Time Management - Taimer

The ultimate checklist for every project manager and business owner

Time ManagementStrategies & Techniques To Stay on Time & Budget6

Taimer e-guide 2019 | [email protected] | w w w.taimer.com

»Time Management + What is time management? + Tips for ef fective time management

»Know your goals to measure your progress + How to set goals + How to manage your projects

»Plan your resources efficiently + 5 questions to ask yourself during the planning process

Table of Contents

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Time Management || [email protected] || www.taimer.com

»Track the time spent on all tasks and projects + Top 6 reasons why you need to start tracking your time

+ How to easily track your time

»Assess dependencies, risks and deliverables periodically

+ What are the common risks in project management

+ How a resource management sof tware can help in risk management

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»Evaluate the post project impact and learnings + Things to review at the end of the projec t c ycle

»Automate complex and time consuming tasks

+ How does automated invoicing help save time

+ Tips for identif ying best AP automation sof tware

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“Time isn’t the main thing. It’s the only thing.”Miles Davis

Thanks to technology, a big chunk of this problem can be easily resolved. There are multiple platforms and apps that can help you manage your time efficiently. Read further to find out how you can use technology to your advantage to tackle this big challenge.

What is time management?

We all have 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week, and 365 days in a year, however as Charles Richards rightly said: “One man gets only a week’s value out of a year while another man gets a full year’s value out of a week.”

Time management is defined as the process of planning and organizing tasks, to effectively manage schedule, resulting in increased efficiency and productivity. It is one of the most powerful skills one can possess.

In this day and age, with the amount of distraction around and multitasking to be done, what do you think is the one thing that everyone struggles with?

It’s managing your time and resources efficiently.

The average person gets one interruption every eight minutes, or approximately seven an hour, which adds up to 50-60 per day.

The average interruption takes five minutes, totaling about four hours, or 50% of the average workday. Nearly 80% of the interruptions are rated as “little value” or “no value”, resulting in approximately 3 hours of wasted time per day.

Did you know?

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T I P S

F O REFFECTIVE

T I M E MANAGEMENT

Know

Know what your goals are.Stay on top of everything you need to execute.

01.

Plan

Plan your resources efficiently. Knowing where and how your resources arespending their time will help you delegate better.

02.

Assess

Assess dependencies, risks and deliverables periodically. Re-evaluate and fix issues as and when you come across them.

03.

Track

Track the time spent on your core tasks and projects. This will show you how you spend your time daily.

04.

Automate

Automate complex and time-consuming tasks.Use this time to spend on the more important tasks.

05.

Evaluate

Evaluate post project impact and learnings.

06.

In the next few sections, you will learn how to know, plan, assess, track, automate and evaluate effectively using some powerful time tracking and resource management tools.

Research says using these tools can save up to 30 minutes per day per employee. Imagine the annual save for even 10 employees!

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1. Know your goals to measure your progress

“Goals transform a random walk into a chase.” Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Every project must have well-defined goals. Goals help you to focus better and give you a benchmark to compare against as you proceed. It helps you organize your resources and time effectively.

So, how does goal setting work? Here are a few key things you must keep in mind before you set goals for any project.

Specific: In the above example, the project name is mentioned. The KPI, which is a percentage increase in the profit margin, and the means to achieve this, are all specified.

Measurable: Both the 11% increase in profit margin and resource utilization, are measurable.

Attainable: There are sufficient resources and tools that can help achieve this.

Relevant: Increasing resource utilization will impact the profits attained.

Time-bound: Needs to be achieved by end of the financial year.

Whether you are a one-man company or a large enterprise, goal setting is important for your business growth. Well defined goals provide clarity, gives direction, and builds accountability leading to a higher success rate.

One way of knowing how to define a goal is by setting S.M.A.R.T goals. For example: ‘I want to increase sales to earn more revenue’ is a vague goal. A more specific goal would be, ‘By the end of this fiscal year, I want to increase the profit margin for xyz project by 11%, by maximising resource utilization.’

Goals let you accomplish your tasks faster

How to set goals

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How can Taimer help you manage your

projects?

