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 8.3 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.
$9.80
per month per user
Pricing
HCSS
Wrike
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Wrike Free
$0
per month per user
Wrike Team
$9.8
per month per user
Wrike Business
$24.8
per month per user
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.
My organization used Google Sheets to work with subbies, but we've since switched to Wrike. It is user friendly, has formulas and customizable fields. Wrike has been a lifesaver because instead of sharing Google Sheets with external customers and typically they messing up - deleting formulas, users can simply fill out a request form without logging into Wrike . All details are displayed in a table view, making management much easier.
#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.
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.
The email notifications that are automatically sent from Wrike when something is done are easy for users to miss or ignore.
Reporting can be limited. You have to create workarounds for collecting/storing the name of the person submitting the form in instances where they do not have their own Wrike license.
A more user-friendly interface, especially for those less familiar with project management software, would enhance overall accessibility.
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.
Wrike, overall, is pretty easy to setup and use. I still find challenges in changing milestone dates but our programs / date changes are different than industry standard so that is partly the issue. We love the Excel look along with the dashboards! There are also built in analytics that really assist in seeing where the projects are!
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.
Support is very quickly and they want to solve problems actively. When I need additional info I can use community forum, when I've an issue I can use support form to get help. The support is of excellent quality from the first level, to grow when you talk to the engineers it becomes even more important
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
I have not used other products except Microsoft Teams channels with file sharing and standard sharing from Adobe, text and email messaging, and Zoom/gotomeeting sharing. This is the first product that I have used that had the functionality and platform where the sharing is simplistic. It is better than standard sharing through email or other simple forms because everything stays together.
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
Adding versions of a document streamlines our editing process, preventing us from reviewing outdated versions of a document. This feature saves time, especially when working with external contributors who may not know Wrike well.
Blueprints save time because we do not have to manually enter all the details when scheduling a recurring project.
