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.
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Syncro
Score 8.9 out of 10
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Syncro is a combined RMM & PSA solution built specifically for modern MSPs, from SyncroMSP (Servably, Inc) headquartered in Kirkland. Syncro’s unified IT operations platform, automates and simplifies service delivery for MSPs and IT professionals to help them grow their business.
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!
SyncroMSP is great for MSPs starting out or wanting to keep their costs low. Some RMM software will charge per install - and price breaks only available as your base grows to a significant number. As Syncro is a "per agent" cost, the costs for an MSP are (a) known and (b) easily to manage as the team grows. The third-party integration element is very useful for MSPs looking to be able to not only onsell additional services, but the management of these services is simple for anybody to use
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.
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.
Ticketing. Whilst the ticketing system works, it is fairly basic compared to specific ticketing solutions. Some improvements here would be great.
Remote Management - granular options on accounts. You are unable to have some clients or systems which do not require a password for remote access, whilst having this set for other clients/accounts. This makes it a problem if you want to use the remote management component on servers where there is no one available to approve access
Better "built in" remote access software. Whilst the base remote access software works and that the system integrates with larger remote management vendors, some improvements to the remote management component would be beneficial
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.
Very easy to learn and comprehend. My partner and I had about a week of training and we were off and running. We are a small company and this system for now is a good fit. We can grow with it and not be nickel and dimed with various components being considered and add-ons and more money
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.
Syncro does not have every bell or whistle (especially when compared with Kaseya VSA). However from a cost versus feature perspective, Syncro wins hands down. Syncro versus Atera - they are very similar products and also use the per agent pricing. This was a big driver for us and Syncro came out at cheaper priced option. Atera does have more features and is a more mature product - however the features that we required were perfect in SyncroMSP
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.
