BQE CORE vs. Maximizer CRM

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.

It was not a good experience. Nothing was as advertised, from the user experience to the security of purchase. The address book was not able to be converted from the Leads module and the maps feature wasn’t able to connect from Leads. The mobile version has a lot of bugs and isn’t very functional. They have a tutorial, yet [I think they] aren’t proactive in distributing it to new users. Their focus is on sales. And it’s not a very salable product in my opinion. The worst aspect of this company is that they aren’t risk free. If you purchase a year software and decide after a few weeks it simply isn’t for your company, there are no refunds. I had to initiate a chargeback with my bank after being told that “unfortunately, due to the terms and conditions...” No customer wants to hear that. [I feel] they tried to bully me into keeping their software. There are far too many options in 2021 for CRM to be forced into one, especially one so difficult to use. When I asked about a feature that I needed, I was told, “Perhaps later this year...” Not what I need if I’m paying good money for a software. Their sales VP wouldn’t call me when I requested a call after being denied a refund. When I went through their main website again after my experience with Maximizer, I [felt] that everything they advertise is not in line with the product they put out. They say that there’s a free trial available. Not the truth [in my experience]. This maybe would have been a good CRM in say, 1999. [I think] it’s antiquated and didn’t serve the needs of my business. I used well-known CRM previously and didn’t find Maximizer to be better than the free version of that one. There was a disconnect in usage that wasn’t able to be overcome by myself or my employees in several weeks of trials.

• 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

• Shared Calendar
• Customer Service cases
• Common database of customer information

Incentivized

• 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

• Handling large data. Maximizer needs to improve on this.
• Add additional user-friendly shortcuts for the most frequently used functions in the web version.
• There is no mark for deletion option. They need to provide a way to delete without physically deleting records.

Incentivized

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

We are heavily entrenched in Maximizer and trying to pull our data out and into another CRM, with the same amount of customization and workflow would take a lot of effort.

Incentivized

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

The CRM didn’t have the capability I expected

I can only remember a couple of times in 4 years that Core has been unavailable.

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.

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

The support staff are very knowledgeable and competent. Never really had an issue with them not knowing what they are doing.

Incentivized

Make sure you have someone training you that fits your style of learning.

It does take some time to understand the options and to find the best invoice template.

Incentivized

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

We chose to go with Microsoft Dynamics CRM over Maximizer because of the customization and marketing options that were associated with Dynamics. The ease of use with Maximizer, however, was far better than that of Microsoft Dynamics.

Incentivized

This software works on a small and large scale.

• 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

• It allows us to maximize our service billing
• It is easy to generate service quotes
• It is easy to follow up on leads.

Incentivized