Happy New Year and hurry up autumn

Jonathan Garner has his head in the cloud.

- Jonathan Garner

Now that the management of the garden is handed over to us, it's time to commence your management regime. Seeing as though we're still in summer and most of the technical stuff I'm keen to discuss happens further into autumn, I suggest keeping your gardens well-watered (or well-drained if you're getting hammered by the unpredictable rain events we seem to be getting more often) and kept tidied until our next chat in March.

In the meanwhile, I thought it might be useful covering the benefits of what project-management apps and systems can provide to small- and medium-sized businesses.

When running my firm of eight staff, I overlooked utilising management software systems thinking that they were focussed towards larger companies. I now see how wrong I was.

For large and small businesses

You might be starting out, may be satisfied employing a small team, or keen to have your business grow. There are several project-management apps available that can help with managing and organising your garden-maintenance and landscape firm.

I've evolved my business to now assist other landscape companies and large private gardens with managing their assets and training staff. I started using Asana two years ago and it's made life so much easier.

Before I go on, I declare no interest from Asana or any other software providers.

Asana wasn't so much recommended to me. It was more like I had to use it for a large estate project. The various management systems available are probably all quite similar. Check out product comparison websites and forums to see what might be better for you. Most of these companies offer a cloud-based, basic subscription package that's free to use. I find the basic package works well for the small organisations I work with. Stepping things up a level, for around $20 a month there's a whole lot of functions the systems can perform to improve efficiency.