Certinia PS Cloud vs. Planview ProjectPlace vs. Socialtext (discontinued)

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

Planview ProjectPlace is a vibrant platform that manages all activities and schedules different roles based on their urgency, importance, and requests. Further, Planview ProjectPlace outlines the need for proper documentation with the aim of accurate referencing. Tasks are credibly shared, and proper reporting is enhanced to transform firms' work environment. ; Lastly, Planview ProjectPlace brings sustainable email integration for enterprises.

Incentivized

We use Social Text as a platform to air our issues with different departments. We voice our concerns and suggestions so we can help find a solution to the problems we incur on a daily basis. We need to have social text as an app so we can communicate in real time not only during work hours.

• 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!

• Easy of use. Modules are well define.
• Navigation: Users can use the tool's search functionality to find what they are looking for easily. The home page is configurable to the users' needs.
• The knowledge center is a key function to understand the tool capabilities.

Incentivized

• Version history - Always keeps the edited versions and one can revert back any time
• Creating and Editing an article is very easy and intutive
• Sharing the articles with peers

• 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

• Under the time tracking, it would be nice to have a set template that would load each week and not have to click a button to load the previous week's template.
• Somehow making it more intuitive.
• Having to add in each service line and each detail that I cover for every service line each week is a bit ridiculous.

Incentivized

• Search needs a ton of improvements. It was very slow a year ago
• Search result quality was also not that good
• I know they have improved their UI recently but when i used it last year it did not really have any design elements which could be used to make the articles look more presentable. It was important for us as we used it for external communication as well.

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.

We're committed now & have >50 users on Projectplace. All our projects are now tracked in the tool. We this investment of time & training, the cost of maintaining Projectplace is relatively low for the benefit. So we will renew, even if there are some idiosyncrasies in the tool & there are opportunities for improvement.

Incentivized

We have a lot of info in Socialtext already. It would be hard to get all that info out and port it to a different system

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

Easy to use platform and provides the user with an amazing experience and straightforward tools that empower and help execute tasks with fast performances that allow quick and easy service delivery. Easy on implementation and get started immediately with enterprise-ready Planview Projectplace and start to connect with teams and departments at once.

Incentivized

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

No downtime-issues since the implementation. It has been very stable

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)

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.

I haven't needed to get in touch with support because the product is quite well structured and understandable. There were no issues initially when making payments or later for monthly payments. The project manager using the software is quite skilled in the software and has not needed much help. New licenses are easy to acquire, and there is no delay in getting them. I know there are several ways of support available, so that's a plus.

Incentivized

It was fine.

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.

create an extensive change management process to help folks embrace the change

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

[In my experience] Jira is more refined, better looking, and easier to become familiar with. Also, the massive market share of Jira helps in consultancy as you can switch between clients easily. Projectplace has many powerful tools but so does Jira, and Jira integrates with our suite of software much easier compared to Projectplace.

Incentivized

I frankly like Confluence better than socialtext because of the speed and the quality of search. They also have better design elements which can help make the articles pleasant to the eyes.

It is a bit more difficult to fluently use in large scale implementations

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

• [We have the] ability to support remote work through projects that scale across multiple groups
• We have large-scale quarterly projects, so the ability to save and duplicate project templates are helpful for us to keep track of tasks down to the specific card

Incentivized

• We get solutions to concerns much faster
• We promote interactions with the other depts
• We listen and have discussions