Ideagen Risk Management vs. PolicyManager

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.

The part I like the most is our staff not having to log in to view policies. We have so many passwords to remember having this convenience is a big satisfier.

• 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.

• If I ever have any technical issues or questions the support team is great at getting back to me very quickly. I also like all the resources available to help as well.
• Policy reports, there are so many to choose from. These reports help me track several different things in the system. Compliance, attestations, past due, and so much more.
• Another plus for me is being able to add linkages to outside programs like TJC and Elsevier. Linking these to policies saves a lot of time.

• 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.

• The program doesn't work well with Chrome, would like to see that fixed. We have several staff members that use Chrome.

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.

Overall this program is great. I am continuously in the program and find it very simple to use. I do have some staff that struggle, only because they are not in the program as often as I am

The support team are excellent and always answer queries promptly. They are very helpful.

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.

• 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.

• The program has kept us compliant on reviewing and updating all of our policies.