Using a project management tool to reach your

goals

An ideal project management tool should let you:

+ Define the projects at hand, sub-projects, and/or tasks under these projects.

+ Measure progress of your tasks.

+ Assign resources to each task.

+ Prioritize tasks.

+ Specify the skills needed to attain the tasks.

+ View the project related costs and invoices.

+ Remind you of deadlines.

Taimer’s project management tool can help you to organize and manage

your projects with ease. With Taimer you can:

+ Create a quote for the project being sold, specifying the quantity,

selling price and quoted amount.

+ Describe the project details and the type of work.

+ Allocate pricing for different job types to invoice hours separately.

+ View allocated or unallocated hours for each skill type,

check resource availability and utilization in real time.

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Once you have defined your goals, the next step is to plan how to achieve these goals. As a project manager who is leading projects, the importance of planning cannot be overstated. Planning is one of the most important time management techniques. So what are some effective planning techniques that can help you achieve your goals on time and budget?

Goal setting basically defines What´ you want to achieve and ´Why´ you want it.

Planning, on the other hand, emphasizes on ´How´ to achieve that.

2. Plan your resources efficiently

According to a survey of 2,000 office workers conducted by management software developer AtTask, out of 8.7 hours that an average American spends at work daily, less than half of their time (45 percent) is used performing the primary duties of their job, approximately 14 percent is spent managing emails, the other 40 percent was spent on meetings, administrative tasks, and interruptions.

Did you know?

“A goal without a plan,is just a wish.”

Larry Elder

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1. What are the tasks that need to be done to achieve this goal?

Breaking down the goal into a well-defined action plan using tasks that can help achieve your goal is the first step in the planning process. In our example, what actions should you take to increase the project margin by 11%?

These actions may include:

+ Identifying the factors affecting the profitability of the project such as resource utilization rate at the moment.+ Identifying the budget, resources, and skills needed to accomplish the tasks.+ Prioritizing the tasks.+ Resource scheduling based on priority, skills, and availability.+ Monitoring the project’s progress.+ Collaborating with stakeholders.

2. What resources do you need to perform these tasks?

A resource can be people with a specific skill set or the tools and equipment needed to get the tasks done.

Example: We may need people with sales, marketing, or engineering skills. Also, we may need tools like reporting tools to analyze data, CRM tools for customer relationship management, and project management tools to resource and log hours.

3. How much time does it take to accomplish each of the tasks?

It’s very important to budget hours on task-level with a start and end date to each task. Research has shown that assigning deadline on tasks has a positive impact on them being done on time.

4. What resources are needed for each of the tasks?

Depending on the urgency and complexity of the tasks, and the available budget, decide on the resources that need to work on each of the tasks.

5. What are the challenges anticipated and how to address them?

Some hurdles that you may come across could be well anticipated at the beginning itself. This will help you be prepared when you actually come across a similar challenge.

Example: What if one of the tasks extends over a given deadline? Knowing how each task is progressing and how much time goes into a particular task, can help you delegate better. If you notice a particular task probably does not require the same number of resources or effort, you can delegate the resources from here to something more complex and time-consuming.

If you remember, our goal was: ‘By the end of this fiscal year, I want to increase the profit margin for xyz project by 11%, by maximising resource utilization.’

5 questions to ask yourself during the planning process

?

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Here’s a simple solution

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Resource efficiently using Taimer

As mentioned previously, in the example in #5, knowing the progress of your project and effective use of resources is vital to the timely completion of a project.

With Taimer, you can:

Plan ahead to see the hours allocated for the projects in a pipeline.

Define tasks, sub-tasks for a given project.

Specify required skills, and priority for each tasks.

Create tasks, budget hours, and assign to users.

Track hours spent on each tasks.

Follow up on unallocated hours. Create additional tasks for unallocated hours, assign, or split tasks.

Visualise progress and utilization via customizable Gantt chart.

Follow profitability per user.

Define invoiceable or non-invoiceable projects (e.g internal projects).

Get approval or collaborate directly with task owners.

