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.
N/A
Planview Daptiv
Score 6.7 out of 10
N/A
Planview Daptiv is a cloud-based project portfolio management (PPM) solution that is now owned by Planview since the January 2021 acquisition of Changepoint). Planview Daptiv PPM covers diverse needs like Portfolio Management, Project Management, Resource Management and Office Management functionalities to larger business enterprises across diverse industries, and therefore offers a wide range of features achieving this, such as a resource load charts (e.g. Gantt charts), an easy to use DeskDocs…
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.
I would recommend Daptiv for anyone who is look for a collaborative tool that is easy to use and provides excellent results for project management and resource allocation. The tool offers many various capabilities and is not isolated for use with one or two workgroups. Its versatility allows many workgroups across many different organizations to use it. In my previous role, I used Daptiv in both a Project Management and Account Services Information Technology role. In my current workplace, I would like to leverage Daptiv for Product Launch and tracking as well as change request visibility in the Release Management Organization of a pharmaceutical company. Both roles and companies are vastly different however Daptiv would serve a great purpose in both situations although my needs are different.
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.
The Daptiv UI has seen some significant improvements recently that were long in coming. However I am still waiting for more that are on their plan. Lack of ability to customize what appears on specific screens or to add hover over help for less experienced users make it a difficult sell for some of our occasional users.
Daptiv comes with Cognos reports that does allow reporting against all the data elements. However the lack of ability to extract data in any form other than an emailed report significantly limits the ability to interface with the data.
Changes to many of the data elements are not tracked to who made changes and when.
Access to data elements is at a very broad level making it difficult to allow third party users to use the tool with limited access.
As previously mentioned, we were not able to get the product to solve our particular problem. After time spent implementing a custom solution, it was the decision of the executive team to discontinue the agreement. The costs of training the team didn't outweigh the cost of hiring an employee to do the translation of schedules to web view.
The previous systems were essentially timesheet systems only with very basic accounting. It's mostly the accounting subsystem that made us select Ajera.
Daptiv is an integrated toolset that satisfies our needs for multiple functions (project intake, resource capacity management, time tracking, portfolio planning and management). Daptiv was selected based on our evaluation of multiple tools. It was a close race between a couple of tools but we felt that Daptiv was a better fit for both our immediate and long term needs.
Better customer service - In Daptiv I can easily track the amount of time I worked on a project, so I can then tell my client accurately how much time I spent.
Effectively managing budgets - When I know I need to stick to a certain budget on a project, I can carefully plan and be aware of my time and money spent in Daptiv.
