Changepoint, a discontinued product, began as a professional services automation and portfolio management product, was acquired by Compuware in 2004, and was later divested to Marlin Equity Partners in 2014. Under Changepoint, the company acquired Daptiv that same year, combining its professional services automation capabilities with SaaS project portfolio management. Planview acquired Changepoint in 2021 and offered it as Planview ChangePoint. It is no longer available to new customers.
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Karbon
Score9.4 out of 10
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Karbon is presented as a collaborative practice management solution for accounting firms. It includes communication and workflow tools to streamline practice operations, with task automation for common processes, and scheduling data collection. Its features encompass: Client Management - tracking the relationship with all the firm's customers. Knowledge Centralization - A single source of truth for job tracking. Business Analytics - Insights to guide firm…
Changepoint is basic and would, therefore, work for businesses with uncomplicated requests, pretty straightforward workflows and willingness to work with an unsightly solution. It is basic, from the UI to the search option and the way the information is captured, which can be frustrating and counter-intuitive at times. It is relatively robust (i.e. I have been using it for almost 2 years and have not seen it crash once) but it does log me out when the system has been inactive for about 30 minutes - and I am only notified about being logged out upon clicking the Submit button, meaning many a line of text have been typed more than once!
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Having a tool where all of our task management and communication internally and externally is connect is a big pro for Karbon. When we made the switch we were able to eliminate multiple 3rd party tools we were using that didn't talk to each other. They are always updating and rolling out new features so you can stay up to date with what comes next to help your business. Being able to see all of the work agreed to for a client, all of the time budgets vs actual time, and then the specific tasks with specific notes, along with attaching all of the documentation (bills, emails, cc expenses ect) to the work items and having it all in one place so that the client work can be done by multiple people in our office has been a game changer for us for capacity and just not having one person hold all of the knowledge.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Changepoint has significant reporting capabilities, though of course, the data that comes out is only as good as the data that goes in. I enjoy being able to use the standard reports to understand exactly how much a project has cost us and to compare it to how much we are charging. This allows us to more accurately set our prices. Though we have not used the report designer capability, I understand that custom reports can be designed with relative ease.
Changepoint has a versioning capability for changes made to user profiles in the system manager, which I find particularly helpful. As a non-power user, it is valuable to be able to see what changes I have made to various profiles so that I can troubleshoot a problem down the line.
Changepoint has significant functionality well beyond the features that we are currently using, and for this reason, I think it is affordable and a good deal. Particularly if your organization is interested in dedicating the time and resources into using all of the features around project planning, resource allocation, etc., the price is well worth the value.
Resource management: Ability to view workloads of team members and reallocate easily in the event a team member is on leave.
Workflow management: Repeating workflows allows consistency of work and visibility of where work is up to.
Communication: As a remote team, communication is vital. We use tagging and assigning to ensure relevant team members are across the information they need to be. The client portal is handy for keeping sensitive information off email.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
We use Changepoint to manage the IS organization. I would like to see more advancement in order to do benefits management.
I would like to see a capability where a project manager can build a very detailed work breakdown structure, but only require project resources to charge time and provide a task status at a higher level.
Time integration with XPM: We use fixed fee billing through Ignition, with invoices flowing through to XPM where we manage WIP against time. At the moment, time recorded in Karbon needs to be manually entered into XPM. A direct integration that automatically pushes Karbon time into XPM would remove this duplication and improve accuracy. Alternatively, if Karbon could pull the relevant Ignition billing information through in a way that supported WIP management, that could remove the need to maintain time separately in XPM.
Intelligence and reporting: I find the Intelligence area quite clunky for the management reporting we need. It can be slow to load, includes former team members who are difficult to exclude, and it is not easy to quickly produce a clean report with the key information required to manage the business.
I would like simpler, faster reporting around measures such as team productivity, revenue compared to payroll costs, utilisation and other operational performance metrics. Ideally, these reports would be included in the current subscription model, easy to filter and export for use for management decisions. The current experience has not provided enough value for us, and as a result I cancelled the Intelligence section of our subscription this year.
Bulk workflow updates: Making changes across a large number of recurring client workflows can be time consuming because many updates need to be made individually. While Karbon allows bulk updates using standard work templates, applying these can overwrite or remove client specific customisation, so it is not always practical for established workflows. It would be useful to be able to add a new task section to existing recurring workflows in bulk, while leaving all existing client specific tasks, settings and customisations intact. This would make it easier to roll out process improvements across the client base without having to manually update every workflow.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Sometimes the decision to renew boils down to an old adage "if it isn't broken don't fix it". Previous to moving to Changepoint, it was obvious that we needed a better project management tool. Projects we completed on time but the time zone difference between the teams and several iterations of back and forth caused a number of communication issues with projects. The difference is night and day.
As mentioned previously, it is a great tool to increase overall productivity and transparency. The work appears in my-week making things hard to slip under the radar.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Planview Changepoint helps us to understand our key customers enabling us to capitalize on every financial opportunity and helps us to forecast demand against the capacities required for new opportunities, and also it automates and monitors contractual terms and conditions. It gives us visibility into our employees' skills and helps to optimize resource allocation.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
I used CCH Prosystems for many years and in different variations and versions. I found that the training provided was lacking and the program was not user friendly. My former firm paid a great deal of money and we didn't use half of the functions it claimed to have due to the unfriendly nature of the platform.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Employee efficiency has decreased significantly within our Project MAnagement team. The main causes are lack of logical steps/not user-friendly and the slowness of the entire program.
Changepoint PSA has greatly improved being able to track budgets for all projects. Before this software, budgets were done manually by hand and cross-referenced with Accounting. Now, we can pull a report out of the system, as long as all parties entered their time and data correctly.