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3. Assess dependencies, risks & deliverables

“If you don’t invest in risk management, it doesn’t matter what business you’re in, it’s a risky business.” Gary Cohn

Identifying and addressing challenges or risks periodically is one of the most important time management strategies. It’s very common for businesses to predict challenges or hurdles before the start of a project but most of them fail to understand that these risks might change as the project proceeds.

It’s important to re-evaluate your deliverables consistently from the startto the end of a project.

Identify new risks and reassess the current ones

According to the Pareto principle, 80% of your output can come from just 20% input.

This means that by identifying the top 20% of the risks, you can eliminate 80% potential risks.

Therefore, it’s important to periodically identify key risks that could be a roadblock to the successful completion of your project.

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Types of risks

Unclear tasks or guidelines

While it’s important to have clear guidelines and goals in the beginning of the project, it is important to be prepared for any changes in the requirements. One way to do this is by having a constant and clear communication flow between the client and the project owner.

Inaccurate time estimates

There is a possibility of forecasting inaccurate timelines in the beginning of a project. Re-evaluate the tasks and prioritize the most urgent or important ones (top 20%). Consider the progress made during the different stages of the project cycle and adjust the estimates.

Financial risks

Running into unexpected costs or budget cuts is another common risk one can face. This can be avoided to a certain extent by knowing how your finances are being managed and having a real-time view of cost estimates.

Unforeseen circumstances

The chances of an employee falling sick or going on an unplanned leave is unforeseen. Knowing how to manage and delegate available resources in crisis, is essential to completion of the project.

How a resource management software can help in risk management

With a resource management software like Taimer, you can:

+ Plan ahead projects and subprojects, tasks and even sub-tasks.

+ Monitor visually & in realtime the assigned projects or tasks to users.

+ Communicate directly without interruptions, with users assigned to a given task or a project.

+ Measure the allocated, budgeted, and the remaining hours for each task.

+ Monitor the daily progress and resource utilization in Gantt chart.

+ Get real-time view of the impact or profitability.

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Did you know?

The first employee time clock was built by Willard Legrand Bundy and was patented in 1891. At the time, it was dubbed the “Workman’s Time Recorder.”

“What gets measured... gets managed.” Peter Drucker

You now know that time tracking is one of the key steps of the goal setting and planning process. How often have you heard your team complain about updating their tasks by the end of the day? What was it that made you cringe every time you heard the word ‘time-tracker’? This is one of the most important elements that determine the success of a project. While time tracking may be painful, how do you convince your team to start tracking their time?

Get more done by tracking your time

Here are the top 6 reasons why you need to start tracking your time:

1. Easier payroll processing: You can integrate payroll, invoicing, and billing with the hours tracked and automate the process.

2. Make informed decisions: You can see how much time is invested in each of your projects. As a project owner, this insight is helpful while negotiating terms with a client, or in your appraisal discussions.

4. Track the time spent on all tasks and projects

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Easy time tracking with Taimer

There are hundreds of apps these days that can help you track your time. While some perform the basic function of just time tracking, there are others that are integrated with various other tools and apps to improve efficiency. With Taimer, time tracking is so easy, you will want to do it. With just one click, you can track your time for a specific project, sub-project, task, or a job type.

Taimer’s time tracking module is further integrated with invoicing, so the user can automatically invoice for the work hours spent. And, since Taimer is a unified platform, the time tracking module is just one of the features it offers. We will explore more about the rest in the next section.

3. Improve productivity: Identify the time spent on non-essential activities. Does the word ‘too many meetings’ ring a bell? Improve team’s productivity with time tracking.

4. Forecast accurately: When you have data on how much time it takes to accomplish a given task, you can use this to predict the time needed for similar projects in the future.

5. Allocate & monitor resources: If a project crosses a given deadline, this data can be helpful for a project owner for resource reallocation and as a team member you can use this data to get the additional help you need.

6. Smoother workflow: Users get an idea around how they spent their previous day. Also, this gives a sense of accomplishment at the end of the day when you complete all the tasks for the day. This makes your workflow much smoother.

