Autotask PSA is designed as a complete IT Business Management Platform for MSPs, now from Datto (resulting from the Autotask merger with Datto in 2017).
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IBM Maximo Application Suite
Score 8.2 out of 10
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IBM Maximo Application Suite is an enterprise asset management (EAM) platform.
In my opinion, Datto Autotask is exceptionally complicated to set up, manage, and use on a daily basis. I would think the target market for this product would be someone managing a team of 20 - 50 people, possibly more. In my experience, for it to run properly you will need to dedicate at least half an FTE to running this product in an organization of that size per month. I would not recommend it for companies with less than 10 people or for companies that value quick communication with their clients. I would not recommend it for companies using Datto's RMM product. The integration exists, but it is clearly a bolt-on. They were not developed together and they are slow to talk to each other. Frequently you cannot add details from RMM sessions into the PSA without manually copying the ticket number, and if the ticket is more than a week old, then you can't even find it with the ticket number.
IBM Maximo Application Suite is well suited for organizations looking for an application to track their end-to-end procurement and supply chain process. It can also be used for billing services, but that would mainly be for services provided as part of a work order, not voluminous customer billing. IBM Maximo Application Suite allows us to have one application where someone from procurement can input contracts and details, someone from any various department can create a requisition and superiors can use automated workflow to approve a purchase order, and someone at an operations location can receive and store materials. Subsequently, someone in the field can submit their hours and material used and it be approved via automated workflow for an invoice to be created. Payment functionality is possible, but we did not implement this aspect of IBM Maximo Application Suite. To note, throughout the process, interfacing can be set up to send transactions to your general ledger. As far as interfacing, IBM Maximo Application Suite also offers tools and configuration to set up endpoints. We have been able to set up REST APIs and request/responses without heavy involvement from developers. This is a nice bonus if integrating with multiple applications.
The graphical calculations on time spent on requests, how long they were open for, who worked on a ticket last.
Grouping by priority so you can determine easier what needs to be addressed sooner rather then later. This also helps if Account Management has conversations a technician is not aware of so they can prioritize efficiently.
The email updates that are sent out to the technicians so they are aware of upcoming or stale tickets.
Delivers Out-of-Box solutions for various industries without the need for customization and configuration
Modules and Applications are well developed and linked in an orderly way, with proper documentation and help guides that allow end users to start using the system with ease
Powerful Work Management, Contracts, Inventory, and Purchasing applications and features that are a better match to other ERP applications today
Hard to implement. A high number of resources and manpower is necessary to implement and upgrade IBM Maximo due to its robustness and number of functionalities.
Version fragmentation. Due to the challenge imposed by a version upgrade, it is common to find systems relying on legacy versions of Maximo which might become a challenge for the support team.
Unfriendly UI. The excess of functionalities and services available might become a challenge for a starting user. Although it is possible to customize the UI to fit the exact needs of each user, it is important to map exactly what each user needs.
The versatility, strength, and value that IBM Maximo adds to our company's asset management procedures. The platform has greatly increased operational efficiency and asset performance by streamlining jobs, automating procedures, and offering customizable solutions. Furthermore, IBM's constant assistance and updates have been crucial in meeting changing company requirements. Though there's always potential for improvement.
The gui screens in IBM Maximo Application Suite are not overly cluttered with options to click and navigate to new areas. That is, the display is more of a layout of fields that the user can either input data or just interpret what is on the screen. For those in IT, there is even a feature (press Alt+F1) that will show you the exact table and column of any field selected.
I have regularly contacted IBM Support to report issues and raise requests for issues we face during project implementations. The response from them has overall been good and to the point, and they get back to us within a day or 2 and guide us through the process of fixing it or providing an interim fix of the product
The portion of Autotask that we've used other companies for prior to using Autotask is the Endpoint Management. The Autotask Endpoint Management (AEM) portal integrates perfectly with their PSA/CRM tools. It's alerting features are much better than the above software as there aren't a bunch of superfluous and unneeded alerts. Instead, it only alerts for things that you specify that you want. Alerts aside, for the PSA/CRM, I don't have much to compare it to as Autotask was the first PSA we tried. It's hard to imagine a PSA having more features or doing a better job than Autotask.
As a computerized maintenance management system i do not have experience of any other system. The only experience I have is for Maximo and it works excellent for me. I am using many modules available in Maximo and all of these modules are almost fulfilling all of my business needs.
