Opal vs. Project Insight

I honestly cannot recommend this tool enough. Opal is such a valuable tool for brand content creators and there is nothing like it available. If you're serious about content marketing and have a need to find ways to collaborate, plan and provide more visibility among teams, then Opal really is the only way to go. One more thing that's not being mentioned: The tool is simply amazing but it's only as amazing is the team behind the tool. Their customer support and willingness to quickly be in touch when needed is a key feature within itself. Seriously, such a good team of people.

Incentivized

My rating would vary depending on the types of projects that need to be managed. Since I am in software, I don't think it was an excellent fit to manage software projects unless they are small projects with only a few tasks. On the other hand, if you are needing to manage a wide range of departments that are working on a single project with many moving pieces, then I would think that PI might be a better fit. Think of it as a jack of all trades, but master of none.

Incentivized

• Content planning: you can look at one asset and see how it is being used across multiple channels by multiple teams.
• Content collaboration: it is really easy to see what other people and teams are contributing to an asset, or how they are using it. We can also duplicate content that was created by another team to use as a starting point in our own content collaboration.
• High level/big picture overview: Opal allows us to see content that is being created, planned and scheduled very easily; it goes beyond social content (which we can also see in Sprinklr) to show us content created across multiple channels.

Incentivized

• History tracking for any changes made to data.
• Tracks all milestones and retains records for lifetime of account.
• Easy extracting for reporting purposes.

Incentivized

• No publishing capabilities, for the most part.
• No analytics tie-ins.
• Rather pricey.
• Requires someone to really manage the structure in order to keep the tool organized and use it effectively. When this is done right, though, it's worthwhile.

Incentivized

• Not a good fit for all types of projects
• Very Complex

Incentivized

I found Project Insight somewhat opaque overall. I thought the training was sparse and answers to questions few and far in between. There was a lot of power there for the dedicated user/administrator. For me, who was a casual user and administrator, I found support lacking. I didn't administer Project Insight much, just some work on integrations with other tools.

Incentivized

I've used Percolate and it's said to be a competitor of Opal, but in reality, it's a tool I've struggled with. It's fine for day-to-day scheduling and publishing, but lacks the flexibility and functionality of Opal. Opal really feels like it was built by storytellers where Percolate feels like it was built purely by an engineering team.

Incentivized

• When I got to the company where I used Project Insight, we had our own custom tool that fit the tasks that it was designed for but wouldn't grow with the company unless resources were put onto expanding capabilities. We needed something more.
• We replaced that tool with Redmine. It worked well and was easy to use, but it looked pretty dated when we got it, and since we didn't have many resources for managing, it looked dated after a few years without receiving upgrades. It was a decent tool for small teams that were focused on similar tasks. Redmine was much more straightforward than Project Insight and felt more reliable since we never had an issue with our internal servers. On the other hand, Redmine felt dated and didn't fit as many of the tasks that were needed. Redmine's price was right if you installed it locally and was probably still cheaper if you used their SAAS version.
• Jira, on the other hand, felt like an excellent tool for software teams. Jira had a great project and task management and felt right for a software team. Jira also had useful integrations, even with Project Insight. Jira seemed pretty unreliable, worse than Project Insight. Our team would have preferred Jira, but I think it didn't work for other teams.

Incentivized

• Opal helps us with visibility and content sharing, so that teams have greater awareness of assets that have already been created, meaning they can leverage them instead of creating net new.

Incentivized

• Reduction in costs on materials (i.e. - paper documentation)
• Improved efficiency given that our field members need to report back on an hourly basis
• Web based platform allows anyone access to the same information

Incentivized