Projector's cloud-based Professional Services Automation (PSA) software helps project-based services organizations track time and expenses, invoice clients, schedule resources, and manage projects. Its three modules span a more comprehensive set of uses than typical project management software. The Accounting module helps the user track time and expenses and manage invoices and billing. Also it syncs with the company's accounting systems as a sub-ledger. The Resource Scheduling module matches…
$15
per user
Workamajig
Score 6.1 out of 10
N/A
Workamajig is a project management system with capabilities such as file sharing, resource management, and revenue projection.
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're looking for a system to help you address accounting that's not suited for marketing agency structures, this is the right tool. It is a bit cumbersome, but it has streamlined our reporting, billing, estimating, and tracking. As for project management, it's great that it integrates with the estimating and finances, but it's just not enjoyable to use. The interface is clunky. So if project management is your main criteria, I'd choose something else. We would never use it to collaborate with clients either because I'd be afraid of making them frustrated by the tool, so we use Basecamp to do that.
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 Platinum version has a particularly robust time tracking system, down to a 'timer' function that can be critical for an agency like mine where you want to be accountable for billing a client arruately
The ability to make projects available only to those who are permitted to assign their time to it has apparently been very helpful during our revenue reconciliation meetings where time incurred is reviewed against scope
The mobile app, while I still feel needs some work, is pretty handy for a quick calendar check if I'm in a client meeting and cannot utilize my browser to get information
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.
WMJ's interface is dated. Despite an html5 driven "sheets"-based interface, it takes a lot of time and effort to manage the interface, which could be streamlined considerably. On a UX/UI scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the best, WMJ would earn a 6 from me.
Despite the amount of documentation available, there is a distinct lack of clarity in that documentation, and it doesn't fully cover everything you would expect. Branching thoughts, for instance, are not addressed. Additionally, because there are two editions of the software online, there are two support sites that aren't sequestered. So information from both commingles, creating confusion.
Support is available on an email and phone basis. They strongly encourage you to use email, however, and they are resistant to phone time. This is likely because the support staff is limited in number, but has a great depth of knowledge. If you want immediate phone support, however, YOU ARE OUT OF LUCK. You are placed in a queue and the odds of same-day help are low. For email, the response is usually within an hour, but when you are stuck with a configuration issue, or need to generate a report and don't know how to do something, waiting is not optimal. That said, the support team is TERRIFIC.
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.
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.
Workamajig was definitely a lot easier to keep track of projects, timesheets, and out of office calendars all in one. ClickUp and Zoho were good for project management but JIG definitely has more to offer and it's a little easier to clean. Keeping track of campaigns is much easier in JIG as it assigns project numbers and task numbers to each assignment.
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
