Certinia PS Cloud vs. Salesforce Sales Cloud

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Certinia PS Cloud
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Certinia PS Cloud software is a cloud-based services solution that is built on the Force.com platform. It allows companies to manage professional resources, customers, projects and financials in one integrated services management application. Because the solution works natively with Force.com, it utilizes the same data for sales, services and finance on one system.N/A
Salesforce Sales Cloud
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Salesforce Sales Cloud is a platform for sales with a community of Sellers, Sales Leaders, and Sales Operations, who use the solution to grow sales and increase productivity. The AI CRM for Sales features data built right in, so that companies can sell faster, sell smarter and sell efficiently. Salesforce Sales Cloud is used for, and supports: Buyer Engagement Sales Engagement Enablement Sales AI Sales Analytics Team…
$25
per month
Pricing
Certinia PS CloudSalesforce Sales Cloud
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Starter
$25.00
Per User/Per Month
Professional
$80.00
Per User/Per Month
Enterprise
$165.00
Per User/Per Month
Unlimited
$330.00
Per user/Per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Certinia PS CloudSalesforce Sales Cloud
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Certinia PS CloudSalesforce Sales Cloud
Considered Both Products
Certinia PS Cloud
Chose Certinia PS Cloud
FF PSA is a robust Project Management solution that can be configured to fits any size business. We have tried several other applications and PSA so far has met and exceeded our needs. We run our day to day operations on Salesforce so having a solution that is native was a must …
Chose Certinia PS Cloud
I've evaluated OpenAir and a few others and the main benefit was the easy integration and administration with SFDC.
Chose Certinia PS Cloud
Pre built integration to Salesforce and ability to scale was important to us. We found others had far less integration to Salesforce (one competitor showed us a one button batch record transfer and called it an integration). We also think the mobile capabilities compared to …
Chose Certinia PS Cloud
We were previously an OpenAir customer. The key reason for moving to FinancialForce PSA was the very tight integration with Salesforce.com. Salesforce.com is a core system at our company, the fact that FinancialForce PSA was built on the force.com platform made it very easy for …
Chose Certinia PS Cloud
We did look at other SaaS based systems but Salesforce integration was very important in our selection criteria.
Salesforce Sales Cloud

