EMS Software is an enterprise space management, event, class and resource scheduling application acquired and now supported by Accruent in June 2018.
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Tririga
Score 8.4 out of 10
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IBM Tririga is an integrated workplace management system (IWMS) supporting facilities management, real estate portfolio management, space management, and environmental / energy management.
Accruent EMS is well-suited when it comes to room utilization and transparency but with regards to onboarding other departments such as A/V and Catering, it becomes a challenge because there are other software that meets the needs of these departments that EMS does not have. The use of multiple systems for other departments is a nuisance especially with inventory mangement.
It is great for organizations who have complex data or large amounts of data. For an organization that has small amounts of data or very simple processes TRIRIGA might be too much. It can handle small data and processes but the costs of implementing and supporting might be greater than the reward that would be provided. It also has a lot of room to grow. You can utilize existing forms and business objects or you can custom build new ones to fit business needs.
It's user friendly. By doing a little self-exploration one can find out the many features that EMS offers.
It is simple to add or remove conference rooms and provide details of the conference rooms.
I appreciate that there are different ways of reserving conference rooms. This allows each user to feel comfortable in their use of EMS by finding what works best for them.
Incredible complexity on the back end. While its highly configurable nature lends to flexibility, it also makes it a challenge to manage.
Support has not been as quick as we'd like when we've needed to reach out.
Most likely due to the company recently changing hands, we had real trouble with their billing department attempting to double charge us for our services, and sorting it out took 6 months of back and forth.
In order to get into the back end and manage spaces, there are too many "clicks" and pop up boxes to get to the area that is needed, which causes delays and confusions.
It can be a bit slow when processing requests, pulling up maps.
Trigia holds a lot of information, which is good but it could be easier to get to at times.
Accruent EMS has always been a one-stop-shop for our organization when it comes to scheduling conference rooms, offices, apartments, services, etc. It has a wide array of reporting, and what isn't set up as a standard report, can usually be created as a query to report on the information you are looking for. Accruent EMS has pushed out new releases with updates to bugs and other add-ins and stays current and up-to-date with market trends.
Most new users would greatly benefit from (or possibly require) at least some training on how to use EMS, but the training doesn't need to be extensive for the users to get comfortable with it. Most functions are easy and straightforward, so users tend to not have many issues with it.
I give it this rating because it has more than one way to get to most forms but it can be hard to navigate if you don't know the terms TRIRIGA uses. Also being a new developer can bring up issues with not knowing exactly where certain things are found. The documentation doesn't help too much sometimes since the TRIRIGA community is pretty small.
Currently I can only access EMS from my work computer, from in my office, on campus. While I'm sure this isn't an Accruent issue, and mostly our IT issue, Accruent hasn't exactly stepped up and tried to help when these issues have been addressed.
In the almost 7 months I have been working on my current project there has been exactly one unplanned outage. This was in the QA environment during data migration and was caused by a workflow that was circular and self referencing which caused the processing JAVA memory to spike, not resolve and then crash the server.
The only other software we use in conjunction with EMS is Epaper Signs by Visix. Once we worked out the initial bugs, the integration has been seamless. It does not slow down our software or cause any errors. Our signs are updated every 15 minutes with any problems.
TRIRIGA does a good job of this, being a server based web application it is like other web based systems so it's not as fast as a client server application or a local system but it is very consistent across locations and for different roles and employees. This does allow consistent use no matter where people are located. It also does a fair job of notifying the user when it is loading with the spinning circle or hour glass. The reports can get fairly complex but native TRIRIGA reports perform well even when they are complex. They can be a little slow if they are fetching 100's of 1000's of rows but this doesn't take more than 10 or so seconds. I have yet to write a native report that takes more than 20 seconds and that 20 second report is getting data from 4 BO's and nets over 130K rows.
Since the merger, our team has found that there are a select few of the tech team that can actually support our questions. More often than not, we have already tried the suggestions that they give us and they are either unable to answer our questions and submit them as update suggestions or they have to be sent to supervisor for an answer. Once or twice in the last year we have received bad advice that resulted in system issues. Prior to last year, the customer support system was at the top of the list of tech support departments that I have ever had to deal with, especially during our upgrade to 4.0.
The process does seem to take some time and has to go through a preset escalation process. IBM does a good job of communicating through the process, it just seems to take it's natural course.
It was great but could have been a little better. I feel like there are different ways to use some of the software and some of that was not explained. I think at the time the training was great but now that we are more experienced with the product I can see we missed training based on what part of EMS the instructor thought we were going to use.
I think one of the biggest things is to step back and see how you want your organization to function and use the product prior to quickly diving in and configuring. I think some (based on some EMS Live conference sessions I attended) built their systems on how they used their old systems or old processes, but thinking about how you want your organization to function moving forward will help you configure it the best way and make the necessary changes from the start rather than having to go back and adjust.
[Accruent] EMS is very robust, and a great all in one solution for hospitality and Event management needs. I have dealt with a few other software solutions in the past that try to handle event planning and management, but have run into the need to have multiple solutions to handle all those needs.
We purchased the client, web version, and Outlook plug-in. I'll be honest, we haven't pushed the email part, but I did test it and liked it. After the old program we placed, I have simply been gun-shy about implementing another email plug-in. However, the client for the super users to get department alerts, etc. and the web version for all users to create reservations has been fabulous and easy to use and understand.
TRIRIGA can be split into many servers and is easily scaled over multiple environments. TRIRIGA is also capable of being implemented on multiple operating systems and a wide range of environments with different database management systems. This makes it easy for clients to choose since they can choose vendors they have previous relationships with or are required to use for various reasons.
The most noticeable improvements in our usage of EMS is our ability to process requests more efficiently using a standardized form that has a professional presentation. Before we began using EMS, we processed our parking requests by simply typing an email with a few details. Pricing was jumbled in with the wording and clients often did not read the fine print. EMS has definitely made an impact with projecting a professional image to our clients when they receive confirmations and invoices.
