How can my business be more efficient?
We are all asking the same question. This month, let’s focus on scheduling. How to make it easier, better, more visual, and with reporting features that will help with your timekeeping and payroll process. Let’s take a look at how Google Calendar integrates with Ganttic. Google Calendar is part of the Google Apps package. Ganttic is an affordable application that works with Google Calendar and contains many of the features commonly found expensive CRM programs.
As usual, feel free to suggest topics which you would like to see covered in an upcoming newsletter or on the Grundig IT news page, which can be found at under the News tab at www.GrundigIT.com
As Always, Happy Computing!
— Tom Grundig
Google Apps with Ganttic: Business Efficiency
Overwhelmed with scheduling your team and getting accurate reporting of time spent on jobs?
Google Apps, including Google Calendar, is becoming more and more of a workplace standard as the need for mobility becomes a higher priority among businesses. Easy access to your mail, calendar, and Google Drive documents on nearly any electronic platform make Google Apps for Work an easy choice for streamlining your business workflow.
The features of Google Apps cannot be underestimated when it comes to ease of access and mobility – Phone applications integrate with Google accounts for email, calendars, contacts and storage. Any device with an internet connection works using Google Apps, meaning that if you are on the go and need to access a file in a pinch, they are ready for you. Syncing Contacts and Calendars is also a painless process, and allows for an up-to-date, accurate schedule for yourself or others on your team.
The Calendar, in particular gets used a lot by businesses, especially those with many people in the field. With Google Calendar, you are linked into the calendars of those on your team, so you can filter out their schedule, or put future plans on their calendar to assign jobs or otherwise. Google Calendar will also sync to your phone, for an easy-to-check schedule while you’re on the move.
While the features offered by Google Calendar are great, there can be some limitations when it comes to certain business needs. This is where Ganttic comes in. Scheduling via Google Calendar can work for smaller operations, but, once the workforce really starts growing, it can be overwhelming to view everyone’s schedule into the Google Calendar. When your workforce grows, there is a need for something that can sync with Google Apps while providing a broader scope and clearer overview of the workforce.
Ganttic (see above image for snapshot) helps relieve some of this pressure and we are using it to help our clients become more efficient. According the makers of Ganttic, “Ganttic is an intuitive real-time planner for resource planning, employee scheduling, team management and work collaboration.” Ganttic integrates with Google Apps accounts to provide an excellent planning service for larger businesses, as opposed to the Google Calendar’s more limited layout.
Ganttic uses an easy to navigate web interface to handle job scheduling and allows for multiple “Teams” to be involved. This means is that if you have dedicated groups working specialty areas you can assign them under the same team and give different users the option to manage different teams. The result: Fewer mistakes are made.
One of the best features included in Ganttic is its ability to sync up with Google Calendar. This lets you or any workforce team member know if anything new has come up on the calendar, nearly instantly. This article has more detail on how Ganttic works in conjunction with Google Calendar.
Another great feature is the reporting in Ganttic. It tracks how many hours your employees have worked, which helps greatly when tracking time and processing payroll. DO NOTE: The time scheduled for a job is not necessarily the eventual time to complete, but people in the field will have the ability correct their schedule accordingly if you give them the appropriate permissions to do so.
Try out the free version (up to 10 users – pricing is below) Let Grundig IT know if you need help setting up Google Apps or the integration with Ganttic. We are happy to answer any questions about this excellent solution.
— Tom Grundig 925.528.9081 tom@grundigit.com
