Likelihood to Recommend As a one-person IT department, Atera is almost like having another person to help, especially as we integrate the AIT functionalities. We have several locations spread over nearly 200 miles, and Atera has enabled me to remote in and fix something that before would have had to wait until we could justify an all-day or overnight 300 mile round trip.
Read full review PSA is great at capturing all the data you would need to accurately track and report on consulting projects. It captures project financials, calculates projected GM%, and (among others) allows for hourly tracking of employees, which breaks it up between billable and non-billable for utilization tracking to accurately understand costs. However, the user interface is tough to learn, and the stability of the data reporting functions is questionable. This tool would be great for smaller consulting shops that fit the standard contracting mold. If your business is fairly straightforward without a lot of shades of gray, you shouldn't have much trouble with the tool. However, if your business practices have a lot of exceptions based on clients, then you'll have a tall administrative task on your hands.
Read full review Pros Support, if you need them they are there and they always have the answers you need. The AI scripting features allow you to really hit the ground running. You can give it a prompt and it will give you a script that will be very close to what you need. All you have to do is polish it up and test it out. I love having the ability to use multiple remote access tools, in the event a machine has an issue with one of them, or if a cloud service goes down, you have a fallback. The shared script library is an amazing resource for troubleshooting and streamlining. The development teams are open to adding features and have done so frequently based on user requests. Read full review The biggest strength of FinancialForce PSA is that it's built upon the force.com platform, which means it is very easily customizable to our business needs. Projects are easily created, as well as milestones and assignments. "Actuals" (dollars and hours) are calculated automatically, and are easily reported on. Resources are easily managed by using the Resource Planner FinancialForce PSA support is outstanding! Read full review Cons Some basic functions need some extra work Some basic things are behind paywalls Feature board is not credible. Ideas taking very, very long to implement Atera has no clear road map SNMP monitoring needs a make over and needs more options Read full review The product is still maturing as a full featured PSA tool. The feature roadmap is compelling but is still being built out. Tool is ideal for managing a services business. It is not yet a project manager tool. Limited reporting Maturing change order process Limited integration to back-end financial systems beyond Financial Force Financials. We use Netsuite. The underlying SalesForce UI is constrained and can be keystroke intensive at times Limited archiving of historical data Read full review Likelihood to Renew As of right now, we have found nothing that can offer as many features as Atera does along with the affordability. They are doing monthly releases each month and not just making small changes (shared scripting library, chocolatey support, Install packages, Splashtop SOS support, Scheduled tickets to name a few). The uptimes are great and accessibility to the dashboard has yet to be limited. We are a happy customer and bordering on fanboy status now
Read full review There is another PSA software program that we have been looking into (DreamFactory) that could potentially replace FinancialForce PSA in our organization. Like FinancialForce PSA, it is cloud based on the force.com platform. Licensing is slightly less than FinancialForce PSA, and the Resource Management tool is far superior to FinancialForce PSA. With that said, our renewal falls in Q4 2014 and I don't foresee us implementing a new system this fiscal year.
Read full review Usability This has been a great platform to handle both service requests and device maintenance. Without it, we would have to do manual ticket creation through another platform that does not link with a RMM making the help desk inefficient and frustrating both Employees and the Executives of the company. The addition of AI makes all of this even easier!
Read full review It is maturing and does what it does well although it is not fully complete. Integration to SF is great. Gives great visibility to incoming services projects and allows the staffing process to start on pipeline deals. There are certain processes that take more click-throughs then needed so there are refinement opportunities around the UI. The resource management screen and project status views have really matured since our original purchase, and while not perfect, allow business leaders to do their jobs. Configurations vs. customizations. We seem to have to bring in an Apex developer to do a customization for changes I would think could be configuration settings
Read full review Reliability and Availability We have maybe had 1-2 outages over 3 years.
Read full review Performance Most of the time it is fine. There are peak periods of usage where performance noticably slows down (i.e., Monday mornings when time is due and many reports are being run)
Read full review Support Rating Atera support provides answers to my questions lightning fast. They have never left me feeling like I'm out there on my own. I can ask questions by email, or by chat, or by opening a ticket with them and they are always on it quickly. They also have a forum where other Atera users can help you if you need it, and you can also add feature requests via the forum.
Read full review Every time I submit a new help request, whether it's an actual help request or just a question about FinancialForce PSA, I always feel that I'm receiving world class support. The support we receive from FinancialForce PSA is always very detailed and professional. There are some requests that take longer than other for the initial response, which is why I did not give a full 10.
Read full review In-Person Training It was fine.
Read full review Implementation Rating Appirio did a good job, however, the user team didn’t know enough to make all the right configuration/customization choices. The team focused too much on replicating existing processes vs. reengineering them. In hindsight we should have had deep dive reviews at key milestones and enforced more focus on how the software would operate. We didn’t have access to true best practices expertise. In hindsight, a consultant from the outside would have been helpful to drive this.
Read full review Alternatives Considered Atera was the clear winner for us. The interface and tools were very easy to learn and setup. Atera's licensing incorporates good feature sets and value levels. Some of the other products were difficult to setup and lacked good flow between tools. The value proposition was also not as good.
Read full review FF PSA is a robust Project Management solution that can be configured to fits any size business. We have tried several other applications and PSA so far has met and exceeded our needs. We run our day to day operations on Salesforce so having a solution that is native was a must have. PSA met that requirement and much more.
Read full review Return on Investment We have been able to add new employees/devices without increasing my staff to support them. The value of charging per technician verses per device cannot be stated enough. Without that pricing, I wouldn't be able to budget enough to pay for all of the things I get with Atera. They have a customer portal which allows the end user to check on submitted tickets, open new tickets and recommend any new features. Read full review FinancialForce PSA has helped us improve our data tracking and allows us to get more granular about our financial information and performance. PSA has given more tools and reports to individual contributors to take greater ownership over their own data, and has increased accountability across the organization. PSA has added a fairly hefty administrative burden to individuals, project managers, and our financial team. Read full review ScreenShots