Function Point Productivity Software vs. Planview ChangePoint vs. RationalPlan

Well suited in:

• Project management from estimate creation to final billing.
• Time tracking per job.
• Delegating tasks internally (and externally if choosing to use this feature).
• Creative agency environments where jobs have many moving parts and employees working on.
• Customer contact information management.
• Internal creative collaboration (brainstorming).
• Management oversight allowing team leads to review hours logged per employee to each job.

Incentivized

Changepoint is basic and would, therefore, work for businesses with uncomplicated requests, pretty straightforward workflows and willingness to work with an unsightly solution. It is basic, from the UI to the search option and the way the information is captured, which can be frustrating and counter-intuitive at times. It is relatively robust (i.e. I have been using it for almost 2 years and have not seen it crash once) but it does log me out when the system has been inactive for about 30 minutes - and I am only notified about being logged out upon clicking the Submit button, meaning many a line of text have been typed more than once!

Incentivized

Appropriate as a great alternative to MS Project. RationalPlan provides most of the features needed to develop and maintain mid-level complex schedules. Less Appropriate for large complex schedules of long duration. These can be a challenge due to Duration at top-level. It is also a challenge to generate reports for management - reporting feature is limited.

• Time tracking - like several time tracking solutions, FP uses a clock that will track in real time so that you do not need to remember how long you worked on a project to input later.
• Dashboards - I love FP's dashboards that let me track my personal utilization, the utilization of my team members and all of my open tasks.
• Reporting - FP's reports provide insight organization-wide into how we are doing and where we (as an organization) are spending our time. As with any reporting, though, it is important to manage the cleanliness of your data to make the reporting useful.

Incentivized

• Changepoint has significant reporting capabilities, though of course, the data that comes out is only as good as the data that goes in. I enjoy being able to use the standard reports to understand exactly how much a project has cost us and to compare it to how much we are charging. This allows us to more accurately set our prices. Though we have not used the report designer capability, I understand that custom reports can be designed with relative ease.
• Changepoint has a versioning capability for changes made to user profiles in the system manager, which I find particularly helpful. As a non-power user, it is valuable to be able to see what changes I have made to various profiles so that I can troubleshoot a problem down the line.
• Changepoint has significant functionality well beyond the features that we are currently using, and for this reason, I think it is affordable and a good deal. Particularly if your organization is interested in dedicating the time and resources into using all of the features around project planning, resource allocation, etc., the price is well worth the value.

• Portfolio view is great to get a feel for how your programme is running at a glance and which areas possibly might require attention. The fact that you can customise your view by adding your own columns is another plus.
• All project information in one tool is a big plus for me considering the amount of projects we run with. This really improves efficiency and saves me time. You have the ability to add documents to tasks, manage risks, email resources tasks due for projects they are assigned to(might need some refinement depending on your requirements), material db with costing etc.

• Function Point often provided reports that were inaccurate due to bad calculations. The support team would work with us to troubleshoot these issues, but the fact remained that calculations were wrong.
• Function Point was purchased by a new parent company that increased prices over their nearest, superior, competitor, pricing themselves out of the market.
• Function Point's interface is dated, as is its code base.
• New features are being implemented not as software revisions or upgrades, but as new for-pay features.

Incentivized

• We use Changepoint to manage the IS organization. I would like to see more advancement in order to do benefits management.
• I would like to see a capability where a project manager can build a very detailed work breakdown structure, but only require project resources to charge time and provide a task status at a higher level.

• Milestones should be a primary option instead of 0h to create one.

Incentivized

Sometimes the decision to renew boils down to an old adage "if it isn't broken don't fix it". Previous to moving to Changepoint, it was obvious that we needed a better project management tool. Projects we completed on time but the time zone difference between the teams and several iterations of back and forth caused a number of communication issues with projects. The difference is night and day.

It could be more intuitive and user friendly.

• Receive weekly emails from FP team about new features being added and webinars to review.
• Always extremely reliable and quick to respond with answers to questions or concerns.
• Includes function for their clients to make recommendations to their platform.
• Allows for customization on the back end to provide the best solution/functions for each client.

Incentivized

I had to ask for support once and got a response immediately.

Workamajig was NOT a good fit, after over a year of back-end setup. FunctionFox didn't have the financial integration capabilities we needed, but we used it for years and were happy with the service and support. FunctionPoint brought together the 30,000-foot view of the projects and resources with a simplified process for getting day-to-day jobs into the queue, which was essential for our organization.

Incentivized

Planview Changepoint helps us to understand our key customers enabling us to capitalize on every financial opportunity and helps us to forecast demand against the capacities required for new opportunities, and also it automates and monitors contractual terms and conditions. It gives us visibility into our employees' skills and helps to optimize resource allocation.

Incentivized

RationalPlan is cost-effective and allows most users to prepare and manage their schedule. The software lacks comprehensive reporting and duration changes at the top level of a project.

• We have a much more timely and accurate sense of our financials since switching to FunctionPoint
• Our team is more efficient at tracking time, and we are much more able to track resources and profitability
• Our accounting manager is able to use Quick Books in a much more efficient manner than previously

Incentivized

• Employee efficiency has decreased significantly within our Project MAnagement team. The main causes are lack of logical steps/not user-friendly and the slowness of the entire program.
• Changepoint PSA has greatly improved being able to track budgets for all projects. Before this software, budgets were done manually by hand and cross-referenced with Accounting. Now, we can pull a report out of the system, as long as all parties entered their time and data correctly.

• Helps explain the target schedule and resource estimates for cost of the project

Incentivized