The ability to create processes for everything, and one place for all the processes
January 23, 2014
The ability to create processes for everything, and one place for all the processes
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction
Agiloft is used by our entire organization, a company of about 25 employees. The primary purpose is to manage the workflow of our product development. The ultimate goal is to have this start at quoting, go through all operations teams until product delivery, and finalize with invoicing. We are currently creating this workflow, piece by piece, as we learn more about Agiloft and what it can do for our company.
It is helping to make the large number of processes we have more automatic, which makes things easier and reduces errors that manual processes can create. It creates automatic emails that employees used to have to create every time. Instead, they now click a button and Agiloft does the work for them. It also makes information more consistent, connects related information together, and gives us one centralized location for our records.
We also use it for several non-production processes, including time off requests, new hire on-boarding, internal projects, and employee recognition. We anticipate that we have several more months of work to build up everything we want to have on Agiloft.
It is helping to make the large number of processes we have more automatic, which makes things easier and reduces errors that manual processes can create. It creates automatic emails that employees used to have to create every time. Instead, they now click a button and Agiloft does the work for them. It also makes information more consistent, connects related information together, and gives us one centralized location for our records.
We also use it for several non-production processes, including time off requests, new hire on-boarding, internal projects, and employee recognition. We anticipate that we have several more months of work to build up everything we want to have on Agiloft.
- Customization. We are able to take the foundation and default set up and turn it into exactly what we need.
- Support. Although a ticket system and dealing with support almost exclusively online seemed not ideal to us at first, we know we can rely on Agiloft's support team to get back to us quickly and help us to find a way to do something, fix issues that are going on, and answer any questions we have.
- Easy to learn. Although there is a LOT to learn, most of it has been intuitive and easy to follow. It's easy to try out different setting to see what will happen one way versus another.
- Charts and Reports. Being able to see data in many, many different ways through the searches and views. Automatically emailed reports are extremely helpful.
- Documentation. The Administrator Manual gives some information, but we end up just going to Support a lot of times to help us figure out how to do something.
- It would be extremely helpful to see what other employees with other permission levels can see, without having to go to their computer and view it from there. It seems like this is only possible in the Charts/Reports section.
- There seems to be several bugs related to working with an external database. Nothing major, but little hiccups now and then can get a little frustrating.
- Increased efficiency on certain processes. Our time sheets were done previously in excel spreadsheets, which HR had to constantly remind everyone to do because they hated it. We created a tool for logging time sheets which is much easier and faster to do, and now employees don't dread it (as much). We also use print templates to automatically create documents to send to our clients, which previously had to be created manually. It also allows for information to be viewed at anytime, instead of waiting for someone to close a document first.
- Linking together of information, and having one place for everything. Previously, we never had one place to store information and records. We had one place for this information, another for that information, and sometimes information went to one place and sometimes in some other place. We also used different tools for different things. Emails for this, our wiki for that, an excel spreadsheet for this other thing. Agiloft has allowed us to have one place where employees will go to do everything from requesting vacation days to doing tasks related to our product, to recognizing another employee's accomplishments.
- Decreased efficiency on certain processes. However, there is a silver lining to this. These processes were previously as simple as you can get - logging information into a text file, which is then added to by other employees. There were no controls, no major checks, and things could easily be missed. Agiloft's system allows us to do things so that everything stands out and is seen, checked, and recorded in a much better way. The trade off for less efficiency is tough, but it will be worth it in the long run as we are more effective and accurate.
N/A - Agiloft was already chosen as the tool we were going to use (by an employee that has now left the company) before I was given the assignment of working on this.
Product Usage
25 - Quoting - Logging quotes that are created in Quickbooks, creating a database for us to follow up on. Plan on creating tools to create Ballpark Quotes within Agiloft
Sales - Currently creating a comprehensive CRM program
Client Services - Manage all projects, log errors, see the different processes that go into creating a product, creating a system of checks that all products must go through
Configuration/Software Development - Being able to request tasks from other teams, see client standard practices, log errors and process deviations
HR/Finance - A more efficient way to receive Time Sheets and process the data from them.
We are still working on many, many more processes to fine tune and add to our Agiloft system.
Sales - Currently creating a comprehensive CRM program
Client Services - Manage all projects, log errors, see the different processes that go into creating a product, creating a system of checks that all products must go through
Configuration/Software Development - Being able to request tasks from other teams, see client standard practices, log errors and process deviations
HR/Finance - A more efficient way to receive Time Sheets and process the data from them.
We are still working on many, many more processes to fine tune and add to our Agiloft system.
2 - Familiarity with company's policies, processes, and procedures. Ability to consult with other teams, learn their needs and requirements, and make them work within the Agiloft system. Attention to detail but ability to look at the entire picture, rules oriented, and process driven.
- Using it to help manage our entire production workflow.
- Managing employee Time Sheets.
- Ability to connect and link data from table to table.
- Created a new way to produce Time Sheets which made it more efficient. We are also able to see how much time was put into a specific product.
- As a complete CRM product, when we were starting to consider replacing our current program.
- File versioning gives us exactly what we were looking for in a Document Management System.
- Quoting, Invoicing, and working with QuickBooks to help our finance team.
- Improving communications through notifications and updates.
Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed No escalation required Immediate help available Support understands my problem Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response | None |
Yes - Yes, in one situation we had to push quite a bit to make sure that they understood that the bug was extremely affecting our day to day work. We were told that they would try to escalate, but weren't given confirmation that it was. However, it clearly was because we very quickly got a solution to our issue, which we were very appreciative for.
This ties back a little to the previous question, but we performed an upgrade which caused Agiloft to produce an error when we tried to update it with information from our external database. This is the core to all of our processes, and although we had a temporary work around, it was far from ideal and could only work for a few days. The support team and the developers had a solution to fix the issue in about a day and a half, which no doubt required a lot of emergency work on their part, especially because they likely have tons on their plate already. We appreciate what they did to get us back up and running.
Usability
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Well integrated Convenient Feel confident using | Requires technical support Lots to learn |
- Creating tables is very straightforward and intuitive.
- The customization of using linked fields and actions buttons allows us to create forms that will show and do exactly what we want.
- Searches and views are very easy to set up and customize.
- The dependant choices wizard on choice fields was extremely easy to figure out, and worked right on the first time.
- Permissions are very tedious because there are so many different levels of them. Not being able to see what the permissions look like for a specific group would make this much easier.
- Charts and Reports are not as easy or as intuitive to use as the rest of the program.
- Not being able to edit the information in a record from the table view makes some processes less efficient.
- Not being able to duplicate a field and only change the name makes creating tables, which is usually easy, very tedious and cumbersome. If I'm creating 10 fields where the only difference is the name, but each involves me changing 10 options, it's hard to remember all of those options each time and make sure everything is set up correctly the first time.
Yes, but I don't use it