Oracle’s Primavera is a software suite designed for construction and other asset-intensive industries. It contains a variety of project planning, management, and execution components for buyers to select from.
N/A
Smartsheet
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
Smartsheet is an online project management and collaboration tool. It includes automated alerts, instantaneous updating and sharing across team members, resource management, nested tasks organized in a hierarchy, a Gantt chart view, exportable and automated reports, and integration with email.
When compared to the likes of the field, Oracle is the least friendly in regards to being accessible to the team with Smartsheet working the most favorably in that aspect. Otherwise, Oracle's PM program is more intuitive than Microsoft Project, has more features when compared …
Oracle Primavera Portfolio Management is a utilitarian product of a yesteryear gone by. It's straightforward and to the point. It is well suited for a customer base who is not interested in frills, portability, or a multitude of OOTB ability. It's for those who like to restrict and manage all control over users, code in queries, functions, and create customized reports for end users. It does what it does very well however, just do not expect it to be pretty. It's a 2007 product, so curb your excitement. It does handle all aspects of portfolio management well; financials, budgeting, spend plans, contracts, projects, staffing, workflows, etc... however, it is not intuitive to navigate, and will require some training.
Smartsheet shines for collaboration. When you have multiple people involved with planning events Smartsheet makes it easy to share and collaborate. For instance, multiple people can be in Smartsheet working at the same time. Also setting permissions for exactly those who need to know is quite easy with Smartsheet. For data analytics and general spreadsheet purposes Excel is better but for project management and event planning Smartsheet is superior
Its hard to overstate the value of familiarity. Being able to use a tool that has some familiarity takes away the time needed to train and orient employees on a new tool and allows an organization to hit the ground running.
Smartsheet covers most of the basics of a project management tool, the usual tasks, milestones and project viewing options.
For data viewing, you get multiple data viewing options including a calendar view (good for marketing teams and those who work around scheduling), Kanban, Gaant etc
Smartsheet set up is similar to Excel, yet when you upload an Excel file, things like conditional formatting are lost. Smartsheet has its own conditional formatting, and you have to reinstate the rules. It would be great if those would apply automatically once a file is uploaded
Some Smartsheet management and access rules can take some tweaking to work properly. This may be a case of offering more info to admins so they can apply these better and with more efficiency
It definitely meets our needs as far as organizing and archiving our tasks and files. As we train more staff to view it, I see opportunities for more improvement, which I am sure this program can handle. I look forward to seeing continued improvement from Smartsheet on their capabilities and functionality.
Smartsheet is very easy to learn. However, while I have been able to pick it easily, Microsoft Excel and Project super users that I have trained on Smartsheet get bogged down in the differences and can find it frustrating. Explaining the differences ahead of time and why Smartsheet is being chosen instead of a different software seems to counteract those reactions
I give this rating because it fills a niche in the market. MS Project scares many away from proper task management but there are limited tools our there, especially cloud-based that are mobile-friendly. Smartsheet fills this market gap, especially for small to medium-sized businesses. IT is not fair to compare it to MS Project, but fairer to see what gaps it fills.
It's absolutely paramount to take a few minutes to actually play with the software. It's nearly impossible to do anything wrong or make a mistake which cannot be fixed easily. Under the help menu is Live Training option. After you familiarize yourself with the commands, watch the live training for some in depth understanding of how to make the software fit your needs perfectly.
Oracle is better laid out and has more functionality as well as end-user flow. The login process, billing, and construction management features are easy to find, easy to use, and helpful. The limitations on Quickbooks restrict users from the ability to view and bill full contracts if broken down, to track and show % complete. Procore is confusing.
Jira and Redmine are much more robust and technologically advanced project management solutions. I enjoy using either when managing a very large project. However, I prefer to use Smartsheet for my smaller to medium sized projects. As for Google Drive - I would say that Google sheets and Smartsheet are almost identical in my opinion when it comes to functionality. Personally I prefer to manage smaller projects via Google Drive, but it is a personal preference!
P6 is critical to the execution of all of our projects. Without it we would have less control of our projects.
One of our key business objectives is to deliver projects on time or ahead of schedule. P6 supports us in this goal and allows our superintendents to manage complicated construction projects.
