Certinia PS Cloud software is a cloud-based services solution that is built on the Force.com platform. It allows companies to manage professional resources, customers, projects and financials in one integrated services management application. Because the solution works natively with Force.com, it utilizes the same data for sales, services and finance on one system.
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Jira Work Management
Score 8.2 out of 10
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Jira Core is Atlassian's general purpose business and project management tool available to smaller companies or teams and designed to suit a variety of purposes (e.g. marketing planning, product roadmap, etc.). In Jira Core, Workflows define process and enable teams to track tasks. Jira Core Cloud instances also have boards that let users visualize workflows and drag and drop tasks from to-do to done. It is available on the cloud.
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.
Jira Work Management suits projects involving multiple teams, such as product development. In our case, the design, development, and QA teams use Jira to track tasks from ideation to deployment. Custom workflows and real-time updates ensure that all teams are on the same page, and the ability to link related tasks helps manage dependencies effectively.
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
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 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
Now that I've been using Jira Work Management for a few years, it feels intuitive. However, when I first started, there was an employee who was far more familiar with Jira Work Management. They taught me the ropes so that I could learn the basics. Eventually we experimented with the tool and learned some new tricks, but it's best to learn from someone who already knows how to use it.
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)
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.
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.
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.
The evolution of Jira Service Desk to Jira work management is accompanied by lot of new features like the List View which allows inline editing, easy column management, the Calendar View bases on extensible modal and state categories, the Timeline View supports tasks and subtasks, the Boards which allow the categorization of status and allow the visibility of subtasks on the cards, Forms can be created very easily, Project templates can be used based on the business area.
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.
It has allow us the proper documentation of over 50 products.
Time spent on activities has been reduced by a 25%.
The reporting module has allowed us to identify over 10 problems in our workflow, allowing us to solve them and become more effective and efficient with it.
