Team management software programs are becoming popular due to the rise in remote and hybrid work. These collaborative project management tools enable distributed teams to effectively communicate and collaborate. Organizations working across multiple time zones also use these team coordination tools to improve productivity.
In this guide to team management software, we discuss tools built for maximizing team efficiency and streamlining team workflows.
What are collaboration tools?
Collaboration tools are team management software built for more coordinated workflows. These software programs, apps, or platforms enable individuals and units to communicate in real-time and streamline their efforts for greater synergy.
Team management software programs provide a centralized place for members to communicate. Beyond that, they allow users to access documents, store files, assign and monitor tasks, and hold task-specific discussions.
The primary purpose of a team management software program is to align individuals and teams. By enhancing collaborative project management, these tools increase transparency, optimize resource allocation, reduce delays, and help teams execute projects faster and better.
While communication and productivity tools for teams were earlier limited to large enterprises, now there are software programs for businesses of all sizes. Most team management software programs now support multiple modes of communication, such as instant messaging, chat, audio and video conferencing, screen sharing, and file sharing.
While choosing team management software, it’s important to select one that meets your specific requirements, such as team strength, usage patterns, and budget.
13 best team management software to improve team collaboration
Productivity tools for teams aren’t a luxury anymore. They’re a necessity. To help you make the right choice, these are the 13 most effective team management software for streamlining team workflows.
1. Monday.com
One of the most popular team management software, monday.com is known for its user-friendly design and features that make it easy for teams to collaborate. You can share documents, hold debates, and co-create meeting minutes. This team coordination tool also has comments and mentions to enhance discussions.
Instead of merely replying to emails, users can respond by adding attachments to tasks. monday.com also allows budgeting, scheduling, file sharing, email integration, resource management, notifications, and third-party plugins. What this means is that teams can find everything related to a task or project centralized in one place.
2. Slack
Available in both mobile and desktop versions, Slack is a team management software program that’s particularly popular in the startup ecosystem. Designed for collaborative project management, it allows users to send messages to each other both as individuals and in groups.
With Slack, you can organize messages into channels for specific projects or initiatives. You can easily search for messages, and the platform integrates well with a host of other apps. Supporting private group communication, Slack is also an excellent tool for external sharing.
3. ClickUp
Simplified project management is what you get with ClickUp, a team management software program that allows you to plan, manage, and track all kinds of work, irrespective of the device or your location. Made for effective team communication, it comes with in-app recording. It also has mentions, comments, notifications, whiteboards, collaborative documents, and task management.
ClickUp’s other features are reminders, subtasks, priorities, task checklists, and task templates. You can also sort, filter, easily reorder, search for, and view tasks in a way that’s convenient for you.
4. Ziflow
If you’re a creative agency and content review and approval are what you primarily seek in a team management software program, you should be looking at Ziflow. Touted as a platform for creative collaboration, it enables you to give clear feedback through rich comment threads.
You can collaborate on all your content, including web, digital, print, video, and packaging, among others, on Ziflow. By automating creative content reviews, this team management software makes it easy to give fast approvals internally, which leads to shorter project timelines.
If you use products from the Microsoft ecosystem, Microsoft Teams could be your collaboration software. That’s because it has full integration with Office 365 apps and has excellent cloud storage. This means it would be extremely easy for you to connect with your colleagues and even external users.
Microsoft Teams offers a unified communications platform that brings chat together with videoconferencing, attachments, file storage, and app integrations. You can communicate through video, audio, and chat and host web conferences with users both within and outside your system.
If you’re a content production agency, GatherContent can help you improve collaboration while streamlining team workflows. As a team management software application, it helps teams organize, plan, and produce content. It also helps you manage your content inventory and monitor the content production process.
Publishers, marketing teams, and media firms will benefit from GatherContent. Built for content creators, it’s a user-friendly tool that allows multiple users to contribute and give feedback on content. You can also establish content guidelines, give inline comments, and preserve a revision history for every piece of content.
7. ConnecTeam
Branded as the all-in-one employee app, Connecteam goes beyond communication and offers a unified portal with operational and HR tools. Considering your organizational priorities, you can purchase each solution independently, which makes it a flexible program to implement.
The operations platform has time tracking, task management, scheduling, checklists, and forms, enabling managers to unify their team’s operations and align them on priorities. The communication platform helps you build a knowledge base with documents, policies, and procedures. There’s also a live chat for users to communicate with each other.
8. Height
Here’s a cloud-based platform built for remote teams to collaborate on projects. Height simplifies collaboration with an intuitive user interface. This versatile team management software is domain-neutral and can be used by multiple kinds of teams.
The platform allows users to create and manage projects, and track and monitor their progress. Height also allows team members to work on projects and documents in real-time. This not only improves collaboration but also significantly enhances collective productivity.
9. GoToMeeting
While it’s primarily an online meeting and web conferencing platform, GoToMeeting empowers internal collaboration and communication with customers, clients, and other external stakeholders in real-time. As a team coordination tool, this is particularly useful for firms with international teams who need video conferencing capabilities.
GoToMeeting also enables group chat, messaging, recording, and integrations with other popular apps. You can host large meetings and instantly schedule them in Outlook or Google Calendar. The platform has screen sharing, which will reduce the learning curve.
If you’re looking for a team management software program that people are already familiar with, you should try Skype for Business. Almost everyone is familiar with the platform since it was one of the first and most popular names in videoconferencing. Extremely easy to install and get started, the basic version of the app is free.
It has voice, instant messaging, and screen sharing. If you’re a small business, what should interest you is that you can hold conference calls for up to 25 people on Skype. This will save you money and improve collaboration, especially if you have to showcase products or hold demos.
11. Toggl Plan
Toggl Plan makes collaboration intuitive and easy, empowering managers and team members to cooperate more seamlessly on projects. The app comes with color-coded visual overviews, which enhances transparency. You can keep all information related to a project in one place and plan your tasks based on current workloads and team availability.
Team members can effortlessly know what’s coming next through notifications and visual cues. They can also share ideas along with file attachments. Managers can monitor projects with up-to-date information through shared timelines.
12. Miro
Miro, a visual collaboration platform, has an online whiteboard with more than 1,000 templates. These include Kanban boards, mind maps, product wireframes, research boards, Gantt charts, and flowcharts. Miro is highly suited for hybrid work and has a compelling set of resources for continuous learning, such as online events, Miro Academy, and a community forum.
Miro enables teams to visualize and track their communication in multiple forms through sticky notes, comments, stickers, emojis, and more. It also helps visualize content workflows and map out content clusters. Those in the creative domains will particularly like how interactive and visual the platform can be.
13. Heycollab
HeyCollab has all the features you need from a team management software program. With chat, you can communicate with team members one-on-one or as a team in real-time. You can share documents and action item tasks to streamline progress. You can also create tasks from messages, attach video calls to messages, and attach folders to messages.
HeyCollab allows you to centralize your work and host seamless video calls. You can manage your projects from kickoff to completion and create folders to organize your files. Designed for clutter-free collaboration, it comes with 24/7 support. Start your free trial and check out its cool features.