Projector PSA vs. UDA Construction Suite

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

If you've never used software before and have low expectations, then you might be able to make it work out.

• 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!

• The beautiful user interface. It looks good.
• Their videos are professional.
• They have webinars.

• 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.

• Their spell checker creates a squiggly line to tell you that you have a misspelled word, but, doesn't allow you to correct it.
• The spell checker lets you add custom words to a dictionary, but, it can only use one dictionary at a time to check spelling. So the default dictionary gets used, and your custom words still show up as being spelled wrong!
• You can't select-copy addresses, in order to paste them somewhere else.
• Using duplexing on my printer doesn't work right. It works for every other software I own, but not in UDA.
• There is a bug in the WIP date range that doesn't pull accurate data.
• "Options" in the estimate show only cost, not margin. So if you show your customer that report, you are revealing cost info, not selling price!!
• You can't import a PDF into bid notes, even though the premise of UDA is to try to make it a single repository for all your information.
• You can't use the arrow key to browse photos in UDA. You need to close, and click into the next one. No inuitive functionality.
• The estimating module separates material and labor, in ways that create a very confusing Scope of Work. You need to select the labor item from your database, then separately select the material from your database. You end up with two line items in your Scope of Work for the same thing. Instead of writing, "Supply and Install a new window" you have "Supply a new window" and then "Install a new window." It's hard for my estimator, and confusing for my client.
• UDA will WREAK HAVOC on your contacts in Outlook.
• It does a terrible job of managing husband/wife or partner/partner situations. You can't mail merge them properly, or, you get forced into combining their contact into into a single contact-- and then how do you know whether the cell phone is his or hers???
• There is no good way to credit design fees against the construction contract, if you happen to use that paradigm for your contracts.
• There is no way to filter contracts by their date created. So, how do you find your newest contacts for entering them into something such as Constant Contact?
• If you try to use integration of QuickBooks(QB) and UDA, your ITEMS list in QB will either get expanded to hundreds or even THOUSANDS of items... or, your POs in QB will get created in a summary form such that they are virtually meaningless.
• The "lead funnel" graphic may look cool, but there is not a good way to actually report on the lead status, track the activities and calls that you make, note significant emails that you write, or keep track of when you send out thank-you cards or spiffs/gifts!
• They might tell you that these things work, but, after spending MONTHS with UDA, I found out that these problems are deal breakers.
• Within their customer service department, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. They do not use a structure such as Zendesk that so many other great companies use. Even though I was paying for priority support, there were often days going by where I could not get a call or email back to assist me with a support request or provide a tutorial on how to do something. Had I not paid extra for support, this would be acceptable. But when paying for "TotalCare" priority support, there are times when the software had me stuck, and I was stuck for a day at a time waiting for an answer. Sometimes no answer ever arrived.

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.

Desktop interface feels complex to new users.

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

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.

QuickBooks has great quality assurance and while they don't provide support, their software is nearly flawless. Co-construct provides great support and solves problems. In comparison, UDA Construction Suite is full of flaws, and their customer service department is disorganized and overworked.

• 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

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• All my money was wasted. I could not get a refund.
• All my time was wasted. I spent much time on customer support, and even more time "stuck" where customer support could not be reached.
• My staff time was wasted, because it was hard for them to implement and then we ultimately abandoned it.