OpenAir -- Energetic, open-minded leadership; Most flexible PSA meets our detailed needs
Updated April 08, 2015
OpenAir -- Energetic, open-minded leadership; Most flexible PSA meets our detailed needs
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with NetSuite OpenAir PSA
NetSuite OpenAir PSA is used by our Professional Services Organization globally. We utilize the tool for all modules: reports, reporting dashboards, project tracking, time & expense management, SFDC integration, finacial integration. It allows us to track project milestones and deliverables, utilization, project profitability, etc. The information in reports is "actionable" and allows us to implement corrective steps appropriately.
- OpenAir demos really well and NetSuite prefers early consultation to be product-agnostic. They encourage clients to share specific needs they require in a PSA application. They then take on the ownership of making those configurations and setting up the application to be successful (per your requirements) from the start. Take time to work backwards in preparation for implementation. Outline the reports you need, then identify the specific value fields needed to create the desired outputs. The OpenAir consultant can then educate how this will be accomplished within the application.
- As legacy QuickArrow users, we were encouraged to implement OpenAir because it's the natural migration path. OpenAir made transfering our data easy with minimal adjustments. OpenAir helped us recreate our legacy reports using the appropriate new field values. While not every report could be replicated, we came "close enough" for our business needs.
- When you inquire if OpenAir can do something, the reply is always "Yes." The application is so flexible (almost too flexible), which makes fielding executive managment requests much more easy than within our former application, QuickArrow.
- The integration with Salesforce.com saves us a significant amount of time as we set up similar projects leveraging pre-created templates. After working with our references (more-so than our OpenAir consultant unfortunately) we were able to tailor this configuration to meet our needs perfectly. While this took a bit of technical collaboration on our end, this was an easy way to reduce our day-to-day manual effort.
- OpenAir dashboards allow executive management to have the information they need at their fingertips. They can tailor the dashboard reports to reflect their KPI interests and access the reports when they need them 24/7/365. While this takes a bit of effort to set-up a good starting point for all interested executives, the education enables them access information independently vs relying on reporting specialists or administrators for report outputs. As an administrator, take time to invest time in this area, as it empowers others and reduces reporting requests.
- OpenAir reviews enhancement requests often and they can be incorporated into the product quickly. When negotiating our contract, they were missing a have-to-have criteria element. Upon our contract signing, the product supported our criteria fully. When talking with other OpenAir customers, there are multiple examples supporting this strength!
- NetSuite conferences are fully of energy, offer great key note speakers, and offer opportunities to have conversations with OpenAir, open-minded leaders. This group is focused on the customer experience and are eager to hear (and best of all incorporate) customer feedback. This dynamic team is full of energy at all levels of the organization. A very genuine company where anyone would be proud to hold a role.
- Compared to QuickArrow, setting up reports to reflect the data accurately seemed to require a bit more consultant time and collaboration. Getting the numbers correct is essential, so budget extra time for this iniative. We also learned that certain calculations can not be displayed in the executive dashboards. Ask these questions upfront to ensure your dashboards are complete for your needs (again, working backwards in the preparation stages).
- Compared to QuickArrow, NetSuite OpenAir PSA falls short in the resource management capabilities. UI, flexibility, and scheduling options all could be improved. This is on their roadmap, timeline yet to be defined. Scheduling is vitally important to our company and this is THE area where we feel is the applications weakest. However, the application does provide everything critical to scheduling and provided the elements we needed in order to be successful. We altered our scheduling process accordingly.
- During our System Administration 3 day online training, when a question was asked about detailed functionality, sometimes the trainer would share..."Yes, OpenAir has a configuration for that. Just inquire with your consultant and they can flip that flag in your instance." The responsibility for obtaining these special application configurations was placed on the System Admin [in training] to ask and to take notes. If your company needs the application to work a certain way, speak up and ask your OA consultant. There seems to be MANY flags that can be flipped in the background to allow for the system to meet your needs. My complaint is that these are not published, rather made available if one inquires.
- OpenAir is able to generate invoices directly and we strongly encourage using this feature to keep everything housed under one application. However, this did not work for our organization and we leveraged a financial integration. A bit of a pioneer integrating with Softrax -- the integration works well, however is quite fragile. We do receive appropriate support when needed, but would prefer the integration to be a bit more stable. We recommend integrating with their stated supported financial systems, as staying the course will likely net a more stable integration.
- The Salesforce.com / OpenAir Integration reduces project creation manual entry effort by 50%, leveraging pre-created project templates.
- The resource scheduling takes longer than within QuickArrow, as there are more clicks involved to set up scheduling specifics and double-checking your work. Accurate schedules make or break our utilization, so we are OK with spending time in this area. OpenAir does offer a feature to transfer a pre-created schedule from one resource to another. This is our favorite time-saver, specifically helpful when back-up employees are needed to cover for leave on complex projects.
- Please know that when considering all the PSA solutions out there, an application is only as good as technology. It's up to you, the admin, to configurate it to meet the needs of your business. Technology alone is useless...take time to become educated and share those details with internal stakeholders. Make wise decisions and document them. We believe OpenAir is the best PSA on the market, when compared to competitors in 2013. Good luck making your decision, working backwards from reporting to achieve the best success.
I have evaluated Clarity, ConnectWise, SAP, and Tenrox solutions. From my perspective, judging against our internal have-to-have and nice-to-have criteria, they do not offer the level of flexibility and detail our organization needed to continue to support our current service offerings supported by QuickArrow. Their sales individuals ‘talk a good talk,’ but when reviewing with current clients on each application, their feedback paints a different picture. OpenAir solution provides the configurations, flexibility, robust reporting, executive dashboards, and improvements our organization needs to continue to our current service offerings. The solution offers functionality that can be leveraged when putting together future, more scalable, service offerings. OpenAir is the natural upgrade for current QuickArrow clients. Sales individuals provide honest feedback and when reviewing with current clients, they praise the organization, product, support and overall client experience. They cite that enhancement requests are reviewed and often incorporated into the product quickly, offering many examples in support of this claim.
Using NetSuite OpenAir PSA
OpenAir PSA Implementation
- Implemented in-house