OpenText Solutions Business Manager vs. Projector PSA

How many users will be using the system? What part of the organization will own the product? Serena is a great workflow tool. It can be tailored to fit in any scenario and so I dont believe there is any situation where it would be inappropriate.

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We think Projector PSA is a great tool to track and manage people in a professional service environment like management consulting. This system is easy to set up, easy to understand and should easily suit the needs of smaller and medium sized firms. It may be less appropriate for firms that rely very heavily on project management through another system (like MS Project) or firms that rely very heavily on a sales pipeline tracking system. While still very much possible to use, you would (I believe) have to do some re-keying between systems

• One of my favorite capabilities within the Serena user interface is the reporting. Detailed searches into the workflows allow the users to create reports containing any field that is in the workflow. Users here use the reporting during review time to pull metrics on tickets they have worked during the year. From a process perspective, the system provides a specific report with details around how long the items have been in various states. I use this information to measure my process peformance and to identify bottlenecks within the processes themselves. The reports are fairly easy to use but they can also be very complex too. Reports can be set up and shared across groups. Generic reports can also be set up so that query at run time fields can be entered.
• Developing new processes in Serena Business Manager is relatively easy and does not necessarily need to be done by a developer. Serena has added some key features that reduces the need to add Java scripts. Serena Business Manager is a blank slate and it can be as complex or as simple as you make it. The forms are the same. I have seen some very simple designs and some very complex and beautiful form designs.
• From a user perspective, it is fairly simple to just pick up and start using. I introduce our new hires to the systems in a thirty minute session. Most users are more confused by which process to use for what than by how to use the system.

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• Projector is a very well designed tool for project management. It has allowed us to eliminate a number of auxiliary tools for project timelines and WBS for the vast majority of our projects.
• Time and expense entry is intuitive and quick for our staff.
• Our forecasting and resource management capability has improved greatly with Projector and allows us to grow our team efficiently with minimal additional administrative burden.
• Reporting is extremely robust. It does require some time to really get a handle on the full functionality of the reporting tool, but once you do, you can get almost any kind of report you want out of the system!

• Serena's documentation for the product is well written but it can be a bit challenging because it is often missing key components, best practices or tips and tricks that you get when you call into their customer support. It is also very frustrating to have their release notes refer back to their knowledge base to have their customers figure out what they fixed in their releases.
• Serena Business Manager manages their users in an Administrator function. Any changes made in this part of Serena is only logged in the database. It would be nice to have some reporting out of of this system. When you have multiple administrators of a system, it would be a nice feature to have some reporting here rather than having to go into the database.
• The notification feature within Serena can be a bit challenging and time consuming. You can't copy the notifications so if you want to duplicate a notification you had previously created you have to recreate it again. The notifications have three levels to them and they can be a bit tricky to get them to work just right.

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• Release management process needs to be improved. Currently no facility is provided to test the impact of new releases in a sand-box. This introduces business risk if there are interfaces into Projector PSA as part of it's use in the business.

We have been using this tool for a year now and find our use of it continually evolves and broadens. We are also very excited about the overhaul that's under way and feel many of the improvements being put in place will help make us that much more effective and efficient. The Projector team is also very responsive and collaborative in terms of user feedback and improvement suggestions, which helps us know they will work hard to help us get what we need out of the tool.

Desktop interface feels complex to new users.

In 5 years of use we have never experienced an unscheduled outage.

We have been using Serena for eight years and I don't believe I can answer this question since it was so long ago that we made the decision to purchase Serena.

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We did pursue Quick Arrow another tool that was similar. We found that be in inflexible in use. Projector allows a lot of flexibility in setup. Our organization has very specific business processes and we were able to set up Projector to work with those processes. Several other systems we tried were not as flexible in allowing set up to our needs.

• We use Serena to standardize our business processes to ensure a more efficient work day experience for our employees. By having the employees use Serena for the processes we can ensure the process is completed the same way every time.
• By having our key processes in Serena we are able to measure our processes at any time. Some of those key metrics include a 90% reduction in rework and a 47% reduction in overall process time. With the ability to measure processes at any time, we can react to process problems and correct them quickly. Serena Business Manager is flexible enough to allow quick development and rapid promotion when necessary.
• Serena is very ingrained in our culture and the culture has taken on the "ticket" mentality unfortunately. With everyone trying to measure their work and justify their body counts through ticket counts, having a ticket opened for every act of work has become the standard.

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• Even in the small time that I stayed to see Projector PSA reporting I saw ROI projections become more realistic. There was real data to analyze that proved we were spending way too much and charging way too less on some projects.
• Although employees were not used at entering their hours, this single reporting improved operations management and validated employees concerns that more people were needed to manage workload
• Project proposals were more realistic because they were driven by real data.
• Decision making overall for the department became more efficient and effective

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A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info