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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    BQE CORE

    Score8.8 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

    Kayako

    Score6.8 out of 10
    N/AKayako is a help desk and customer support platform that helps businesses automate workflows, improve agent productivity, and deliver personalized customer experiences across email, chat, and social media.

    $79

    per month

    Pricing
    BQE COREKayako
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Kayako One
    $79
    per month
    Enterprise
    Contact Sales
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    BQE COREKayako
    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
    Community Pulse
    BQE COREKayako
    Considered Both Products
    BQE Software Inc.
    No answer on this topic
    Kayako
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    94%
    Would buy again
    144 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    98%
    Delivers good value for the price
    106 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    98%
    Happy with the feature set
    150 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    92%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    70 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    82%
    Implementation went as expected
    81 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Features
    BQE COREKayako
    Incident and problem management
    Comparison of Incident and problem management features of BQE CORE and Kayako
    Feature
    BQE CORE
    -
    Ratings
    Kayako
    2.0
    11 Ratings
    122% below category average
    Organize and prioritize service tickets00 Ratings1.011 Ratings
    Expert directory00 Ratings1.05 Ratings
    Subscription-based notifications00 Ratings1.08 Ratings
    ITSM collaboration and documentation00 Ratings1.07 Ratings
    Ticket creation and submission00 Ratings7.011 Ratings
    Ticket response00 Ratings1.011 Ratings
    Self Help Community
    Comparison of Self Help Community features of BQE CORE and Kayako
    Feature
    BQE CORE
    -
    Ratings
    Kayako
    1.0
    9 Ratings
    156% below category average
    External knowledge base00 Ratings1.09 Ratings
    Internal knowledge base00 Ratings1.08 Ratings
    Multi-Channel Help
    Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of BQE CORE and Kayako
    Feature
    BQE CORE
    -
    Ratings
    Kayako
    1.0
    10 Ratings
    156% below category average
    Customer portal00 Ratings1.07 Ratings
    IVR00 Ratings1.02 Ratings
    Social integration00 Ratings1.04 Ratings
    Email support00 Ratings1.010 Ratings
    Help Desk CRM integration00 Ratings1.06 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    BQE COREKayako
    Small Businesses
    Autotask PSA
    Score7.7 out of 10
    Help Scout
    Score9.3 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Workday Professional Services Automation
    Score8.2 out of 10
    LiveAgent
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Planview AdaptiveWork
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Front
    Score9.2 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    BQE COREKayako
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.4
    (167 ratings)
    1.0
    (22 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    7.0
    (8 ratings)
    7.8
    (11 ratings)
    Usability
    9.6
    (117 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Availability
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    7.5
    (2 ratings)
    Performance
    7.3
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.4
    (90 ratings)
    2.1
    (4 ratings)
    Online Training
    6.4
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    2.3
    (6 ratings)
    9.0
    (2 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 COREKayako
    Likelihood to Recommend
    BQE Software Inc.
    I would recommend this for our industry: architecture, engineering, or construction. I would recommend this for any larger firm with many employees or high number of projects. I would particularly recommend this for a company with projects that have budget constraints and where time tracking and expense tracking is very important. I would not recommend this complicated software for a small firm with a small amount of income or number of projects.
    Read full review
    Kayako
    When it works, It's without a doubt a great help desk solution. It is perfect for our usage, and have rolled it out company-wide. It's great if you have multiple departments. We have it set up so most items come through a single desk that then hands out tickets to their proper department. There may be cheaper options for smaller organizations but for one that is as service-driven as ours, we really think Kayako is a great fit.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Kayako
    • Gives a very good report on an individual level of what is being done for a customer or corporate issue.
    • Easy to understand who has what, what the tickets are about, how long they have been opened and how many times the customer/employee have gone back and forth with each other.
    • Nice dashboard view.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Kayako
    • Departments need a bit of work. Even though you can have multiple departments, the only changes that can be made are globally. If you want independent queues within the departments, you have to do a lot of work that can be very confusing.
    • Survey system is not up to speed. Kayako really needs to add Net Promoter Score into their system. Also, if a staff user removes their name from an incident ticket, it removes them from the survey so you really can't even get a good estimate of how well your staff is in the eyes of the customer.
    • Very difficult to implement when you already have a customer base. Setting them up in organizations is difficult. Also, the sign-up for new customers is quirky. If you send an email to Kayako, it will say you are not an authorized user, however, it will store your email address. If you try to send an email a second time, it will go through. This is one of many reasons why we decided to move from Kayako to Oracle Service Cloud.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Kayako
    • We are grandfathered in on their old Software-assurance pricing and our continued use costs us only a few hundred dollars a year (excluding hosting expenses)
    • Our team's processes are now heavily ingrained in the system
    • We have not been shown a more compelling option that is more cost-effective while still offering all the features we've come to expect
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Kayako
    I did not come from an IT background and I picked this program up quickly
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    BQE Software Inc.
    I can only remember a couple of times in 4 years that Core has been unavailable.
    Read full review
    Kayako
    They are really good, but it takes a while to get back, because of the large time difference to the Eastern US. However, they are very helpful.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Read full review
    Kayako
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Kayako
    • We didn't have to use support too much, but when we did, they were able to assist us and help us make everything work.
    • Mostly we used their Online KB and step by step instructions to get all of our issues resolved.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Online Training
    BQE Software Inc.
    Make sure you have someone training you that fits your style of learning.
    Read full review
    Kayako
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Kayako
    Three years in we are about as happy with Kayako as we could be. We've had several employee's leave and on-boarding new hires was easier than it has ever been as things are uniform and consistent across the entire application.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Kayako
    We were using Spiceworks for a few years before switching to Kayako but found that it wasn't as customizable or as user friendly for our customers. The SNMP scanning and inventory features with Spiceworks was nice but we needed more of a Help Desk that would allow us to scale our services to more companies.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    BQE Software Inc.
    This software works on a small and large scale.
    Read full review
    Kayako
    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
    Read full review
    Kayako
    • Tickets were definitely responded to faster once we implemented the audible alarm that would go off when new tickets came into the queue. This was possible because of the API.
    • Since the system was email based we could set our monitoring software up to generate tickets automatically via email for customers when it found something out of the ordinary.
    Incentivized
    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