Scraps of paper with jotted notes scattered around the computer, last week’s agendas strewn about the conference room table, and a white board that hasn’t been updated in months – a scene that’s all too familiar in businesses today.  These days, more and more employees become disorganized while attempting to tackle endlessly growing to-do lists.  Workers employ handwritten notes, spreadsheets, shared computer folders, emails, and text messages to communicate what needs to be done, by whom, by when.  Information gets stashed in various places until it becomes nearly impossible to track. Despite technological advances and decent interoffice communication, many businesses lack the resources to keep all their dealings in one, central location which leads to miscommunication, overlooked assignments, general inefficiency, and at worst, lost profit.

To combat this, leaders need to manage tasks in a way that provides specific roles for team members with real-time notifications of progress.  These four steps will enable leaders to accomplish just that:

1. Establish clear objectives. The role of the leader is to provide a vision of where an organization is going. For projects and daily work, the same stands true.  Leaders must outline the specific objectives for any given task or operation.
2. Ensure all parties understand the objectives. Put the tasks in writing for all parties to reference at any given time to create accountability for your team. Tasks can be changed and updated as necessary. Some leaders prefer to share directions verbally, through conversations or meetings. However, ensuring the layout is in writing, in a central location cuts down on miscommunication or wasted time.  CRM RUNNER provides a place to maintain these lists
3. Breakdown the tasks into manageable pieces. Tasks should be as manageable for the supervisor creating it as they are for those carrying them out. Reshaping large endeavors into bite size pieces allows for not only better tracking of tasks but also for a sense of accomplishment as each part is completed.  A motivated and informed team will be more productive.
4. Review and assess the outcome. Ask all parties for real-time updates on the status of tasks. If a task is done at 1:00 pm, the team should be updated as such.  From there, the team may make adjustments or continue to follow the planned course of action.  Real-time updates, made possible by the latest CRM technology, allow for more efficiency, which means employees have more time to focus on other channels to support the business, like building relationships with prospective clients and partners.

CRM RUNNER eliminates the runaround with task management functions, giving supervisors the power to create assignments and track progress with real-time notifications.  With CRM software, managers can create a task and assign it to colleagues, employees, and contractors.  However, the work does not stop once roles have been assigned.  By setting parameters, metrics, and deadlines, workers break their projects into steps that are easy to tackle while communicating their progress as they move along.  As efficiency improves, there is less time spent digging through notes and making phone calls to lock down specifics.  Instead, the project can be viewed by everybody, at any time, with periodic revisions to keep the whole team up-to-date.

Supervisors can take the progress updates a step further with access to real-time notifications by using CRM RUNNER.  As the moving pieces come together, each counterpart can pose a question or mark the task as complete.  With this, the manager will move forward, responding to issues or doling out the next assignment to keep the organization moving as planned.

If you are new to using this software, then you can use our free 14 days trial or check our pricing here.