Planview AdaptiveWork vs. WorkOtter PPM

Planview AdaptiveWork is by far the most flexible project management tool we've ever used. The ability to customize and create solutions to fit our needs is beyond capable. We often find ourselves creating new workflows that make automatic actions in parts of a project, or send notifications, or add users, or update statuses... the list of things goes on and on. Essentially the ability to create an IF statement on pretty much EVERYTHING you can do in the system is unparalleled. If you can imagine it, you can achieve it.

Incentivized

I know it works well for IT but not sure how it would work for construction. I think construction has a different set of needs.

• Highly customizable, can develop organization specific workflows, modules, etc.
• Interface (in most instances) is easy to use. Timesheets, project details, and report modules are fairly easy to navigate and understand.
• Good comms tools like discussions, group pages, automatic reminders and notifications.

Incentivized

• Users find it easy to use which is important if you have a large number of users who don't have time for a lot of training or when new hires come on-board.
• WorkOtter has a lot of advanced features that we don't use but when we do need one, it is nice to know the feature is waiting for us. We have used several of these features for special projects.
• It does a good job with resource management.

• Yes, Clarizen has time tracking functionality. But in the end, so does much other software, and they do it with a better, less confusing interface which is one of the reasons our organization ended up switching. The platform was crowded and made it confusing for users who only used it to track time (like me).
• Our organization also wanted software that would better house PTO information, in addition to time tracking, and Clarizen's program wasn't efficient enough.
• The point above also goes with expenses. We wanted a more diligent and robust expense report system. For our needs, Clarizen wasn't it.

Incentivized

• Nothing significant. Maybe could be faster at times but I'm not sure if that is our own internet connection.

I give my renewal of this product a 9. It's only because we never know what product may come out next and how other factors in our office political environment may cause impact upon this. If I always had my way, this is what we'd settle on as our de facto project management system.

It is easy to configure, intuitive. The customization process is in some ways better than Salesforce.com. It has a great UI. It does however depend on how it's implemented.

The design of it is generally fine, however the ability to data upload people from a spreadsheet is an obvious miss.

Sometimes it is slow when everyone is entering their time on Fridays or Mondays but other than that we rarely see downtime and maintenance notifications are well in advance.

Reports: Quick to Reasonable

Most Ancillary Pages: Quick to Reasonable
(By "ancillary" I mean lesser used/master data maintenance pages - e.g. People, Customers, Individual Tasks, Milestones, etc.)

Work Plan (with 100 sub items): Reasonable to Slow

It's a good experience overall. Clarizen was useful when needed. It's mostly needed for advice on how to do more sophisticated actions or how to change something that was set up administratively. It's seldom used otherwise. The product consistently works, the documentation is acceptable, and the generally intuitive product is easy enough for most staff to pick up without much issue.

Incentivized

• We worked with a Project Manager on their side. He was very good about developing a project plan to hit our goal. I think we had weekly or twice weekly calls – very steady cadence over 3 month period.
• Their PM skills were great – kept us on task. For the last week, they sent 2 people on site and they did training for power users. After that a couple of them revisited here

Our trainer, Alex, is exceptional and knows the product really well. I swear he must have wrote the product himself! His manner with training is very easy going, gives you homework that is applicable to what you need to learn and stages it correctly for you. It was a pleasure to be trained by him.

I performed the implementation with our Clarizen provide trainer, who knew the product 100% and it went quickly and without a problem. It was a pleasurable process without the problems other software implementation often encounter. Kudos to the Clarizen team for making this a worry free process for their clients because it is worry free.

Planview AdaptiveWork was the right size, at the right price point that fit our customization and integration flexibility. It is intuitive to use but allowed us to add complexity as our needs grew

Incentivized

• We use the time tracking reports to help identify types of projects for which we're under charging for implementation fees
• We use the notes tracking for assisting with post mortems when projects go off the rails
• We use the tracking of ARR and implementation fees to pull together reports based on go live that let us know how we're tracking towards our yearly goals

Incentivized

• I think it has really helped us make sure we are using resources effectively but I think it is hard to prove. Although we don't have hard ROI numbers, I believe the general feeling is that you really need a good PPM tool or will waste a lot of time and money.
• It helps with communication since we have a standard process.