Can an Outlook Time Tracker Be Good for Your Business?
Time is a treasure that we sometimes may take for granted. As one of the resources that every business has in equal measure, time has always been an integral aspect of productivity and efficiency. When time is properly managed, it can give an immense competitive advantage to any business.
“We do not micromanage teams here.”
“It will just slow everyone down!”
“We already spend our time quite efficiently.”
It is common to hear these phrases when the topic of time keeping pops up in our office conversations. Tracking time is seen as a way to stifle creativity and focus of your team, and considered an added headache.
In reality, keeping track of time enables your business to benefit from a myriad of benefits. Keeping in check how much resources are being used for a project, creating deliverables and timelines and keeping track of how near a project is to completion can help increase a business’s overall productivity.
Businesses and companies that have been tracking time consider it as their lifeblood, from keeping a track on project timelines to making sure employees are not being overworked, there are several aspects of a time tracking solution that can be beneficial for a business entity.
Time Tracking
We have come a far way ahead from the decades’ old timeclocks where you had to punch in your card every morning and evening, a system which was once considered as a way of keeping the accurate record of employees’ working hours.
As businesses grew larger and more research studies were undertaken for developing continuous operational efficiencies and optimizations, time tracking became easier with new applications and software accurately recording and analyzing how economic resources of enterprises were being used.
Nowadays, keeping a track of time allocated to different business activities actually gives business enterprises valuable insights on profitability, project pace, employee needs, while at the same time shedding light on how exactly a business is performing.
Why Outlook Time Tracker Software?
There can be several ways to track time, but a company should make use of the least cumbersome method or technique, so that users (those who are part of the system) do not think of it as a hassle.
In a professional business environment, one of the quickest, easiest and most effective ways to manage time is to utilize good time tracking software integrated with a calendar. A time tracker – integrated with Microsoft Outlook – will prove to be an excellent choice for business managers as it will help them leverage the existing IT infrastructure while offering greater convenience to employees and employers alike.
With the majority of contemporary organizations already using Microsoft products in their offices, the host of benefits a time tracker integrated with Microsoft Outlook and its calendar offer are immense.
Benefits and Optimizations by Using an Outlook Time Tracker
Here are a few benefits that you will notice with an Outlook Time Tracker.
Ease of Use
Keeping a track of time is a bother without a good time tracker plug-in on your Outlook. As software designed for teams, a time keeping program captures tens of thousands of time entries pertaining to payroll, client invoicing, project scheduling and task deliveries with a few simple clicks.
Better Time Management
People in an organizational setting often waste several hours on a weekly basis – close to one full working day! Employing the Outlook time keeping tool will help companies to boost productivity of their teams significantly. By organizing everything in a single place: project start and end times, personnel information, task allocation, location, duration and notes, an Outlook time tracker allows better time management for everyone.
Working on the motto ‘practice more, manage less!’, the time tracker software simplifies and improves employee time management, payroll administration and allocation of organizational resources.
- Payroll, billing and expenses;
- Project planning and reporting;
- Automated employee time-and-task tracking;
- Online time tracking and field service management;
- Agile project collaboration for smooth organizational workflow.
Integrating time-tracking technology in your Outlook will not only help you to replace old and outmoded processes such as manual time cards or attendance sheets, it will also save hundreds of hours spent annually on non-productive tasks and activities. In the current business environment, a strong time-tracking software application enables employers to ensure that everyone works the correct amount of hours.
Better Project Management
It is no hidden secret that time is of utmost importance when you are working on different projects simultaneously. Managing the various resources (financial, physical, human and intellectual) that you put in a project can be difficult if you do not know the status of individual tasks.
When your tracking software is integrated with Outlook, even with multiple people working on several projects, all you need to do is open a standard report, without the need to call up individual employees asking for the status of their work. The transparency and clarity that you will achieve by an Outlook time tracking application will go a long way to enable your team to better plan and prioritize projects, adjust deadlines, or allocate more staff to a certain task if milestones are not met.
Easier Information Sharing
When you add a task to your calendar, you can add information related to any task or activity and ascertain within seconds what you require from an individual employee, what problem a certain client had faced in the past and why an appointment was cancelled.
More and better options are offered with class-leading software applications, so that you can share data and information about costs, billable expenses, working hours, and issues with other systems such as your CRM, ERP, and billing systems. This means that all of your databases are kept up to date with relevant information.
Keeping Employees Happy
The first and foremost benefit of using an Outlook time tracker is that employees are kept happier. When employers are aware of what is going on in a project, they can see who they can assign more work to, and who is being overworked and should be given a break before they burn out.
Another advantage is that employees no longer have to constantly fill timesheets for the work activities they have already performed. Using a tracker that automatically runs in the background saves employees both time and unnecessary paperwork. This allows them to focus on their work, and get it done more efficiently.
Streamlining Quotes and Billing
When you keep accurate records of how long a job takes and what resources are being used, the accuracy of your quotes automatically increase.
When using a time tracking software application, you also have the ability to bill your clients precisely for the work performed on their behalf. The ease of recording time using your calendar, for instance, helps in maintaining an accurate log of the various work activities undertaken and performed. On average, if 10 jobs are successfully completed in a week, a rough estimate of their time will get billing done, but even if every job only takes 10 minutes extra, a business will be losing over 85 billable hours every year.
Focusing on Areas of Improvement
Keeping a record of time spent on different business activities can help you accurately determine where your organization lacks expertise and in what aspects your business is struggling. Tasks that are seen to consistently take longer than planned can be reconsidered, optimized, replaced or completely eliminated from the system.
Rewarding Excellence
Keeping time is also necessary to get a better idea of who among the workforce is consistently putting in more effort and meeting deadlines. When your time keeping software presents formal reports in graphical form, or an overview of time spent, you are better able to make informed decisions.
Now that you are in a position to better review the performance of your team members, you are better able to see which member is putting in extra effort and consistently meeting targets. This way, you are able to identify staff members who deserve to be promoted or appreciated for the hard work they have contributed.
When employees are recognized for the work they have put in and are rewarded for it, their morale improves and the overall productivity and motivation increases, resulting in a relaxed, more productive and less stressful work environment.
Bottom Line
Manual and paper-based systems are time-consuming and frustrating. They tend to drain precious hours from your human resources, especially those who are entrusted with maintaining these tedious payroll and administrative tasks. Switching to an automated time tracking technology offers significant cost savings and productivity advantages for both the business owners as well as their workforce. For all types of organizations from small family-owned businesses to large enterprises, using an Outlook time tracker allows everyone to save time, focus on what really matters and simplify reporting for their teams.
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