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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Scoro
Score 8.3 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
Scoro is a comprehensive work management solution for creative and professional services. It helps to streamline work and eliminate routine tasks to ensure a business runs as smoothly and efficiently as possible – from sales right through to billing. Scoro’s project management tools allow users to create project budgets, allocate non-billable and billable work, manage meetings, tasks, invoices, expenses, files, and more. All project information can be managed in a single…
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.
Scoro would be ideal for a larger business who is truly interested in developing a stronger and more efficient workflow. I honestly would have recommended it had it not been for the cost, the hidden fees, and the fact that I'd have to upgrade to an even more expensive plan if I wanted to get the most of the program for our level. We only needed one item, so would have ended up paying much more to not use a great deal of additional features. So, if you want to increase your workflow and have the funds, use them - absolutely. You will not regret it. But I cannot recommend it to someone who is on a tight budget
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
Cost. I ended up not recommending this product simply because of the cost alone. There are hidden costs you will not know about until it is too late. Their pricing model is geared for bigger businesses, and can cripple smaller ones. The pricing is by user. If you get the most basic of plans (with a 900 onboarding charge), you will realize that all the things you actually need to make the program effective are on the next tier up...
Quickbooks. At the time I was exploring this, Quickbooks was not very well integrated. If you wanted to include billing (which they do show promise for), then you will have issues here.
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
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.
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.
Scoro could have had a wonderful impact on the workflow of the business. It allows for integrations most programs don't, including accounting and time tracking, and could have easily eliminated the need for an FTE through the streamlining of tasks alone.
If we had implemented this program, we would have saved time, but all of the gains would have gone to pay for Scoro. It would not have balanced out, especially if they ever were to raise their rates.