“We used to use many different tools to run our business. Because of that, we couldn’t get a 360° view or generate real-time forecasts on how our business was progressing. Taimer has solved several essential problems related to time management. The system combines resource scheduling and time tracking, into one integrated tool... Taimer is a very good tool. It’s worth it.” Henri Grönlund, CEO Cloud²

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“Success is not the result of the amount of time we put in at work, instead it is result of the quality of time we put in.” Arianna Huffington

Save money and time by automating your accounting process

One of the most common Business Process Automation solutions is AP automation or Accounts Payable Automation.

This reduces manual work, replaces papers and spreadsheets, and accelerates the invoicing process.

Planning and time tracking can be further simplified by implementing automation processes.

Apart from saving time, business process automation or BPA can help reduce costs and resource usage.

Automating the manual tasks would imply more time to focus on the more important and complex tasks.

For example, If you’re still using spreadsheets for invoicing, you need to think about it again!

5. Automate complex and time-consuming tasks

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How does automated invoicing help in time management?

Automated invoicing is directly proportional to the time saved. The more automated the invoicing process is, the more time you save.

Improved efficiency:Errors are inevitable when you create invoices manually. Likewise, inaccuracies in updating work hours is very common when invoicing is done manually. When you have a cloud based time tracking system in place, integrated with your accounting software, error margin is reduced to a very large extent resulting in smoother payments.

Lower costs: A study carried out in the United States showed an average company spends as much as $25 pushing one invoice through a paper-based system. Imagine the time and costs you can save by automating the invoicing process!

Lesser dependencies:The dependency of data can be automatically checked to avoid invoicing things that you shouldn’t have invoiced, or things you should invoice, but have forgotten. This results in accurate & faster invoice creation process.

Ease of use: If time tracking is famous for being tedious, then creating an invoice is an even more cumbersome task. But, both these steps are equally important if you need to get paid on time. Having a cloud based time tracking, and an integrated invoicing software turns this into an agile and effortless process.

Ease of access:When you have an integrated system, you can create invoices at any time, from anywhere, on any device.

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Invoice faster with Taimer

You can integrate Taimer with your accounting system and save hours on invoicing. With Taimer you can:

1. Invoice hours, bills, expenses, recurring & scheduled invoices, and put invoicing on auto pilot.

2. Send invoices, collect payments, track expenses and manage all your payments from one place.

3. Integrate with other apps including a time tracking software to make the invoicing process or payroll process much more streamlined.

4. Send invoices from anywhere, at any time, with any device to save time.

5. Communicate directly with the clients, send notices, and reminders from the app itself.

6. Analyze your cash flow by providing invoice forecasting.

“I have been more than happy with the collaboration between our teams. Our companies use Taimer and it has proven its benefits in sales management, project and time management and in invoicing”.

Risto Tattari, Head of technology, Salomaa Group

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6. Evaluate the post project impact and learnings

“Don’t waste a good mistake. Learn from it.”

Robert Kiyosaki

Post implementation review is the final and one of the most important time management strategies.

Learnings from the current project can help you save time and utilize resources more efficiently in your upcoming projects.

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Identify your most productive and non-productive tasks

Setting aside some time at the end of the project to evaluate the impact and analyse the successes and failures can give you valuable insights for your upcoming projects.

Things to do at the end of the project cycle

Win Loss Analysis: Were the project objectives achieved? Identify what went well and what did not. Analyse why it went well or what could have been done better to avoid the failures next time.

Optimizing workflows: Was the project plan reliable? Are there any smarter ways to accomplish some of the most regular tasks? What processes worked better? Are there better tools that can help complete these tasks faster?

Identifying challenges: What were some of the challenges that you came across and how do you overcome them? Is there someone you can reach out to, to get this issue resolved faster? Were there any unforeseen risks?

Analysing deliverables: Was the project completed on time? Was the quality maintained throughout? Was it within the planned budget?

Documentation: Get feedback, conduct surveys, maintain reports, create case studies. Gather and document insights that will be helpful for the next project cycle.

Last but not the least, look at all that you were able to achieve for the day.

Celebrate your accomplishments as this is what is going to keep you motivated for the upcoming projects!

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Time Management - Taimer

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