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Certinia PS CloudSalesforce Sales Cloud
Sales Force Automation
Comparison of Sales Force Automation features of Product A and Product B
Certinia PS Cloud
-
Ratings
Salesforce Sales Cloud
7.7
237 Ratings
0% above category average
Customer data management / contact management00 Ratings8.5237 Ratings
Workflow management00 Ratings7.9228 Ratings
Territory management00 Ratings7.4182 Ratings
Opportunity management00 Ratings8.4231 Ratings
Integration with email client (e.g., Outlook or Gmail)00 Ratings7.4216 Ratings
Contract management00 Ratings7.0188 Ratings
Quote & order management00 Ratings7.5172 Ratings
Interaction tracking00 Ratings7.4202 Ratings
Channel / partner relationship management00 Ratings7.6164 Ratings
Customer Service & Support
Comparison of Customer Service & Support features of Product A and Product B
Certinia PS Cloud
-
Ratings
Salesforce Sales Cloud
7.4
79 Ratings
1% below category average
Case management00 Ratings7.679 Ratings
Call center management00 Ratings7.363 Ratings
Help desk management00 Ratings7.366 Ratings
Marketing Automation
Comparison of Marketing Automation features of Product A and Product B
Certinia PS Cloud
-
Ratings
Salesforce Sales Cloud
7.6
216 Ratings
1% above category average
Lead management00 Ratings7.8211 Ratings
Email marketing00 Ratings7.4181 Ratings
CRM Project Management
Comparison of CRM Project Management features of Product A and Product B
Certinia PS Cloud
-
Ratings
Salesforce Sales Cloud
7.4
219 Ratings
2% below category average
Task management00 Ratings7.4209 Ratings
Billing and invoicing management00 Ratings7.056 Ratings
Reporting00 Ratings7.7172 Ratings
CRM Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of CRM Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Certinia PS Cloud
-
Ratings
Salesforce Sales Cloud
7.7
232 Ratings
1% above category average
Forecasting00 Ratings7.3201 Ratings
Pipeline visualization00 Ratings7.7220 Ratings
Customizable reports00 Ratings8.1229 Ratings
Customization
Comparison of Customization features of Product A and Product B
Certinia PS Cloud
-
Ratings
Salesforce Sales Cloud
8.0
223 Ratings
5% above category average
Custom fields00 Ratings8.1221 Ratings
Custom objects00 Ratings8.1211 Ratings
Scripting environment00 Ratings7.9157 Ratings
API for custom integration00 Ratings8.0184 Ratings
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Certinia PS Cloud
-
Ratings
Salesforce Sales Cloud
8.7
225 Ratings
4% above category average
Single sign-on capability00 Ratings8.8192 Ratings
Role-based user permissions00 Ratings8.6198 Ratings
Social CRM
Comparison of Social CRM features of Product A and Product B
Certinia PS Cloud
-
Ratings
Salesforce Sales Cloud
7.4
142 Ratings
2% above category average
Social data00 Ratings7.5141 Ratings
Social engagement00 Ratings7.3138 Ratings
Integrations with 3rd-party Software
Comparison of Integrations with 3rd-party Software features of Product A and Product B
Certinia PS Cloud
-
Ratings
Salesforce Sales Cloud
7.7
192 Ratings
8% above category average
Marketing automation00 Ratings7.8188 Ratings
Compensation management00 Ratings7.7128 Ratings
Platform
Comparison of Platform features of Product A and Product B
Certinia PS Cloud
-
Ratings
Salesforce Sales Cloud
7.0
203 Ratings
7% below category average
Mobile access00 Ratings7.0203 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Certinia PS CloudSalesforce Sales Cloud
Small Businesses
Atera
Atera
Score 8.9 out of 10
Salesmate
Salesmate
Score 9.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Atera
Atera
Score 8.9 out of 10
Creatio
Creatio
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
Planview AdaptiveWork
Planview AdaptiveWork
Score 6.8 out of 10
Creatio
Creatio
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Certinia PS CloudSalesforce Sales Cloud
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(13 ratings)
8.4
(369 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(3 ratings)
9.0
(56 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(2 ratings)
7.5
(120 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(1 ratings)
9.8
(27 ratings)
Performance
7.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(18 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(3 ratings)
5.7
(91 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
7.9
(11 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(15 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.0
(1 ratings)
1.0
(18 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
-
(0 ratings)
8.8
(9 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
8.6
(28 ratings)
Professional Services
-
(0 ratings)
9.3
(8 ratings)
User Testimonials
Certinia PS CloudSalesforce Sales Cloud
Likelihood to Recommend
Certinia
PSA is great at capturing all the data you would need to accurately track and report on consulting projects. It captures project financials, calculates projected GM%, and (among others) allows for hourly tracking of employees, which breaks it up between billable and non-billable for utilization tracking to accurately understand costs. However, the user interface is tough to learn, and the stability of the data reporting functions is questionable. This tool would be great for smaller consulting shops that fit the standard contracting mold. If your business is fairly straightforward without a lot of shades of gray, you shouldn't have much trouble with the tool. However, if your business practices have a lot of exceptions based on clients, then you'll have a tall administrative task on your hands.
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Salesforce
Salesforce Sales Cloud is, in my experience, well suited to large B2B businesses who are driving demand and lead generation, and tracking customers through the funnel. It is a system we needed for a long time and has made a huge difference. However, I think it would have been more appropriate for a smaller business / a business who sets this up earlier on. There are great advantages to having historical data. It is really useful for allowing all commercial teams to work together, including sales, new business, marketing, client success etc. However, it relies too much too often on human error. If more things were automated and simpler, perhaps with AI queries, it could be easier to use
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Pros
Certinia
  • The biggest strength of FinancialForce PSA is that it's built upon the force.com platform, which means it is very easily customizable to our business needs.
  • Projects are easily created, as well as milestones and assignments.
  • "Actuals" (dollars and hours) are calculated automatically, and are easily reported on.
  • Resources are easily managed by using the Resource Planner
  • FinancialForce PSA support is outstanding!
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Salesforce
  • Logging notes: SF makes it easy to log notes in the timeline or static notes that live in an easy-to-see spot for longevity.
  • Logging activities: It's easy to post a call, text, email, etc.
  • API data: Once connected, SF is critical to automation, such as website activity, login activity, pages visited, etc., which saves the Customer Success side time in understanding account activity.
  • Custom fields: you can add custom fields to really personalize your experience. We use quite a few and it's brilliant.
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Cons
Certinia
  • The product is still maturing as a full featured PSA tool. The feature roadmap is compelling but is still being built out.
  • Tool is ideal for managing a services business. It is not yet a project manager tool.
  • Limited reporting
  • Maturing change order process
  • Limited integration to back-end financial systems beyond Financial Force Financials. We use Netsuite.
  • The underlying SalesForce UI is constrained and can be keystroke intensive at times
  • Limited archiving of historical data
Read full review
Salesforce
  • I have hard-coded the auto-update of the phone number format and state format from some codes shared by the community, but I do not know where to do it. I cannot reset it either.
  • It is unclear what functionalities each version has. We use the enterprise version, and it seems we can only have one design of the pipeline. But different business segments would have very different sales cycles, and hence, pipeline tracking would be different. It would be nice to have this available in our version.
  • It seems I cannot create a report to pull notes logged at the account levels.
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Likelihood to Renew
Certinia
There is another PSA software program that we have been looking into (DreamFactory) that could potentially replace FinancialForce PSA in our organization. Like FinancialForce PSA, it is cloud based on the force.com platform. Licensing is slightly less than FinancialForce PSA, and the Resource Management tool is far superior to FinancialForce PSA. With that said, our renewal falls in Q4 2014 and I don't foresee us implementing a new system this fiscal year.
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Salesforce
There are days when I wish we hadn't switched, but I know that if we put in the time, we will get to where we want to be with the software and that it has many more capabilities than anything else we looked at. However, the amount of time and onboarding we need to do is also far greater than we realized/were told when we originally bought the product. They told us we should hire onboarding support, but at the end, after we had already reached our budget maximum for this, so it's been slower than we had hoped.
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Usability
Certinia
It is maturing and does what it does well although it is not fully complete.

