Likelihood to Recommend Pentana is great for monitoring PIs and risks. We find it less helpful for monitoring projects (with the Actions module); it isn't quite flexible enough for our needs, though the support team have been very helpful in adding custom fields for us.
Read full review Microsoft 365 is well-suited for:Small and Medium-sized Businesses (SMBs): Microsoft 365 offers a cost-effective solution for SMBs to access a suite of essential productivity tools without the need for extensive IT infrastructure. It provides a wide range of applications, allowing teams to collaborate, communicate, and manage documents efficiently.Remote Work and Collaboration: Microsoft 365's cloud-based nature makes it ideal for remote work scenarios. With tools like Microsoft Teams, employees can easily communicate, hold video conferences, and collaborate on projects in real-time, regardless of their location.Microsoft 365 may be less appropriate for:Organizations with Specific Software Requirements: Some organizations may have specialized software needs that are not met by Microsoft 365. In such cases, they may require industry-specific software or custom solutions.Limited Internet Connectivity: Microsoft 365 is a cloud-based platform, which means a stable internet connection is essential for optimal functionality. Organizations with poor internet connectivity might face challenges using the cloud-based applications effectively.
Read full review Pros Pentana is excellent for monitoring, recording and reporting on PIs. Very easy to use the PI module. Pentana is excellent for monitoring risks at various levels (service, strategic etc.). Risks are displayed very clearly in a tree structure and the module is relatively easy to use. Read full review keeps me extremely organized. It is so easy to link calendars, emails, and documents. keeps me well connected. It is so easy to send a quick message on teams or send an email to a group (for example, my particular team within the company). easy to use. Everything is straightforward, making it easy to find an answer to a question. There is even a search option to figure out how to do something within Microsoft. Read full review Cons Pentana could improve the free Documents module that comes with Pentana Risk. At the moment documents have to be linked to an action in order to display query results (such as how many documents are due for review) - this can be confusing for users who don't understand why there is an action linked. There is also no easy way for users to see the documents that are assigned to them. We would like to use the Actions module fully in order to monitor our corporate projects, but it a bit confusing for users and not very flexible when a project doesn't mirror Pentana's way of monitoring actions. Read full review Microsoft 365 really needs to work on protection part. In complex environment it is not reliable as compared to its competitors like Proofpoint. There are many instances where it fails to perform effectively. In SharePoint Online the versioning feature of the document needs to be improved by Microsoft. Sometimes when we have to roll back to the previous version it does not work as expected. In Teams messaging and app permission policies can be improved. There are some settings where we have to add a lot of things manually. Read full review Likelihood to Renew There are many features of Office that we cannot replicate in any other tool. Plus people know it already. It's not going away anytime soon.
Read full review Usability Some modules are more user-friendly than others. It's sometimes not obvious where to click to update the fields (or even that field titles can be clicked on). We have written 'Howdys' to help users. There can also seem to be a lot of steps/clicks to updating risks and actions. The Reports module on Pentana classic is certainly not user-friendly, particularly the Report Layout and Charts modules - we were told these would be integrated into the web version but this hasn't happened yet.
Read full review The interface of the different tools (this suite has MANY different tools) is usually simple to use and intuitive, and you can always re-arrange and add or remove the task you use most frequently from the menus and task bars.
Each tool / product includes a lot of features that may require a more intensive learning, but usually Office 365 tools are simple to learn from scratch, adding more knowledge as you required more advanced features
Read full review Support Rating The support team are excellent and always answer queries promptly. They are very helpful.
Read full review Over the past 8 years of using Microsoft 365, I have noticed that they change vendors often. This always leads to a poor experience in the beginning, then levels out after some time for the company to get things worked out. As a customer, it is really frustrating because I don't have time when something isn't working to have them "look into my issue" and get back with me. They have even closed a ticket I specifically told them to keep open. Your applications are only as good as the support.
Read full review Implementation Rating Everything works and I use it all the time.
Read full review Alternatives Considered We selected Pentana because our neighbouring authorities are users and had spoken highly of the product and given us demonstrations; some of our staff were also familiar with Pentana when it was called Covalent. It seemed to be the best product on the market for monitoring risks, PIs and projects.
Read full review Google Sheets is better for sharing and collaborative editing. Versioning of the same file is also one of
Google Sheets strong points.
Microsoft 365 is better for working with local files. It is much easier to store the file in multiple places and backup multiple versions in multiple places.
LibreOffice is free but the usage is much counter intuitive than Microsoft Office. OpenOffice is worse when it comes to UI.
Microsoft Excel's performance with larger files is much better. When opening huge files, excel loads it asynchronously and I can start working right away.
Read full review Return on Investment Pentana Risk has allowed my team to focus on other areas of work whereas before we would be manually chasing for updates on PIs and risk. Pentana Risk does the chasing for us! We are able to produce reports for audit purposes very easily, rather than sending spreadsheets which is what we used to do. New managers can easily inherit risks, projects and PIs and see all of this on a custom portal, saving them time when they start. Read full review Positively, it has increased productivity and efficiency in creating templates and being able to systemize some of the protocols we are working on putting into place. It has been a positive as well as most individuals and companies that we associate with also use MicroSoft 365 and therefore there is no need to have formats change in our documents when they open them up using another type of program. Getting work done quickly.... One and Done!!! Read full review ScreenShots