BQE CORE vs. EPM Live

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
BQE CORE
Score 8.5 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
BQE CORE is a business management solution built specifically for professional service firms. BQE CORE is a combination of a billing assistant, project management, and accounting solution. CORE is designed to do the hard work of delivering actionable insights directly to the user's dashboards or inbox. BQE CORE replaces the products Engineeroffice, Archioffice, and BillQuick; the functionality of these applications is now found in BQE CORE.N/A
EPM Live
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
EPM Live is a PPM (project & portfolio management) platform based on Microsoft™ SharePoint. It offers project management and work collaboration to small and large enterprises. The focus is on helping deliver products successfully, optimize resource utilization, and select the right work. EPM Live is part of the Upland family of cloud-based project, portfolio, and work management software products.
$21
per month
Pricing
BQE COREEPM Live
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BQE COREEPM Live
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Features
BQE COREEPM Live
Project Management
Comparison of Project Management features of Product A and Product B
BQE CORE
8.1
55 Ratings
8% above category average
EPM Live
4.6
1 Ratings
48% below category average
Task Management8.537 Ratings7.01 Ratings
Resource Management9.138 Ratings7.01 Ratings
Gantt Charts6.716 Ratings7.01 Ratings
Scheduling8.226 Ratings5.01 Ratings
Workflow Automation7.627 Ratings2.01 Ratings
Team Collaboration8.031 Ratings5.01 Ratings
Support for Agile Methodology8.712 Ratings00 Ratings
Support for Waterfall Methodology8.312 Ratings00 Ratings
Document Management7.230 Ratings1.01 Ratings
Email integration7.225 Ratings1.01 Ratings
Mobile Access8.532 Ratings00 Ratings
Timesheet Tracking9.355 Ratings6.01 Ratings
Change request and Case Management8.521 Ratings00 Ratings
Budget and Expense Management7.343 Ratings00 Ratings
Professional Services Automation
Comparison of Professional Services Automation features of Product A and Product B
BQE CORE
8.4
38 Ratings
13% above category average
EPM Live
3.0
1 Ratings
85% below category average
Quotes/estimates7.820 Ratings00 Ratings
Invoicing8.833 Ratings00 Ratings
Project & financial reporting8.737 Ratings3.01 Ratings
Integration with accounting software8.424 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
BQE COREEPM Live
Small Businesses
Stackby
Stackby
Score 9.8 out of 10
Stackby
Stackby
Score 9.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
SAP Ruum
SAP Ruum
Score 9.0 out of 10
SAP Ruum
SAP Ruum
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Quickbase
Quickbase
Score 9.2 out of 10
Quickbase
Quickbase
Score 9.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
BQE COREEPM Live
Likelihood to Recommend
8.6
(148 ratings)
1.5
(7 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.2
(8 ratings)
7.0
(6 ratings)
Usability
8.1
(100 ratings)
3.0
(1 ratings)
Availability
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
7.3
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.0
(90 ratings)
8.3
(2 ratings)
Online Training
6.4
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
2.9
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
4.5
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
BQE COREEPM Live
Likelihood to Recommend
BQE Software Inc.
BQE CORE is well suited for a firm trying to get a better understanding of their project performance as a whole as well as better manage time and project resources. It is not the greatest for client management through a project or through invoicing, but it is do-able within the system.
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Ignite Technologies
I think EPM Live might be the right solution for a much smaller company, who does mainly business to business material sales. As a software company with a ramped subscription model and heavy use of Salesforce, it was not well suited to our business.
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Pros
BQE Software Inc.
  • Invoice Collections within Billing is a great tool because of the ability to take notes and track contact.
  • Invoices are professional looking and easy for our clients to understand the overall progress within each phase of their project.
  • Dashboards are the best tool EVER!
  • The Contact List feature within Clients setup is the perfect way to track multiple project managers within a large company that also has multiple contracts with us.
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Ignite Technologies
  • Fantastic project management features
  • Cost and Resource management features more than paid for the software
  • Social Collaboration tools improve communication between departments
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Cons
BQE Software Inc.
  • Customizable Reporting
  • Linking Project to Payment all together
  • Assigning contacts to particular roles - such as Invoicing, Contracts, etc.
  • Accounting Functionality - they are basically a project management accounting software, so in my opinion, they could learn some things from other accounting software such as QuickBooks etc.
