An Excel Project Management Alternative

For organizations utilizing Microsoft Excel for project management, TrackerSuite.Net offers a flexible, easily adopted solution with considerable benefits.

While Microsoft Excel offers basic project management functions, which may be used to manage lists of projects, as well as tasks and resources (and in some cases, time reporting), as well as providing report generation capability, it has limitations, particularly when trying to manage a large, complex project.

TrackerSuite.Net, a Web based suite of collaborative applications, provides several modules which organizations can utilize to better manage and track their projects and resources, as well as leverage integrated applications for time reporting, purchasing, invoicing, help desk services and more.

TrackerSuite.Net vs. Microsoft Excel for Project Management

Following is an overview of some of the weaknesses Microsoft Excel presents when used for project management, and how they are resolved by TrackerSuite.Net

Microsoft Excel is limited to core project management functions, including the maintenance of project, tasks and resource lists, and provides only basic budget tracking functions.

TrackerSuite.Net provides a complete project management environment, with workspaces and functions for project requests, document management, risk and issue tracking, status reports, resource availability analysis and assignment. TrackerSuite.Net also provides a comprehensive project budget management toolkit, including functions for baselining, tracking planned vs. actual and forecasting.

Using Microsoft Excel, the project manager must gather updates from the team on their work, and then manually update the spreadsheet with the progress and status of projects, tasks and resources.

Using TrackerSuite.Net, project team members can update the status and progress of their tasks at any time, from any location via the Web, as well as report time using Time Tracker.Net. These updates are immediately posted to the project, and the cost of the time charged by team members is automatically entered into the Actuals column of the project budget.

When the schedule of a project or task, or the assignment of a resource, the manager must make notifications.

Schedule changes and assignments in TrackerSuite.Net generate automated email notifications to concerned parties.

Reports must be built in Excel, and there are no project-specific reports for different stakeholders

TrackerSuite.Net provides an array of project dashboards, as well as Gantt Charts, reports on Earned Value, Project Time Pies and much more. In addition, TrackerSuite.Net users may configure their own personal views and reports.

For More Information

For more information about TrackerSuite.Net and its project management capabilities, please contact Automation Centre today at (520) 882-9287, or email Info@Acentre.com.

Automation Centre is also pleased to offer a free demo of TrackerSuite.Net, which includes its applications for project and personnel management, as well as time and expense reporting, purchasing, payment requests, support services and more. Interested parties may register for immediate access to an evaluation site to make a hands-on evaluation of TrackerSuite.Net for their needs.