Bitrix24 vs. Certinia PS Cloud

Bitrix24 is highly beneficial for teams that are geographically dispersed or working remotely. Its real-time communication tools, including instant messaging and video conferencing, enable seamless collaboration regardless of physical location. The centralized document management feature ensures that team members can easily access and collaborate on shared documents from anywhere, facilitating efficient teamwork in a remote or distributed environment.

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.

Incentivized

• Huge opportunities for customization, integration with other services. Easy search for solutions to setup questions.
• The ability to write letters directly from the system with the help of a binding for working mail.
• The presence of an application for Android. This helps to get access anywhere.

Incentivized

• 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!

• It's user interface can use some work. Although it doesn't take as long as some other software to learn, there is still a bit of a learning curve when it comes to day to day usage.
• Bitrix offers a lot of features. It would be nice to have those features laid out in an easier-to-read layout, versus the long list at the side of the page.
• It's mobile app functionality is quite limited. It can be difficult to work with other team members, solely off of their mobile app.

Incentivized

• 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

It has become the central nervous system of the business and has constantly proven to be of value. We are not just renewing but might even upgrade to advanced Bitrix24 plans and will be adding more user licenses in the next 3 months. Bitrix24 has a sharper learning curve initially. However once it is surpassed, it opens doors to a range of creative deployment strategies

Incentivized

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.

It is a time-saving CRM that will help save time by using one application for all your business needs. Our brain sees colors, images, drawings, it is very visual, and so is Bitrix24. You can plan visually and easily see how everything is progressing. It has tasks, projects management, chat and video, CRM (as you know), visual staff structure, calendar, shared drive, mobile app. You can't ask for anything better out on the market for what you get with their free version and also their step-up plan is $20/month, all the way up to $200, they have a plan for your business. Get your free account and try it out for a few weeks.

Incentivized

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

I can't recall any instance of unplanned outages over the past 1 year of use. Likewise for application errors. However note that, advanced users will have a learning curve

Incentivized

We have maybe had 1-2 outages over 3 years.

Technical performance is 10/10 so far. Cannot comment about integrations since we currently haven't tested those

Incentivized

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)

The absolute worst! Your only contact method is via the paid version and via a chat window. They will take days to answer and when they finally do answer, they will provide nothing but a half baked canned help file.

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.

It was fine.

Overall the training was very comprehensive. The trainer did provider necessary additional reading materials as well. However the general approach at Bitrix24 is to divert users to self-help documentation and videos. It is recommended that atleast 1-2 personnel in the organization be "Bitrix24 experts" so that lower phases of training requirements are covered internally itself. Also the best part about Bitrix24 is that not all users need to go very deep while using it. We have multiple counsellors who started using it on day 2 without any major hiccups

Incentivized

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.

In fact, I use both, but in different ways, monday to control the internal agenda, Bitrix for all other parts within the company, such as task control, chat with employees and with calendar also for control in two systems. Bitrix is ​​more complete and has many more features, but its purpose is also different from monday.

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.

Incentivized

The scalability and reliability is almost 9.5/10 to be honest. We istarted with Bitrix24 for just 2 functions and now have expanded its usage to 2 more. In terms of users, every full-time employee (FTE) now uses Bitrix24 without fail. We are also working on giving limited/partial access to external service providers

Incentivized

• It definitely has a positive impact as it helps with collaboration and improves data health.
• Overall it reduces time and speeds up the processes and helps achieve more in the less time.
• It has helped target the right customers and the success ration or the success rate has gone up when we have sent out marketing campaigns.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized