Certinia PS Cloud vs. Replicon Polaris PSA

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Certinia PS Cloud
Score 7.1 out of 10
N/A
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.N/A
Replicon Polaris PSA
Score 7.3 out of 10
N/A
Replicon Polaris PSA is a professional services automation platform containing project management, expense tracking, and billing features, from Replicon headquartered in Redwood City, California.N/A
Pricing
Certinia PS CloudReplicon Polaris PSA
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Certinia PS CloudReplicon Polaris PSA
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details——
More Pricing Information
Best Alternatives
Certinia PS CloudReplicon Polaris PSA
Small Businesses
HaloPSA
HaloPSA
Score 8.9 out of 10
HaloPSA
HaloPSA
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Planview AdaptiveWork
Planview AdaptiveWork
Score 7.0 out of 10
Planview AdaptiveWork
Planview AdaptiveWork
Score 7.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Planview AdaptiveWork
Planview AdaptiveWork
Score 7.0 out of 10
Planview AdaptiveWork
Planview AdaptiveWork
Score 7.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Certinia PS CloudReplicon Polaris PSA
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(13 ratings)
10.0
(4 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
7.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Certinia PS CloudReplicon Polaris PSA
Likelihood to Recommend
Certinia
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.
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Replicon Inc
It is perfect for inputing time sheets, time offs and expenses. It is hosted on the cloud, so accessible from anywhere, and even from mobile. It should nonetheless do just that, as it is not suited to track the work that you are doing or details about it. It is completely useless in that case.
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Pros
Certinia
  • 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!
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Replicon Inc
  • Many of our staff members work on multiple projects. Replicon PSM is ideal for managers to track all staff hours just by running a simple report.
  • It's so easy use & maintain.
  • Support team is really impressive, seem to know their product.
  • Reporting is a breeze.
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Cons
Certinia
  • 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
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Replicon Inc
  • Though the technical support staff are always very nice, sometimes they don't seem to understand exactly what the issue is based on our explanation. There have been several times when I've ended up solving the issue on my own without their assistance, despite numerous emails and phone calls. Could be a language barrier issue, perhaps they could receive more training in how companies are actually using the software on a daily basis.
  • Employee time sheets have to be approved by project managers and supervisors prior to my final approval. However, when viewing the time sheets in list form, there is no way for me to tell whether a time sheet has been approved by everyone else. I have to manually open each one and hover over the approver link. It would be helpful if there was a column in the list showing which approvers still need to approve it.
  • There have been a few times when time sheets were accidentally deleted by approvers. In order to retrieve them, we've had to contact Replicon support and have a backup instance of the information created. It would be great if perhaps there was some sort of archive or recently deleted section that could be accessed right away without having to go through Replicon support, a folder or something that would hold on to recently deleted files for a few days or a week just in case they needed to be retrieved.
  • Some of our projects have more than one project manager. Replicon currently allows for co-managers to be assigned to a project, but this status does not seem to include that co-manager in the approval of time sheets and expenses. We have had to manually create an approval path to include that second manager. It would be nice if co-managers would automatically be included in those approval paths.
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Likelihood to Renew
Certinia
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.
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Replicon Inc
No answers on this topic
Usability
Certinia
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
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Replicon Inc
No answers on this topic
Reliability and Availability
Certinia
We have maybe had 1-2 outages over 3 years.
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Replicon Inc
No answers on this topic
Performance
Certinia
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)
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Replicon Inc
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Certinia
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.
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Replicon Inc
No answers on this topic
In-Person Training
Certinia
It was fine.
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Replicon Inc
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Certinia
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.
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Replicon Inc
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Certinia
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.
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Replicon Inc
We used to track time on JIRA on the tickets. This was good enough for time tracking, but didn't integrate efficiently with accounting software, so accountants had to replicate manually the data from JIRA to their software in order to bill clients. Using Replicon made things much easier for them.
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Return on Investment
Certinia
  • 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.
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Replicon Inc
  • No negative; we just use it for timesheets.
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