Integration to SF is great.

Gives great visibility to incoming services projects and allows the staffing process to start on pipeline deals.

There are certain processes that take more click-throughs then needed so there are refinement opportunities around the UI.

The resource management screen and project status views have really matured since our original purchase, and while not perfect, allow business leaders to do their jobs.

Configurations vs. customizations. We seem to have to bring in an Apex developer to do a customization for changes I would think could be configuration settings
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Salesforce
Salesforce has been designed on the basis of "Clicks, not code". So anyone willing to learn the Salesforce user interface (which is quite good as far as management software platforms go) is able to become a Salesforce user or even a Salesforce administrator. You don't have to know coding language to work in the Salesforce environment. Also, Salesforce has one of the best software training resources (Trailhead) that I have ever encountered. It is free to all, easy to use, and most importantly it is interactive. No scrolling through endless text in a user manual. There are hands-on modules and related videos interlaced and through it all you earn points and badges to display your level of learning.
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Reliability and Availability
Certinia
We have maybe had 1-2 outages over 3 years.
Read full review
Salesforce
Salesforce is always available securely from any internet-capable device anywhere in the world, UNLESS you choose to set security measures so that ONLY trusted IP ranges may access the system at certain times of the day. It's all about choice and flexibility with Salesforce products.
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Performance
Certinia
Most of the time it is fine. There are peak periods of usage where performance noticably slows down (i.e., Monday mornings when time is due and many reports are being run)
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Salesforce
Salesforce performance in general is excellent. "The cloud infrastructure beneath Force.com has been fine-tuned over the past 10 years. It powers nearly 100,000+ businesses running more than 185,000 applications that 3 million users count on every day."
Points per Salesforce -
1) Multitenant kernel - With a multitenant platform, each business that uses the app doesn’t have its own copy. Instead, all businesses share a single copy and then customize it for their specific needs.
2) ISO 27001 certified security - You can’t compromise when it comes to enterprise-level security. Force.com is road-tested and trusted by nearly 100,000+ companies, including many of the world’s most security-conscious organizations, such as banks and health care providers.
3) Proven reliability - All Force.com apps run on world-class data centers with backup, failover, and disaster-recovery facilities. Force.com has had a proven 99.9 percent uptime record for years.
4) Proven, real-time scalability - Force.com is used by many of the world's largest enterprises, including Cisco, Japan Post Network, and Symantec. Applications can automatically scale from a few users to millions of page views, as needed.
5) Real-time query optimizer - You need fast access to your data. The Force.com query optimizer delivers under 300ms response time, at a massive scale.
6) Real-time transparent system status - You can always see real-time system performance, availability, and security information at trust.salesforce.com.
7) Real-time upgrades - Unlike traditional software platforms, our upgrades never break your customizations, code, or integrations. We upgrade the platform for you 3 to 4 times each year. As a result, you’re always on the latest version, with access to the latest features, performance, and security enhancements.
8) Real-time sandbox environments - With a single click, you can create copies of your applications, configuration, and data in separate environments for development, testing, and training.
9) Three global production data centers and disaster recovery - Force.com runs on three geographically dispersed, mirrored data centers with built-in replication, disaster recovery, a redundant network backbone, and no single points of failure
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Support Rating
Certinia
Every time I submit a new help request, whether it's an actual help request or just a question about FinancialForce PSA, I always feel that I'm receiving world class support. The support we receive from FinancialForce PSA is always very detailed and professional. There are some requests that take longer than other for the initial response, which is why I did not give a full 10.
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Salesforce
The overall support has been good. More and more features are being released quite frequently. Very small features are also making big difference in how the tool can be adapted and used better. If there is anything we need or are stuck, the support team sets up a call and helps in resolving the issue/provides workarounds.
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In-Person Training
Certinia
It was fine.
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Salesforce
I attended two training sessions. I would rate them a 4 as an advanced user. It was very basic – great for someone new – would give 8+ for new person.

