Deltek's Ajera is an integrated project management and accounting suite for architectural and engineering (A & E) companies that includes light payroll functionality and also can integrate with third-party payroll providers (ADP, Paychex, Quickbooks, etc.). The product was acquired with original developer Axium in June 2014. CRM functionality can also be added via integration with the Deltek Ajera CRM.
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LiquidPlanner
Score 8.6 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
LiquidPlanner is a cloud based predictive project management solution. Some key features include: Dynamic Timeline View, Workload View, and Real-Time Activity Stream.
For small to medium engineering and architecture firms, Ajera appears to be the right size. Beyond the engineering software, Deltek Ajera has all the features a small to medium firm will need for smooth operation. AR, AP, Payroll, reporting, project management are all in one package. We chose to self-host because the licensing was more cost effective for us, but cloud hosting is also available.
LiquidPlanner is amazing for any time of project management scenario where you have to manage several teams and details. Running a project through LiquidPlanner is so easy because it lets you break down the project into sections and folders and small tasks that you can assign to specific people. With a small to medium size team-- LiquidPlanner is amazing for organizing and tracking details. If you have a huge team or not a ton of details to track LiquidPlanner might not be right for you because it is a software that requires some good training to learn and has tons of functions that can be utilized so it seems better suited to be used by a smaller group looking to coordinate or for people who have lots of details that can be difficult to track.
Widgets are the best feature of Ajera. Designers can make tiny reports for the entire company, or for one or two individuals. These little reports are the first things that the employee sees when they log in. Viewers of the reports are able to filter, sort, group, print or export the widget without impacting the other users. Deltek has been releasing new features that allow the editing of data in widgets. You can now create new projects or edit timesheets from the widgets.
Credit card importing and credit card reconciliation in Ajera has greatly decreased time spent by administration. You can import credit card transactions from your credit cards. It saves on data entry, and it is easy to see what receipts you are missing when you get the statement.
Mobile timesheets and expense reports help engineers or other users enter their time and expenses as they are on the go. They can take pictures or receipts or submit their timesheet from home.
The Project Command Center is a one stop fountain of information. Everything the project manager wants to know about a project can be found here. You can also add custom fields that allow you to tract addition information.
Priority based planning. Every other planning software we've used relies on dates and therefore needs constant attention. Priority based planning means that the plan is always up to date.
Ease of use. LiquidPlanner has a very short learning curve. This is critical to getting team members to use it.
Forecasting. LiquidPlanner makes it very easy to run scenarios by simply dragging and dropping projects and reassigning resources.
Awesome Support. I get personal responses very fast. Usually within a couple hours. And, they listen and ask for more information.
The interface is messy and cluttered. The best way to find things and see what you actually want to see is the main Projects view which is also the most cluttered and hardest to maneuver in.
Clicking an external link someone posted in a comment or task description doesn't open in a new window by default, so we are constantly having to go back to get to LiquidPlanner again.
The way that the interface saves your state globally (rather than per tab instance) means that if you click a link from someone else to a task that's not yours, then it adjusts your filters on the Projects page. Then if you refresh another LiquidPlanner window where you were on the Projects tab, suddenly all of its filters are updated and what you were looking at may no longer be there.
It might just be the way that we use the system, but the Home and My Work tabs are fairly useless for us. They typically don't show the tasks we're actually looking for.
We may not renew LiquidPlanner's contract, but only because my company has recently been acquired and we'll be adopting some of the software that they're using to standardize process. LiquidPlanner's development team releases new features pretty often, so it seems like the gaps and inefficiencies are slowly getting smaller/less frequent
They have been great in trying to come up with creative solutions to help us do what we want to do with the platform. I would say their support has been exceptional because we have hit them with some complex requests.
The previous systems were essentially timesheet systems only with very basic accounting. It's mostly the accounting subsystem that made us select Ajera.
LiquidPlanner offers a whole lot more on the project management and tracking side, but Powow is more efficient in terms of the AI that powers it to efficiently manage meetings. AI definitely brings a big difference to Saas products and can magnify the benefits that would otherwise not be realized.
LiquidPlanner really forces you to map out your workflow. For me, honing into a template that I can later adjust as needed has been huge, as there is less time at the beginning of a project trying to assign and figure out what needs to happen when usually it never changes.
Communication between employees, especially ones not immediately available in the office has been very welcomed. It helps having conversations documented in a public, logical place that is easy to find and refer to as the project continues.
Our productivity has definitely skyrocketed as we've really gotten a feel and committed to using LiquidPlanner daily. As we move forward, we continually try to add more and more ways for us to use the service.
