Planview Changepoint is a platform that marries professional services automation (PSA), project portfolio management (PPM) and business analytics to provide managers broad operational visibility and control over their strategic business portfolios.
N/A
ResultsBI
Score 5.1 out of 10
N/A
ResultsBI (formerly RESULTS.com) offers a cloud-based objectives and key results (OKR) software built around foundational features such as key performance indicator dashboards, project and task management functionality, and collaboration tools.
Changepoint is basic and would, therefore, work for businesses with uncomplicated requests, pretty straightforward workflows and willingness to work with an unsightly solution. It is basic, from the UI to the search option and the way the information is captured, which can be frustrating and counter-intuitive at times. It is relatively robust (i.e. I have been using it for almost 2 years and have not seen it crash once) but it does log me out when the system has been inactive for about 30 minutes - and I am only notified about being logged out upon clicking the Submit button, meaning many a line of text have been typed more than once!
Results.com would be a fantastic platform for a distributed team that has its data stored in a simple/single/common method and is looking for a single visual platform around which the culture of the company can collaborate, see relevant company metrics (and each other's metrics), and discuss the same. RESULTS.com is likely unnecessary for any team that is physically located together within an office and who can physically meet together. Such a scenario likely already has wall-projected charts and physically posted information. Further, we found RESULTS.com to be a bad choice for a company that has its data in several different locations, requiring the integration of several different APIs all coordinated together. Our somewhat complicated/disparate data simply didn't work well in the system to the point where people eventually were conditioned to NOT believe the numbers shown in RESULTS.com.
Changepoint has significant reporting capabilities, though of course, the data that comes out is only as good as the data that goes in. I enjoy being able to use the standard reports to understand exactly how much a project has cost us and to compare it to how much we are charging. This allows us to more accurately set our prices. Though we have not used the report designer capability, I understand that custom reports can be designed with relative ease.
Changepoint has a versioning capability for changes made to user profiles in the system manager, which I find particularly helpful. As a non-power user, it is valuable to be able to see what changes I have made to various profiles so that I can troubleshoot a problem down the line.
Changepoint has significant functionality well beyond the features that we are currently using, and for this reason, I think it is affordable and a good deal. Particularly if your organization is interested in dedicating the time and resources into using all of the features around project planning, resource allocation, etc., the price is well worth the value.
It has a very nice graphical/visual display of metrics/KPIs that are fed into it.
It has a fantastic meetings agenda and communication module that helped better connect our geographically distributed offices.
It solved the problem we had of using several different platforms for each need - providing a central place for results-orientated information sharing and discussion.
We use Changepoint to manage the IS organization. I would like to see more advancement in order to do benefits management.
I would like to see a capability where a project manager can build a very detailed work breakdown structure, but only require project resources to charge time and provide a task status at a higher level.
Like all BI software, the pretty graphics and charts and information are only as accurate as what is put into the system. It does not have parameters that will flag suspect data, which became a problem as our data sources increased and the results.com integration required more and more results.com-side development.
The promise of having the corporate mission/vision/values/etc. all connected to individual priorities and associated KPIs never came to pass. Being early adopters, we purchased partly on the promises of salespeople. As time marched on, support and development dropped off in favor of increasing their sales department.
We believe, through our experience with results.com, that the company was built to sell quickly. That is, we believe the owner/s blasted through their funding in the first year to onboard as many users as possible so they could increase value for a quick sale. Then we believe that when the money was mostly spent, and there was no sale, the company had to become a normal, profitable, long-term business which led to expense cutting, a RIF of developers and customer support, and the resulting slowdown/stoppage/inability to develop and support the product. Our feeling in the last months on the platform was one where it seemed the employees/owners were unhappy and disgruntled to have to actually run it as a business and deal with customers. (This is our guess and belief based on what we saw over time and without any knowledge whatsoever on what was actually happening over there.)
Sometimes the decision to renew boils down to an old adage "if it isn't broken don't fix it". Previous to moving to Changepoint, it was obvious that we needed a better project management tool. Projects we completed on time but the time zone difference between the teams and several iterations of back and forth caused a number of communication issues with projects. The difference is night and day.
When it worked, it worked nicely. Unfortunately, it didn't work for us all the time - and less so as the months went on. So, although relatively "easy to use," it stopped providing value due to its data integration problems. Thus, when the data was incorrect, people stopped using it.
This is a solid 5 because the first year we had fantastic customer support. We had a comprehensive training, a (seemingly) dedicated support staffer, a fair amount of development help to integrate things, and consultations with people associated with RESULTS.com who have made a name for themselves in this general method of business operations. But, after the first year that mostly dried up. It was a 10 the first year, and a 1 the next years - averaging to a 5.
Planview Changepoint helps us to understand our key customers enabling us to capitalize on every financial opportunity and helps us to forecast demand against the capacities required for new opportunities, and also it automates and monitors contractual terms and conditions. It gives us visibility into our employees' skills and helps to optimize resource allocation.
We have examined a variety of similar products both before, during, and after our time with results.com. We are currently using Sisense which is an entirely higher level than results.com in terms of B.I. - not only in the drill-down type of data access and reporting but certainly in its ability to handle multiple data sources effectively.
Employee efficiency has decreased significantly within our Project MAnagement team. The main causes are lack of logical steps/not user-friendly and the slowness of the entire program.
Changepoint PSA has greatly improved being able to track budgets for all projects. Before this software, budgets were done manually by hand and cross-referenced with Accounting. Now, we can pull a report out of the system, as long as all parties entered their time and data correctly.
We did not utilize a BI dashboard nor a standardized meeting agenda system before results.com so in that respect, it helped us establish a results/performance-orientated culture which was badly needed.
Unfortunately, beyond that first year, results.com didn't keep up with our struggles with data imports. That, combined with the inability for us to see direct ROI $ increases, led us to eventually leave the platform. Unfortunately, they locked us into a longer term (even without providing promised services) and so we technically were on the system (but not using it) for 6+ months past the date where we'd all agreed it was not useful for anyone anymore.
