CMiC Construction Platform vs. Microsoft Dynamics SL vs. Planview Portfolios

CMiC is a robust platform best suited for large companies with resources for implementation and management of the program. One analogy is CMiC is like a droid phone where the user must decide how to use all the features of the program (as opposed to an iPhone where most configuration decisions are made for the user). Smaller companies with limited resources can struggle with CMiC both with the expense and configuration.

Incentivized

In the service series, there is a weakness in applying revenue recognition concepts which are a strong point of the project series. It is difficult to get a period sensitive WIP that could be recreated at any time for a point in time (fiscal period).

Incentivized

Planview Portfolios is well suited to provide a single, central, view of the truth. There is clear expansion capabilities to integrate it as a true Enterprise toolset with existing organisation wide (not just delivery) - you can pick and choose what you need to implement and that list gets longer. The ability to quickly gain an understanding of resources within the overall portfolio and some really clever tools regarding capacity and demand modelling. I think the only challenge we have encountered is modelling our Business as Usual activity to a level of detail - this is due to other tools being very embedded not just in the organisation but across a lot of industries.

Incentivized

• The user interface is similar to that of other project management software applications so folks in our company that had previously used other applications have been able to switch over fairly easily.
• I really like the software and it was much less expensive than other applications.
• I like the mobile application so that our superintendents can view the documentation on their phones.
• I really like the punch list capability mobile field, however, we have a hard time getting our superintendents to use it for some reason.

Incentivized

• Ability to add companies, and sub-accounts on the fly allows for the growth of the system without conversions, and flexible reporting allows for the quick utilization of the data.
• Multi-Company allows for easy and automated data entry and reporting across multiple legal entities and business segments.
• Multi-Company also allows for easy centralization of business processes (AP check writing and Fixed Assets for example), while spreading data entry across the enterprise.
• Ability to Copy/Paste into Dynamics SL has always been a strength- especially from Excel. The additional power of being able to use Excel for a myriad of calculations, including complex allocations, and formatting the result into a JE to paste directly into the Journal Entry Screen has saved countless hours in data-entry, and made re-use of complex items very easy.

Incentivized

• Out of the box analytics. Canned, but modestly configurable reports that provide quick insights to project and resource performance.
• Flexible configuration enables resource management at a macro or micro level.
• Modeling (what-if). I can create projects, load with resources and quickly stack it against our existing portfolios to identify conflicts and optimize scheduling.

Incentivized

• Entering a code of the vendor instead of the company name while recording an invoice takes time and seems counter intuitive
• Editing an invoice created through Image Management on the AP side is limited to description and address field. When changing the rest (invoice# or a date or an amount) - the whole trace of who entered/submitted/approved disappears. The way it works now is: deleting an invoice from the batch, locating it through Registry/invoice search, unsubmitting it, making changes, submitting, adding back to batch - time consuming
• In Multiple distribution pop up window, when entering a new invoice, I'd make the field "Company" to be autofilled once "Job" is entered. It takes time to memorize what job number belongs to what company.
• There is only web version available and it is limited compare to a desktop client. For instance I can only make one change at a time and save it. Multiple changes don't get saved in one click

Incentivized

• When we have a lot of invoices rather than just a few large invoices, we can be frustrated by how long it takes Flexible Billings to generate a lot of invoices
• It would be nice if Dynamics SL had an easy integration to some of the nicer salestax tools such as Avalara and CCH.
• It would be nice if the fixed assets module and electronic banking were not third party.

Incentivized

• Capturing lower-level detailed expenditures within a project so that financial screens can show the details of the roll-up.
• Reporting flexibility so that end users can create their own quick ad hoc reports for analysis.
• Capturing matrixed skills on resources to ensure staffing is adequate and better align demand to supply.

Incentivized

I can't even begin to imagine the thought of going through another software conversion so I do not think I would even consider switching at this point. It does everything we need it to do so I don't have any reason to recommend not renewing at this point in time

Incentivized

Unfortunately, Dynamics' lack of ability to smoothly integrate with our CRM system is causing us to look at other solutions. The efficiencies that we gain by using Dynamics for our day to day accounting are lost in the constant headaches of getting sales quotes to import properly into the system for invoicing. Another major issue for us has been budgeting and reporting. We currently do all of our budgeting and board reporting in Excel, which is too time consuming and inefficient, especially when a system as robust as Dynamics should easily be able to handle this relatively simple task.

Incentivized

Portfolios are useful enterprise solutions for new and old use cases. They have robust reporting capabilities and many opportunities to customize the functions without additional costs. Although some desired features are still in development, and the reporting infrastructure has some issues, Portfolios continue to offer more capabilities than we can take advantage of at any time.

Incentivized

I believe it isn't easy to use and is unintuitive. Undecipherable error messages appear throughout the application without indicating what is wrong or how to correct it, in my experience. The terminology on the screens is specific to Canada, which adds to the confusion.

