At first glance it may some strange that a virtual assistant (VA) is looking to make use of a project management tool. The term virtual assistant is often misunderstood as only fulfilling an admin role within an organization or only taking the role and responsibilities of a personal assistant, but this is a very shortsighted view of a VA. A VA can fit into almost any role within an organization and fulfill roles and responsibilities associated with marketing, finance, controlling, supply chain management, human resources management, business management, etc. With these roles and responsibilities, VAs face many daily tasks and projects.
Projects and tasks
The difference between a project and a task is that:
- a project has a clear start and end date, the end result of a project is always different, the project is to achieve a specific goal, and may even involve different stakeholders (people involved in a project).
- A task is the same action that is performed over and over again. It has the same end goal in mind. For example the sorting of emails, is the same task on a daily basis to ensure one gets through all email messages and sorts accordingly.
- Should someone decide to migrate their email provider, this will be a project – a mail provider will be selected, paid for, then there will be a process involved i.e. backing up of emails, saving contacts, creating a signature, setting up of the new mail box, official move from old to new and then sending emails from the new account.
A VA will most of the time be faced with various projects that may sometimes overlap, this is where time management will be vital, never mind the actual management of each project, ensuring that each project meets its end goal within the set timeframe. The project tool/software will be significant to each VA, a tool that works for one may not always work for another. It may involve some trial and error to find the one that works for you, and we hope this series will save you some time.
There are a number of project management tools/software available to help VAs manage their project efficiently and effectively. Among these are Asana, Evernote Business, Freedcamp, Favro, TeamGantt, Miro, Smartsheet, Hive, MeisterTask, Freshdesk, CoSchedule, Monday.com and Padio.
In this series of project management tool/software comparisons, this blog will be comparing Evernote Business and Freedcamp.
Evernote Business
The word note is in their name as that is exactly what this tool is for, taking and sharing notes. It allows users to take, edit, upload and share notes and files from any device. This is also done in real time, meaning that all project stakeholders are up to date 24/7.
Evernote’s main focus is on individuals who can store all thoughts, ideas and lists in one space to ensure they do not miss anything. Evernote business takes this to the next step with allowing individuals to collaborate within in the space and be able to share ideas, webpages, tasks to be done, etc.
User-friendly and highly configurable, Evernote gives you access to features such as web clipping tools, multi-device synchronization, search handwriting options, document scanning, and PDF support so that you can supercharge your note taking efforts without hassle. It even has the capacity to save any references you need for notes such as audio files, photos of handwritten notes, or even scanned receipts (www.reviews.financesonline.com/p/evernote).
Evernote Business is more an information hub for a project. This tool will be great to share ideas, ensure every team member is aware of their roles and responsibilities, to be able to communicate will all team members at the same time which will make sharing important and time sensitive information much easier. Besides a team space, individuals can also use this to store their own information for their project, set reminders for tasks and compile to do lists, among many other things. Evernote Business does not allow the actual tracking of a project in terms of budget spend, goal achievement and time. Should you be looking for an information space for your project and project teams – Evernote Business is for you. should you be looking for a tool to actually track project budgets, track outcomes and view closed tasks and tasks still to be completed, and to see when certain tasks need to be completed by to ensure one is on track to meet the end date, then this tool is not for you.
Pricing (www.evernote.com/compare-plans):
Evernote Basic: Free
To take great notes
Evernote Premium: R49.99 per user month
To organise everything
Evernote business: R96 per user per month (min 2 users)
To bring your team together
Freedcamp
If you are looking for a project management tool/software that will allow you to have total control of your project, to track budget, time and tasks, then Freedcamp is for you. you will be able to assign tasks to project members, schedule events via a built-in calendar, setup discussion boards, and time track projects.
Pricing (https://freedcamp.com/pricing) :
Free: $0 per user/month
File size limit: 10mb
Minimalist $1.49 per user/month
File size 25mb
Business $7.49 per user/month
File size 100mb
Enterprise $16.99 per user/month
File size 250mb
All options come with:
- Tasks
- Discussions
- Calendar
- Milestones
- Files and
- Time
Premium features and add-ons
- Wiki
- CRM
- Email-in
- Issue tracker
- Project templates
- Good Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive
- Invoices+
- Reports
Enterprise Benefits:
- Daily data snapshots
- SSA with SAML
- White Label
- Private Cloud
- Support
- 2 factor authorisation
Conclusion
Evernote Business is great on an individual basis or should you need to have quick open lines between you and your client. This will allow you and your client to always be on the same page no matter the time of the day.
Freedcamp is perfect if you are involved in a bigger project that has many different people involved, if you need to keep track of multiple parts of a project, manage the timeframe as well as budget constraints.
