Projector PSA vs. SpiraPlan vs. TaskRay

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

We selected SpiraPlan because the workflow allows us to start simple without adopting an entire methodology. It suits small teams and single users really well.

TaskRay is a great solution for small to medium sized businesses running multiple projects at the same time. It is very cost effective and their development team is actively adding new functionality regularly. If you prefer working from a tiled Kanban board view, this is highly worth evaluating.

Incentivized

• 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!

• Flexible requirements organisation structure. I'm able to group and sub-group requirements as I see fit.
• Competitive product pricing. Paying by active use instead of registered user was the winning point.
• UI is straightforward and easy to use.

• Onboarding Templates
• Scheduling Onboarding tasks and assignments to client and employees
• Creating project logs so that everyone knows what is being worked on

Incentivized

• 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.

• Access from South East Asia is rather sluggish. Could be due to server location.
• Complimentary phone app to do simple tasks (e.g. create tasks, create requirements, add comments) offline would be beneficial because access to the internet can be an issue at the customer's environment.

• Unfortunately TaskRay does not allow us to share templates externally with customers.
• We have employees all over the world and we don't think TaskRay will support other languages such as Japanese. Note, I am speaking with a sales rep next week to confirm this, so we may be incorrect.

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.

It's hands-down the best PM tool we have ever used. Nothing compares in ease of use and being easy to learn. It also looks great and makes sense immediately

Incentivized

Desktop interface feels complex to new users.

Easy Easy Easy to use

Incentivized

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

I have not had many support issues but when I have, they have been courteous helpful, and solved the issue

Incentivized

Again, just like the app, the implementation was very easy.

Incentivized

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.

Main differentiating factors: 1. Lightweight process 2. Plans based on active users instead of registered users.

We are still in our year long evaluation process. But TaskRay has been the easiest, and most successfully adopted tool so far. Even if we do not end up choosing TaskRay, I do not regret implementing the system or the experience working with the team at TaskRay. The only reason we may not end up going with TaskRay is lack of templates and slightly stunted reporting features (this is mainly due to Salesforce limitations). Our organization is growing so quickly, we need to consider tools that are better able to regiment processes in a larger group of Customer Service Representatives and give management more detailed insight into those activities.

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

• Allows us to manage simple IT requirements without major upfront costs. Allows us to expand our process complexity at our own pace.
• Slow UI response from a South East Asia country can make data entry a drag.

• It was highly effective in organizing projects and sprints.
• Time cards were easy to manage.
• TaskRay's integration with Salesforce is a huge win as well as you can leverage workflows, approval processes, and alert notifications.

Incentivized