If your office staff seems caught in a malaise; if your goals are not being met; if your secretary has not had a review in three years; it may be time to hone your management techniques. ManagePro 3.0 might offer the solution. It builds on basic management principles: (1) set clear goals; (2) monitor progress; (3) give feedback and coaching; (4) evaluate; and (5) reward.

ManagePro can best be thought of as a personnel oriented personal information manager. It keeps track of dates and times like any PIM, but in the context of whether others are meeting deadlines. The controlling premise of ManagePro is that a firm can only accomplish its own overarching goals by setting and monitoring goals for the firm's individual employees. If you have used project management software, ManagePro's look will be familiar. With project management software you enter benchmarks and time lines for the organization's goals. You are then given a visual representation of those time lines to assist in monitoring your progress. ManagePro works much the same way, but it is far more people oriented.

You begin by entering the goal, such as: "Increase collections by 10%." Next you break down that goal into the incremental steps necessary to accomplish it, and decide who will carry out those steps. For instance, you might decide that the billing clerk will be required to have all invoices out by the fifth of the month, attorneys will be required to call clients that are 60 days behind on invoices, and the office manager will follow up with past due notices. ManagePro uses a well designed outlining format that makes it easy to brainstorm a plan.

Once you have created your master plan and assigned the tasks (and assuming you are on a network), you then send the master plan to your employees' computers along with their responsibilities. With this setup, there can be no lack of communication. Everyone knows everyone else's duties and time lines. They track their own progress against clearly defined deadlines. When someone starts to slip, their time line begins to show as red. You can imagine how motivated your employees will be to stay on time.

And that brings up an obvious tie-in. Since ManagePro automatically monitors how well employees achieve their assigned tasks, it provides an objective basis for employee evaluations. To that end, the publisher offers a $100 companion program called Review Writer.

ManagePro offers a feature called MultiLink that allows you and your employees to control the flow of information, and further tracks progress. Instead of having one person design the whole plan, tasks could be assigned to department heads, who would then further break down the tasks and assign them to their staff members. As those members update their progress, it updates the department heads, and at their option, can flow through to the master plan.

ManagePro can also act as a home base for dissemination of information. If you wanted to provide further motivation to your employees, you could attach a spreadsheet to the master plan showing the results of the employees' collection efforts.

With its orientation on people and management, ManagePro deserves a look as an alternative to traditional project management software. It is published by Avantos Performance Systems, Inc. ((415) 923-1660), and sells for $395 in both Windows and Macintosh versions.

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