Save Time and Get More Done: How the Right Tools Drive Scalable Operations
Growing small businesses often manage tasks and projects through spreadsheets. At first, it works well for tracking timelines, assigning tasks, and staying organized. But as a business takes on more clients and expands their team, this system becomes limiting and, often, overwhelming. Spreadsheets grow cluttered and disorganized, staying on top of deadlines turns into a daily labor, and tasks begin to slip through the cracks. This is the case for one of the businesses we helped transition from using spreadsheets for task management to using a modern task management tool to create efficiency for their team members and scalability for their business.
The Challenges of Spreadsheet-Based Management
Spreadsheets might seem simple and cost-effective initially, but as this small business experienced, they can quickly become a hindrance. They struggled with several key issues:
Time Consuming Task Management: Each team member spent too much time opening and closing spreadsheets to find out what they needed to do next for each project, which left less time for actual project work and drained productivity.
Lack of Task Visibility: With multiple projects tracked across and buried within separate sheets, tasks would linger longer than necessary and, at times, slipped through the cracks.
No Prioritization: Because there was no practical way to prioritize tasks across multiple spreadsheets, there was no prioritization of tasks and, while the team did their best to mentally manage priorities, tasks often got worked on in whatever order they happened to be seen instead of in order of actual importance.
Enhanced Management Oversight: The new tool provided management with clear visibility into task statuses, making it easy to see which tasks were on track and which were overdue. This oversight allowed leadership to proactively manage team bandwidth, balancing workloads and preventing bottlenecks.
These challenges cost the team time and focus. They knew they needed a streamlined, collaborative system that could grow with their business.
The Solution
With help from In Good Company, the business transitioned to ClickUp, a robust work management tool that solved the issues that spreadsheets had caused. Here’s how ClickUp made a difference:
Clear Task Overview: With a customized dashboard, each team member had at their fingertips a clear view into their most important tasks (determined by due date and priority settings) across all the active projects.
Integrated Communication: ClickUp enabled real-time, task-specific communication, reducing email clutter and ensuring that all relevant information stayed with the work itself.
Automated Updates: ClickUp’s automation features saved time by eliminating manual effort for recurring tasks (e.g. for automated client communications that needed to be sent after certain tasks were completed).
Concise Management Overview: ClickUp offered management a streamlined view of all projects, highlighting which tasks were blocked or overdue. This clarity enabled leaders to quickly identify challenges and determine the best ways to support their team, ensuring projects stayed on track.
How In Good Company Can Help Your Business Transition
The right task management tool gave this business the clarity and efficiency they needed to focus on growth, freeing them from the limitations of spreadsheets. If your business faces similar challenges with managing tasks, projects, and communication, In Good Company can help. We specialize in guiding small and mid-sized businesses through the transitions that will help your business achieve its mission.
Empower your team to work smarter with the right tools—reach out to In Good Company today to see how we can help you achieve a more organized, efficient, and scalable future.
