for smaller, short-term projects with few participants and simple structures. If you're a small business or a team just starting out, Excel can be a cost-effective solution. You can easily customise the setup to suit your needs without requiring extensive training or technical expertise.
Milestone: For small businesses with simple projects and limited growth in the near future, Excel can be a good starting point.
Project size: How complex are your projects?
If your business is handling a small number of projects with a limited number of tasks, Excel might meet your needs. It allows for simple overviews and task management through formatting and sub-rows. However, as projects grow in size and complexity, Excel can become unwieldy. The need for more structured follow-up, capacity planning, and automation becomes increasingly urgent.
Dedicated project management tools have built-in features that make it easier to track resource usage and timelines—something Excel isn’t designed for.
Milestone: As your projects grow and require more detailed capacity planning, it may be time to consider a project management tool.
Scalability: Is your team growing?
Excel works well for small teams, typically up to five people. But as your team grows, the challenges become more apparent. Multiple users working in the same spreadsheet can lead to confusion, errors and version conflicts. Not all information should be accessible to all users, and it can be difficult to keep this under control in Excel.
Project management tools (such as Milient) are designed to scale with your business. They provide features like dashboards, notifications, and task allocation, making it easier to collaborate across teams.
Milestone: If your team is growing beyond five people, a more robust system may be necessary to ensure efficient collaboration.
Learn from the experience of others
The Danish architects at Holscher Nordberg previously used Excel to manage their projects, but as the company grew, the need for a more efficient project management tool became apparent.
Read about their experience
Image source: Holscher Nordberg's Facebook page
Administrative time: How much time do you want to spend on manual work?
Initially, it’s often manageable to put in extra hours in the evenings to gather data and compile reports in Excel. However, as your workload increases, this becomes time-consuming and inefficient. Excel requires manual updates and administration, which can take time away from more value-adding tasks.
A dedicated project management tool can automate many of these manual processes, such as generating reports, tracking milestones, and collecting timesheets.
Milestone: When you find yourself spending more time on administrative tasks, automation through a project management tool could be the solution.
Dependency: What happens when the Excel guru leaves the company?
Many businesses have an Excel expert responsible for setting up and maintaining spreadsheets. This works well in the early stages, but over time, these spreadsheets can become so complex that only one or two people fully understand them. If these key personnel leave the company, you may face challenges maintaining or further developing the complex systems.
A project management tool reduces this dependency by standardising setups, making them easier for everyone in the company to understand and manage. Plus, you have access to a dedicated support team from your project system provider who knows the software inside out.
Milestone: If your company is reliant on one person to manage complex spreadsheets, it’s time to consider switching to a more user-friendly system.
Collaboration and communication: Is it easy to keep everyone up to date?
Collaborating in Excel can be challenging, even with the online version. Dedicated project management tools offer better functionality, with features like automatic reminders, task assignments, notifications, and comments.
These features ensure that the entire team has visibility into the project’s progress, minimising the risk of misunderstandings or missing information.
Milestone: When your projects require collaboration between multiple team members, it’s time to invest in a dedicated project management tool.
Data security and privacy: Is your data secure?
When data privacy is crucial, Excel can be problematic. With multiple users accessing the same file, controlling data access becomes difficult, increasing the risk of errors or misuse.
Project management tools offer encryption and access control, making it easier to comply with data protection regulations like GDPR. Many clients also expect documentation of data security, which can be difficult to meet with Excel alone.
Milestone: When data privacy and security become critical for your business, it’s time to consider a more secure system.
Conclusion: When is it time to switch?
The choice between Excel and a dedicated project management tool depends on several factors, including project size, team growth, and the need for collaboration and security. While Excel can be a good solution for small businesses and simple projects, a project management tool will provide a scalable, secure, and efficient solution that grows with your business.