I had 3 years of experience at the time. I skipped basic and went onto advanced and still not helpful. A lot of it was best practices that didn’t feel relevant for our business
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Online Training
Certinia
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
I have gone through multiple. The content that’s delivered is quite basic – I wish they had more advanced training.

We are grandfathered into premium support plus training. We get unlimited access to instructor led and online training for free. We have taken advantage of this
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Implementation Rating
Certinia
Appirio did a good job, however, the user team didn’t know enough to make all the right configuration/customization choices. The team focused too much on replicating existing processes vs. reengineering them. In hindsight we should have had deep dive reviews at key milestones and enforced more focus on how the software would operate. We didn’t have access to true best practices expertise. In hindsight, a consultant from the outside would have been helpful to drive this.
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Salesforce
Just from an organizational standpoint - we standardized our data prior to moving to Salesforce. But we essentially standardized it wrong. That's created a big disgusting mess for us know that I'll have to deal with as the Admin. Be sure you think through use cases prior to doing something like that - seek outside opinions on how the data will work best, especially depending on what else you're going to integrate with Salesforce.
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Alternatives Considered
Certinia
FF PSA is a robust Project Management solution that can be configured to fits any size business. We have tried several other applications and PSA so far has met and exceeded our needs. We run our day to day operations on Salesforce so having a solution that is native was a must have. PSA met that requirement and much more.
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Salesforce
The thing that puts Sales Cloud above the top is its simple user interface, which is easy to interact with. The visuals and automation are also quite amazing. Given its attention to data and customer relationship management, Sales Cloud is tough to beat. Of course, Microsoft Dynamics integrates nicely with other Microsoft products, and Monday is a tool everyone is familiar with, so it is hard to compete with those.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Certinia
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
Salesforce is the most widely used CRM system. Professionalism tends to increase when things go wrong for market leaders. Salesforce considers us as users because they own the market. Having all of our data in one place and all of our teams working within Salesforce. Anyone who uses Salesforce is impacted by it, even if they don't.
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Scalability
Certinia
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
Salesforce sales cloud implementation can give you the desired outcome for your business. Its workflow, approval, sync, and file-sharing features help automate the process. The Macros feature helps business to shorten their sales cycle. Sales Cloud also allows businesses to make the right decision with its real-time business insights and analysis.
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Professional Services
Certinia
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
Using Salesforce.com has made my daily routines more efficient and simplified the manual tasks I had to perform independently. I can now access data from any device, online or offline, and provide better guidance to my team about the forecasts provided by the built-in artificial intelligence (AI). A chat with a Salesforce support specialist would be great. The knowledge base has a community forum where Salesforce users can ask questions and learn more about the product.
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Return on Investment
Certinia
  • FinancialForce PSA has helped us improve our data tracking and allows us to get more granular about our financial information and performance.
  • PSA has given more tools and reports to individual contributors to take greater ownership over their own data, and has increased accountability across the organization.
  • PSA has added a fairly hefty administrative burden to individuals, project managers, and our financial team.
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Salesforce
  • All tools we've implemented with Salesforce had a pretty quick positive ROI with the exception of CPQ & Billing. That was a very large project that I would only suggest for businesses with many SKUs that tend to be packaged together.
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ScreenShots

Salesforce Sales Cloud Screenshots

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