HCSS is a construction software suite. It includes functionality for bidding, time card and project management, safety, planning, scheduling, equipment management, and data warehousing and reporting. Each module can be purchased separately. The suite can be hosted in the cloud.
N/A
Wrike
Score 8.4 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
Wrike is a project management and collaboration software. This solution connects tasks, discussions, and emails to the user’s project plan. Wrike is optimized for agile workflows and aims to help resolve data silos, poor visibility into work status, and missed deadlines and project failures.
$240
per year 2 users (minimum)
Pricing
HCSS
Wrike
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Wrike Free
$0
per month per user
Wrike Team
$10
per month (billed annually) per user (2-15 users)
Wrike Business
$25
per month (billed annually) per user (5-200 users)
Wrike Enterprise
Request a quote
per month per user
Pinnacle
Request a quote
per month per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
HCSS
Wrike
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
Required
No setup fee
Additional Details
—
Every premium plan begins with a 14-day trial period.
Our operation uses several pieces of what we call specialty equipment (not used every day on every job). The foreman when finished will give a location of where this equipment is left, this many times can be very vague and lead to a lowboy driver trying to block around to find the piece or driving down a street he cannot get turned around in. With the GPS devices, the driver can pinpoint exactly where the unit is and if he has room to turn around at that location.
Wrike is well-suited for content creation, review, and management. I can't speak to other types of work it can be suitable for because I use it as a writer only, but I would recommend it to other people in content creation fields who have to work with a team. A friend of mine is an editor at the local newspaper, and I think some features of Wrike would make her editing tasks a little easier and promote more cohesion in her team.
#1 is support! HCSS is by far the best software support of any product we have ever used. Unlike most software companies HCSS utilizes their support calls to help upgrade their software. When you here them tell you that they will write down a particular issue you come across during a support call if they can't help you then and there they will research and get an answer to you extremely fast. If the software will not do it, you can bet there is a good chance it will be on the list of enhancements you will see come out in the near future.
Estimating software is very extensive. Their software is capable of handling the smallest estimate all the way to the largest joint venture estimate. It has advanced features that make it extremely useful for analyzing job materials, subcontractors etc.
HeavyJob is an extremely useful tool for the field to keep the office up to date with job costs. Everything is at the Foreman's fingertips on Tablets to allow the information from the field to get uploaded to HeavyJob manager which then can export to accounting. We are also able to give our Foreman the ability to deal with the Daily and weekly safety needs (Tailgate Meetings, incident Investigation, observations etc.) right on the Tablets thru HeavyJob.
different views to accommodate different users workflow
predecessors and successors to tie tasks together and adjust dates as a group
Being able to see other people's workloads so when I am planning my projects for the upcoming quarter, I can set a project delivery date that is better suited to workload and is more realistic
All their apps are on mobile devices. Although there is not a clear company policy on Android versus iPhone. Updates for features lag behind on Android. Some apps are exclusive to one platform making it hard to fully interconnect all programs.
For example, let's say we are onboarding a new client. There are certain tasks that need to be done. It would be great to be able to create a new project and have certain tasks preloaded.
Importing.
Importing may seem easy, but there is so much nuance to it. The fact that you need to make sure the parent task comes before child tasks is very difficult to do without the help of AI. Also, I am not sure it is possible if you have a thousand tasks to import, to make sure that you have a folder structure and parent/child tasks.
I also find that the documentation is lacking and the 2 import methods lacking as well.
Customize my inbox. When I log into Wrike, my Inbox is the first thing I see, but this doesn't show the full picture of what I want it.
I wish that Wrike had more drag and drop functionality that would be connected to assignee and also I wish that the finish date of a task would update to the date where you checked completed. It does not do that. Also finishing a task doesn't move the start date of the next task it "protects your time in that way", but our management team wants us to quickly see what we have down the pipeline rather than having to scroll down the list of upcoming tasks.
As mentioned, user interface appears messy and complicated at initial onset. Training is necessary but becomes easy to maneuver through after solid daily use.
The platform is intuitive, easy to navigate, and flexible enough to accommodate the complexity of payer contracting workflows. Features such as custom workflows, automated reminders, and real-time collaboration make it simple for our team to stay aligned and efficient. Wrike allows us to track negotiations and related tasks without needing extensive training or technical expertise, which has driven adoption across departments and ensured consistent usage.
Over two years of (almost) daily usage without outages. Don't remember any errors. I give it 9 only because some Wrike plugins (for online document edit) are based on NPAPI architecture. These types of plugins are being phased out in new browsers, and NPAPI plugins are disabled by default in recent versions of Chrome so you have to do some browser adjustments when you switch browsers or move to another computer.
Wrike tasks loads fine, but I hate clicking files and wait for a bit of time since it is powerpoint or word, Wrike assumes I want to open those on Wrike. My suggestion is to link it to office 365 so we do not need Wrike based decoder for PPTX and DOCX
I have never had a bad experience or heard of one in 4 years of doing business with HCSS. That is unheard of even with the hurricanes and flooding in Houston area it feels like HCSS was always there and willing to help in every way.
During my learning phase with Wrike, I initially struggled with setting up automation rules and request forms. However, Wrike support was always my go-to, resolving issues within seconds or minutes. Their assistance made the learning process much easier. My best experience was receiving step-by-step screenshots to follow, with the support team on standby until I was completely satisfied.
I love the Wrike training options. Wrike Discover has tons of courses, learning plans, certifications, etc. This is an area where Wrike definitely shines! I wish these resources were more in your face for new people, because it seems like a lot of coworkers didn't know all of this training was available to them.
I was not employed with PPI upon implementation. I would prefer to reference my previous statement, that each company needs to evaluate its culture and address your implementation accordingly. The purchasing company should assign an employee as point person and really take charge of not just the technical side of the implementation (HCSS pretty much handles that), but focus on company culture and training.
There are a lot of bells and whistles in Wrike, and not all of it is easy or intuitive to understand once it's plopped in your lap. It's easier when there are a few choice people who understand Wrike as a platform and articulate it in such a way where it makes it easy to pass it along to others in the group
Other estimating products I have used consist of ICE/MC2 and MS Excel. ICE was not a good fit for our company, as they have awful technical support and offer very poor training. MS Excel is great for simple estimates where there is not a lot of data being compiled. However neither hold a candle to the power of HCSS Heavybid
We use both monday.com and Wrike. While Monday does have a better user interface, Wrike allows us to have more visibility into tasks where multiple people are collaborating. And also to receive project brief-ins and requests for new projects. We use both differently and I would say for us Wrike is more the collaboration tool than the day to day individual task management tool - and it works great.
The sky is the limit for what can be done in Wrike. We started with 1 use case and within 5 months we migrated several key business practices over to Wrike because they were easier to manage. Use cases so far: process improvement, management review, corrective actions, maintenance requests, month-end financial closing, and document management. As we grow, it's easy to imagine putting even more into Wrike where it becomes a cornerstone for how we do business
Because of the codebooks (bid item codebook for DOT's specifically), we're able to carve off significant time in "stick-building" estimates
It's very easy to train newer estimators with HeavyBid due to the abundance of resources available on HCSS Academy and elsewhere (i.e. Arthur Nix's material)
The KPI's and Insights that Pre-Con offers helps us to make better decisions on Bid Day.
Wrike has improved our resource management significantly.
Wrike has improved the request intake process for us.
One negative impact of using Wrike is that we had to include Workato for some customised automations, which were not supported by Unito, but this can be on a need-to basis.
