Projector PSA vs. Rev.io PSA vs. Zoho Projects

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

Tigerpaw Unleashed, according to Trust Radius is no longer being marketed. If it worked correctly, it has the potential to be great software for Enterprise level businesses. We chose the Unleashed version so that the technicians could use it in the field. It does take a lot of information to get the software up and running

Incentivized

My work involves projects of 5-15 people with numerous projects running simultaneously. Prior to Zoho, I did not have a central location from which to view all project statuses at once. Zoho looks to provide this and also looks like it will deliver. I am anxious to see how our organization's use of it develops. At this time, I feel I am likely to recommend Zoho Projects because my organization has made great software decisions in the past so I have a level of trust already that the research has been done that Zoho is the best solution for our line of work.

Incentivized

• Time tracking. For a service company that typically bills retainers, it is very important to be able to assign a direct cost to your resources at all levels and analyze your profitability.
• Expense reporting. Projector easily tracks expenses of all types and allows you to categorize them under non-billable projects, client billable projects and/or client development ventures.
• Reporting. Projector has a large list of standard reports right at your fingertips. These reports can be extracted as Excel docs, mdp files and other useful formats. They are intuitive, clear and easy to analyze. For those you need on a standard basis, you can set them up to pull on a recurring basis. It should be noted that all reports are easily customized and Projector's support team is always there to help get you the information you need.

Incentivized

• ability to dispatch tech's to service calls

Incentivized

• Swiss Army Knife: The suite of Zoho projects can be tailored to fit the needs of any business. It's great to have a bunch of different software offerings that will work together seamlessly.
• Task Customization: Zoho allows you to customize your tasks more than other platforms (add start dates, due dates, dependencies, subtasks...)

Incentivized

• The split between the desktop and web environments was awkward at times.
• While the reporting modules are powerful, creating reports can be complex and required a fairly deep knowledge of the product.
• The appearance and interface of the desktop application appears somewhat dated.

• When training, during the overview of a chapter the examples tend to be from a prior version and do not reflect current software.
• In my experience when things don't work the way you think they should being told to go back and read the chapter that you read 5 times before is not helpful.
• I my experience when they know that there is an issue and the software is not working they keep billing you.
• They like to tell you that they are escalating the problem. You never see a resolution and they do not get back to you . You have to keep calling them.
• They acknowledge that you are having issues and state that there will be a credit. I have not seen one.
• In my opinion, training is filled with jargon and no glossary.

Incentivized

• More flexibility on making the user interface more compact (like Excel or MSP). Current interface is well spaced, but some users may like a more compact view.
• More simplified Gantt Charts that help us understand progress and dependencies.
• Ability to export projects to Excel for sharing with others we can't/don't want to bring on to Zoho projects

Incentivized

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.

Zoho has been able to fit the needs of our Engineering organization. The employees and management that are using it have not found a 'catastrophic' reason to discontinue use. Although certain features and better support mechanisms would be much better, it has been able to keep with both basic needs and more advanced ones. A majority of the company has enjoyed the basic interface it offers, the apps it has for iPhone and Blackberry, the mobility of updating a project without needing to be connected to any type of server. There are still improvements that can be made in future releases but as the person who originally purchased the solution for our company, I have found it to be an excellently priced solution in the functionality it offers.

Desktop interface feels complex to new users.

Zoho Projects is an easy project management tool to use. It provides all the functionality that we required for handling projects. We can easily create personal forms for projects and tasks, allowing us to add and report on our own desire. Apart from this we can create and edit documents in real time which saves our time. This allows us to share text docs, presentations, tables with the whole team and we can work on them together

Incentivized

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

Has not been down to my knowledge.

Speed meets my expectations.

Although it might lack intuitiveness, once you get a hang of how Zoho Projects works, you can do a LOT. The impact good project management has on profitability is huge, and it has helped not only improve communication and coordination when working on a project, but more importantly have adequate tracking of time, due dates and potential bottle necks

Incentivized

We switched to Projector from Open Air. While Open Air was a good tool, we found it wasn't really designed for project management at the level of detail we needed from our PSA and used MS Project and Excel to supplement Open Air. We also struggled with the invoicing side of it, manually combining invoice summaries with custom time and expense reports in Acrobat. Projector however, was designed for project management. We are able to manage projects, track time and expenses, and invoice all out of one system. The project setup can accommodate a wide range of complexity, including milestones, dependencies, etc. Project and resource dashboards also help see the services portfolio and team at a summary level and allows us to zero in on particulars easily and more meaningfully than we were ever able to with Open Air. Invoice templates are also easily customized and we were able to get several set up quickly to meet our needs. Lastly, Open Air required us to purchase and pre-pay licensing for a year, so if we lost staff mid-way through the year, the unused seat was not prorated. Projector licensing is paid monthly based on actual number of active users that month, which makes more sense for a team with fluctuating headcount.

Zoho Projects provides a more limited set of functionality and customization options than other task/bug trackers on the market, but what it lacks in functionality it makes up for in ease of use. It probably has 80-90% of the features of its competitors but takes about a third of the time to get up and running and realizing value.

Incentivized

• 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

Incentivized

• Gigantic waste of time and resources

Incentivized

• Unfortunately, prior to creating Project Task Templates we'd occasionally miss a step and something that was necessary would be overlooked.
• The creation of the Project Templates was a team collaborative effort to make sure that everyone had some input as different people was integral to specific projects.
• It took a little while to learn some of the more tricked out features like task dependency but even starting out with the most basic of features was very significant.

Incentivized