Collaborative Minds Blog

Collaborative Minds Blog - page 25

How to transform your Outlook into a workflow system
“I want to work with workflow tasks from Microsoft Outlook. Is it possible?”

Andrey Yanchenko, Head of Sales Engineering at NetCracker.

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5 Things to Look for in a Financial Management Workflow Software
When you’re in the business of managing millions of dollars in assets, one mistake can mean debilitating repercussions to both company and clients. Worse, it can undermine potential clients’ confidence in your organization, a situation you wouldn’t want to heap upon your business, as managing other people’s money is largely also dependent upon consumer trust.

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Increasing Team Productivity Through Collaborative Task Management
Competition, the need to be agile in an ever-evolving business landscape, customers’ desire for speedy answers to queries or issues plaguing them – these are just a few of the reasons why organizations rank team collaboration as an essential factor in powering up their business processes.

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Scrum Beyond Software Development
Scrum project management is usually associated with the software development process, but its flexible, iterative approach has been drawing interest lately from many non-IT teams.

A recent study by the Scrum Alliance revealed that 36 percent of organizations with active Scrum projects are using it outside of IT in some capacity.

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Functional and Process Management: Tools Support
In the previous articles, we positioned Project Management and Process Management as systematic ways to compensate the issues of pure functional management: loss of control at handoffs, loss of focus on corporate goals, sub-optimization, etc. Let us now consider the tools (i.e. software) support for functional, project and process management.

Let’s start with the functional management. First, there are standalone applications – accounting, warehouse, product lifecycle management (PLM), advanced planning & scheduling (APS), etc. targeted to specific departments. Historically, these applications have appeared first as the earliest form of management was functional management.

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Processes vs. Projects vs. Functions
In our  first article we described how the division of labor increases productivity of an individual employee yet, at the same time, creates a disconnect between departments reducing the company’s effectiveness.

These problems arise when the company grows. As long as the founder is in charge, and the number of employees is limited, the mutual understanding and motivation among managers is sufficient to limit “friction” to a minimum. Then, e.g. a new ambitious sales director comes onboard to reorganize the sales department.  The changes might be positive overall, but the former mutual understanding with the director of Manufacturing is no longer there, leading to tensions, that evolve in a search for a “scapegoat” in meetings with the CEO.

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How the Division of Labor Lowers Productivity
It’s all because of Adam Smith! Wasn’t he the one who introduced the division of labor? What, he didn’t invent it but simply described it? Anyway, it’s the phenomenon that we are going to talk about, not the person.

It happens all the time: as soon as we find a solution for a problem, the solution becomes a problem itself. The division of labor is not an exception: it increases the productivity indeed, but it also decreases in other cases.

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How much reporting do you need?
What are you looking for in a workflow management solution for your team? Should it be customizable enough to adapt to your team’s processes? Should it be easy to use? Should it have powerful reporting tools? Of course, all these factors contribute to the overall product value, but for a manager, one of the key points are the product reporting capabilities.

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How to beat project scheduling problems

This is a guest post by Elizabeth Harrin of A Girl’s Guide To Project Management.


Putting together a project schedule is one of the most important tasks for a project manager. It’s also very easy to get caught out! Here are some scheduling problems and how you can beat them.


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9 Key Ingredients for Successful Project Execution in 2025

Embarking on a project, whether it’s executing projects, completing a project, or driving a project, is rarely a simple task. You’re tasked with not only project execution, but also the planning, the actual implementation, and finally, the project completion phase. You must aggregate individual tasks performed by various teams and team members into a cohesive whole. Pressure is a fact of life and keeping calm during such stressful periods is essential to success. The following seven ingredients are vital to ensure your projects are successful projects, regardless of their scope or complexity.

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