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Ignite Technologies
  • This is a solid product. I do not have any suggested changes based on our experience. Cannot understand why there are any negative reviews here. The reviewer(s) must not have given the product a fair chance.
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Likelihood to Renew
BQE Software Inc.
We have been using Core for a few years now, and honestly started to look at other software systems to see what was out there. What we chose was a nightmare for migration so we never left Core. Now we have added invoicing and payments from Core instead of double entry with QBO. Still only a few cycles in but looks like it will be up to speed soon and working smoothly.
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Ignite Technologies
The product is just not fitting our needs so we are looking at other alternatives. The system has gone down 3 times in the last 6 months and was down for at least half a day, timesheets have duplicate tasks, and it takes too long to save and submit. When trying to process updates it randomly changes our dates so we have to go back and fix them, sometimes tasks are lost and the system is just very confusing and hard to manipulate
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Usability
BQE Software Inc.
The foundation is awesome, like I have said before, however the house being built on it, the educational resources being provided to us (more of sales pitches that don't work), and flexible workflow opportunities, is making us look elsewhere for how much we will be spending on per user. It's crazy to think how flexible they are not when it comes to user settings. Lack of integration with other sources is awful.
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Ignite Technologies
No answers on this topic
Reliability and Availability
BQE Software Inc.
I can only remember a couple of times in 4 years that Core has been unavailable.
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Ignite Technologies
No answers on this topic
Performance
BQE Software Inc.
This is one area that does need some improvement. It can be slow at time, so we had our IT look at it from our side and we had no issues, so it has to be some slowness on their side.
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Ignite Technologies
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
BQE Software Inc.
As a new employee and CORE user, I talk to support on a weekly basis. I have never had to wait for more than 3 min to get connect with a support rep, and all my questions have been answered. The support representatives are polite and eager to help no matter how simple your question is.
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Ignite Technologies
We get support when needed.
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Online Training
BQE Software Inc.
Make sure you have someone training you that fits your style of learning.
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Ignite Technologies
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
BQE Software Inc.
It does take some time to understand the options and to find the best invoice template.
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Ignite Technologies
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
BQE Software Inc.
Deltek Vision is far more advanced, more encompassing and offers more flexibility with what you want to do. However, it's also quite difficult to use, whereas BQE CORE is intuitive and user friendly. The trade off is worth it in some arenas but overall it's not suited for a larger fast paced company. Great for smaller companies.
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Ignite Technologies
EPM was easier to use, with better and simpler UI. The product was also a great combination of price and functionality compared to other tools
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Scalability
BQE Software Inc.
This software works on a small and large scale.
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Ignite Technologies
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
BQE Software Inc.
  • Quick setup of new tasks under a parent project, with immediate hourly billing to it.
  • Monitoring of details of non-chargeable efforts in appropriate detail
  • Validation of hourly cost, billing cost, benefit cost, profitability by person and role
  • Company tracking of write-off's included in corporate and project reporting, no data is "lost"
  • Can track excessive work time as +PTO in lieu of pay for use as future vacation
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Ignite Technologies
  • We had to pay EPM for a solution that was, for our business, unusable
  • We gained much needed experience in working with third party software vendors
Read full review
ScreenShots

BQE CORE Screenshots

Screenshot of Core powered by BQE SoftwareScreenshot of BQE CORE Project Dashboard ViewScreenshot of BQE CORE 360* Firm Performance ViewScreenshot of BQE CORE Reporting & AnalyticsScreenshot of BQE CORE Project Time EntryScreenshot of BQE CORE Project Expense Tracking