Incentivized

SL itself is relatively easy to use and most of the Help Files documentation is well kept and outstanding in the amount of information that is given. Most end users pick up the functions quickly and are off and running after some limited training. There will always be questions and research to be done, but overall SL is relatively easy to follow for a seasoned user

Incentivized

Perfect tool for planning resource time management. Giving flexibility with ease in uptodate . Team collabration . Team aligment. Top management aligment. Close the project with feed back . Team aligment. Expert contribution in task . Task management easy for project manager . Nice tool to have for project manager. Cost contol & project management is very easy with Planview

Incentivized

Sometimes since this is a cloud based product the system can become slow but we haven’t had any issues of availability without CMiC first letting us know it would be down

Incentivized

We have had only one unplanned outage for 2 hours in the last 30 months. We shut down for 30 min to 1 hour once a month, but that is for Microsoft OS updates to the servers. Being a 24/7 world wide operation, the reliability is really important. We do get an 8 hour window on the weekend that we can be down for a short period to install Microsoft Dynamics SL updates, but we do not have many of those. On our last version upgrade, we shut the users out at 9:30 am and were fully operational in less than 6 hours. The upgrade was New SQL server, New SL server and 2 new Citrix servers.

Incentivized

We are long time Planview users and its availability is only limited to our internal SLAs for nightly backups. I have never experienced any unexpected or prolonged software downtime from Planview itself.

Reports are pretty shown to run but general pages typically load pretty quick.

Incentivized

There are occasions when the system is a bit sluggish. However, it may not always be on the Planview side. We are investing in better tools to monitor our network performance, which will help us diagnose issues more effectively in the future.

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The support team [has] been in touch with our deployment team and has given them effective guidance up to completion. It has helped us in [the] best methods of resource allocation and secure record-keeping process. We have tracked all our billing information and made the right payments with documentation and avoided [unnecessary losses]. [The] support team has [to] lead our teams to the right channels and empowering our team with the right skills for maximum production.

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Many times support will tell you that your issue is an identified bug and will be scheduled in the future to be fixed in a future release. The knowledgebase has gotten worse in recent years and much more difficult to use. many times you can't find the error during the search

Incentivized

Consultants are knowledgeable and friendly; it is easy to build relationships with the support people you work with and they learn how best to help you. The vendor is continuously looking for honest feedback about their tool and they use that information to design their product roadmaps

The training was on system functions and not really how best to use it for our business. It would have been nice to be provided recommendations for use rather than just a blank slate of functionality.

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I felt the training was good and the trainers knew the software.

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Generally good. Sometimes, users are a bit overwhelmed, and it takes multiple sessions for them to get the hang of it.

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Lots of confusion between sales and implementation regarding what was included and not included...the security encountered a "bug" and made it extremely difficult to set up roles and individual responsibilities

Incentivized

Just to let it take its course. The implementation for me once I became a part of my former organization was pretty seamless. Just get to know the basics and call the support team to ask questions if you need help on an issue, should they arise. They are ready, willing, and able to help!

Incentivized

Always have a pre-implementation meeting or conference call with Planview to ensure all are on the same page, disclosure of all and any customization (including reports) and plan for support after implementation of a specified amount of time with the assigned implementation resource. And document everything

CMiC Construction Platform is the best price point in the market. Others are revenue-based billings, and the annual fees reflect as such. CMiC Construction Platform support staff is generally amazing and offers real-time support on critical issues. The imaging and workflow functions are real-time savers. CMiC Construction Platform is generally a smaller and in touch organization that treats your team like their own and stays with you after the purchase.

Incentivized

We started with QuickBooks Enterprise when our company was young. We quickly outgrew this program as it was not able to accommodate the financial reporting we needed to satisfy our investors. QuickBooks was also very limited in managing our revenue as we grew. We did try Great Plains and Peachtree (now Sage 50) and we discovered that they were rather complicated for our users. They were not as easy to maneuver and manipulate as SL and we felt that SL was much more "user friendly" and simplified, but still able to produce the same results.

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We are currently using Planview AgilePlace. Also we use Tasktop Hub for integrating with other applications within the organization. We would like to use ProjectPlace which is integrated with Planview Portfolios in the future.

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CMiC has several key features that can either work together or independently depending on your companies needs.

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Since the backbone of the database is MS SQLServer, the database can be easily scaled.

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We are constantly growing and expanding. It is challenging to accommodate different user needs, but the system does provide means of doing that as we desire.

Incentivized

• We've knocked days, if not weeks, off of our timeline to getting invoices paid using Image manager and workflow approvals.
• Because we have real time cost and budget information all in one place, we've knocked a day or two off of each project for their monthly forecasts, and we're much more consistent and accurate than we were before CMiC.
• Because we pull a large chunk of project information into our BI reports, we've never had better visibility into projects and their potential issues. We're able to compare current project progress with past similar projects to determine if we are going to have an issue before it actually happens.

Incentivized

• Dramatic improvement in our ability to judge the profitability of jobs.
• Lots of improvements in delivering invoices and statements to customers.
• Automated AP approvals and imaging made our last tax audit a breeze.
• Ease of reporting data is a big plus. Financial statements with drill down capability are very useful.
• One integrated system means less data moving around and more real time information.
• EFT payments, email statements and live linked Excel charts have improved our efficency
• Too many more to name.

Incentivized

• The positive impact is the ability to manage our projects enterprise wide.
• Managing and reporting on projects and programs via portfolios makes it easy to identify troubled projects/programs that need immediate attention.
• The negative is that pushing too much change too quickly is hard for us. We need to get our users focused on the basics of PM before we can adopt everything else. We need to introduce change to different companies based on their maturity level. Too much change too quickly is not always beneficial. We need to focus on core competencies.

Incentivized