People and projects are the heart and soul of a business. So Deltek created Vantagepoint, which they present as a powerful, intuitive solution that helps users manage projects from start to finish. Deltek Vantagepoint’s 360-degree view of projects puts client, project and financial details in a single location. The vendor states this adds up to making well-informed tactical and strategic business decisions and a more efficient, productive and profitable company.
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Smartsheet
Score 8.0 out of 10
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Smartsheet is an online project management and collaboration tool. It includes automated alerts, instantaneous updating and sharing across team members, resource management, nested tasks organized in a hierarchy, a Gantt chart view, exportable and automated reports, and integration with email.
I have used Vision/Vantagepoint with 5 different companies. Where the business model is project-based it works very well. This is the rule for most AEC companies. My current organization does not really have a project-based business model as they have many, many small "projects" that never get entered into Vantagepoint as it would be time prohibitive to do so. This makes the use of the system very limited for all employees outside of accounting and unreliable for reporting pipeline and historical revenue data. This is not the fault of Deltek, however, just an observation of how it is used with my current company.
For teams and users who are very familiar with Excel and its mode of operation, Smartsheet will feel like a walkover. If you have a number of users who use Excel or Google Sheets for their personal project management then you will find this tool to be very useful and somewhat familiar.
Teams that may be used to other project management suites or styles would find Smartsheet a bit challenging to adapt to, as formulas and formatting can be challenging to adapt to.
Smartsheet set up is similar to Excel, yet when you upload an Excel file, things like conditional formatting are lost. Smartsheet has its own conditional formatting, and you have to reinstate the rules. It would be great if those would apply automatically once a file is uploaded
Some Smartsheet management and access rules can take some tweaking to work properly. This may be a case of offering more info to admins so they can apply these better and with more efficiency
It definitely meets our needs as far as organizing and archiving our tasks and files. As we train more staff to view it, I see opportunities for more improvement, which I am sure this program can handle. I look forward to seeing continued improvement from Smartsheet on their capabilities and functionality.
It is ok to use; it is not the easiest to use in terms of usability and user-friendliness but it is not the worst. It still feels somewhat outdated. Many cloud options are cleaner or look more modern. But it is good enough and you should be able to get the hang of it.
Smartsheet is very easy to learn. However, while I have been able to pick it easily, Microsoft Excel and Project super users that I have trained on Smartsheet get bogged down in the differences and can find it frustrating. Explaining the differences ahead of time and why Smartsheet is being chosen instead of a different software seems to counteract those reactions
I would rate Deltek VantagePoint highly in terms of the overall support. You can receive support any time you need it and there is a representative from Deltek assigned to your account so that you can always get the help when you need it. Sometimes, they want to go more in-depth than I would like, however.
I give this rating because it fills a niche in the market. MS Project scares many away from proper task management but there are limited tools our there, especially cloud-based that are mobile-friendly. Smartsheet fills this market gap, especially for small to medium-sized businesses. IT is not fair to compare it to MS Project, but fairer to see what gaps it fills.
It's absolutely paramount to take a few minutes to actually play with the software. It's nearly impossible to do anything wrong or make a mistake which cannot be fixed easily. Under the help menu is Live Training option. After you familiarize yourself with the commands, watch the live training for some in depth understanding of how to make the software fit your needs perfectly.
BQE Core. I think that BQE Core is definitely harder to use, and has a lot of features atleast from the users perspective that dont seem entirely neccesary. Deltek is very straight forward and easy to use.
Jira and Redmine are much more robust and technologically advanced project management solutions. I enjoy using either when managing a very large project. However, I prefer to use Smartsheet for my smaller to medium sized projects. As for Google Drive - I would say that Google sheets and Smartsheet are almost identical in my opinion when it comes to functionality. Personally I prefer to manage smaller projects via Google Drive, but it is a personal preference!
