Autodesk AEC Collection vs. Emptoris vs. PairSoft

If you are a commercial contractor or subcontractor, Autodesk AEC Collection, along with other Autodesk software is a must. There is no other way to design estimate and plan large construction. For residential construction, It may not be as necessary but it could still be useful if your primary construction projects are new builds rather than renovations.

Incentivized

If you have a highly bureaucratic organization that is heavily focused on procurement, Emptoris can provide some value. It seemed to be very good at linking the contract information to procurement for better spend control. If you are trying to implement a standalone contract management solution that allows you to easily create contracts and store them in a central location, this isn't the tool for you. There doesn't appear to be a simplified implementation. In general, when a SaaS solution has a complicated and expensive implementation, I am very skeptical. This does not show that the vendor is trying to move customers forward on a single code base. If that many things need to be done during implementation, you are starting to customize the solution for every customer. This hurts the vendor's ability to scale and make improvements in the future.

Incentivized

PaperSave is ideal for any fundraising company. Its ability to import spreadsheets from queries and import documents into constituent records is an invaluable tool for a fundraiser. Though the program sometimes has its hiccups, overall it serves its intended functions quite well.

Incentivized

• Collaboration with multiple users and
• Software for Computer Assisted Design
• Saving and Documentation of Plans and Blueprints

Incentivized

• Document protection - the Check Out contract feature is a great way to allow external parties to make modifications to contract language without the ability to accept those changes. Those redlines can then be imported back into Emptoris and reviewed or further modified as needed.
• Notifications & reminders - you can trigger an email manually from within the system, or you can configure automated notifications andreminders to alert users when a new task is received or has aged a given amount of days, etc.
• Interview wizard - there is a lot of value in the interview wizard. Administrators can configure screens with selecting options via check boxes, radio buttons, or typed-in values. Variables and conditions can be used to selectively populate fields within the contract or apply other options, making for a quick and convenient method to generate contracts conforming to corporate standards.
• Field customization - administrators can customize a list of options for various fields including contract substatus, address type, and user created business term variables.
• Approvals - many different options are available to configure approvals to trigger automatically upon presenting and/or executing the contract including specific individuals, one or more approver groups, or based upon various criteria including terms within the contract, type of contract, or the contract's owning organization.

Incentivized

• Meta data assignment to documents
• Easy UI

• Revit is limited in its use for civil engineering and landscape architecture.
• There are bugs due to the complex nature of the software.
• Use of software requires the latest high-tech computers.

Incentivized

• Reporting, Emptoris comes with standard reports which can not always can be fit into our business. This needs to be improved. I hope Emptoris is addressing this issue in their latest releases.
• Though the feature of editing language in MS word is excellent, loading MS word takes time.

• The interface could be updated.
• The program sometimes will continue to run in the background after Raiser's Edge is closed.
• Initial use can be a little confusing to learn.

Incentivized

I gave a rating of 10 because, thus far, Autodesk AEC Collection Seems to be on the leading edge for what is required for the construction planning, implementation, and continued of real-world assets. Autodesk has been a great benefit for our organization and has allowed us to continue to improve not only ourselves but the people we work with. We have been using Autodesk AEC Collection for a number of years and hope to continue for a long time coming.

Incentivized

There are a lot of new, exciting products coming out in every field and I believe that there is always something better right over the horizon. If it was my choice, I would review my usage of Emptoris and other software periodically to make sure I'm using the most efficient software possible.

Incentivized

The software has a significant learning curve. You also must know and understand construction standards and codes. Each member of our BIM team has spent 10+ years in construction and has had years of software training. The software also requires powerful computers to render the models. Without a BIM focused gpu and processor, the software will seem less usable when in reality, the computer is not capable of running the software properly

Incentivized

Emptoris is a pretty robust tool overall. Learning curve is small and it is simple to use

Incentivized

PaperSave is extremely easy to use and integrate into any fundraising office. If your company is using Blackbaud products, PaperSave will integrate seamlessly with Raiser's Edge and Raiser's Edge NXT. The ability to save documents to records seems like such a simple concept, but because Raiser's Edge doesn't offer this function in its own program, PaperSave is a life saver.

Incentivized

Similar to what I mentioned earlier in this review, the main pro of PaperSave for my company is its Raiser's Edge integration. The program loads immediately as soon as Raiser's Edge is launched so there's no need to open separate programs. The documents and queries loaded from PaperSave into Raiser's Edge were simple to upload and read.

Incentivized

The above rating for the overall support from Emptoris is for their product / product support, roll out training and refresher training / ongoing training, which is not only good but superior. There is no major or reconizable bad review that can be given to Emptoris at this point in time, from where is stands.

Incentivized

Other products that have been used include Civil Designer and Model Maker for civil services. Other products for structural designs include aq product called "SEDA" These products are not included in the listings.

Incentivized

I am a fan of Ariba to be used for the entire lifecycle of Sourcing. From RFX's to cutting PO's. I feel Emptoris misses the boat on the idea of a "One Stop Shop" for all of your Sourcing/Purchasing needs

Incentivized

PaperSave works well in part due to its database integration functionality. It allows our team to use Raiser's Edge (our main tool as it's our constituent database) without having to constantly switch back and forth between programs. It's simple enough for new staff members to learn as part of their on-boarding process and hasn't caused any major issues for our team.

Incentivized

• Positive impact on collaboration between disciplines.
• Products are the industry standard, which allows for collaboration with other firms.

Incentivized

• We won the 2005 Baseline Magazine Award for best ROI related to a technology implementation with an ROI 5544% (see 2005 Baseline ROI Awards, GlaxoSmithkline).
• We always felt we could do "two times the work, with half the people and deliver double the savings".

Incentivized

• Productive transaction documentation.