When we get enquiries from people about our project management software, or whenever we meet people at trade shows, people often ask us – what is so different about IPM?
On the surface, IPM seems like many other project management applications. You can manage RFIs, drawings, meeting minutes, RFQs, subcontracts, change orders, timesheets and more. But the difference with IPM is below the surface. It’s the Microsoft platform that IPM is built on that is so different from any other project management software products out there.
The Microsoft CRM platform is not a project management product. It is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, and was last year placed in the Leaders quadrant of the Gartner Inc. 2011 Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Service Contact Centers. You may be thinking, what could a CRM system possibly offer to help manage projects? Well, when you scratch the surface and get to the roots of project management, managing a project is essentially dynamic relationship management.
Having a Microsoft CRM platform brings so much more to IPM project management than other project management solutions can, and you’d be surprised just how many of the customer relationship management features cross over with project management.
One such feature is Outlook integration, which was one of the major reasons we decided to build project management software on top of CRM. The integration with Outlook means project managers can use IPM from within their Outlook inbox, which is a familiar environment for many project managers.
The Outlook integration also gives IPM access to Microsoft CRM’s email filing system, which enables all incoming and outgoing emails to be automatically filed. Unlike other email tracking facilities available, the emails can be filed under each individual transaction, rather than the whole job.
Finally, Microsoft CRM is one of the most flexible platforms around. Users can customise their own dashboards and workflows to suit how they manage their project information, and organisation forms and field labels can be easily adapted to suit the organisation’s processes. This simplicity also means changes to the software are more cost effective and easily implemented than a full scale customised solution.
If you’d like to see IPM in action, and just how this platform is revolutionising project management software, click on the icon below to request a demo.
