Socially Innovative with Ease PM System
January 07, 2014

Socially Innovative with Ease PM System

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Professional Edition

Overall Satisfaction

  • Social media is a huge part of our modern lives. Clarizen has taken this and adopted simple concepts, such as using "#" and "@" to easily connect projects, people, tasks, etc to the message board. It makes for quick reference and tagging.
  • Many people are not open to learning new tools. Clarizen's open session is great for learning new tricks and tools. Even better, when you are in a hurry you may jump in, ask a question, get you answers and continue on.
  • Clarizen does not want their product to be a mystery. There are many tutorials, QnA sessions, discussions and even one on one training. I was able to set everything up quickly and easily with these tools
  • Some of the tools are a little tricky. If it wasn't for the one on one help, I do not think I would have figured it out. When setting up your templates, there will be a small blue triangle in the upper right corner. This shows which field is the anchor field for other fields that may piggy back it. A small trick that is easy to miss and then becomes a frustration.
  • Some of the fields directly influence each other, but the default doesn't make a lot of sense to me (at least for my purposes). For example: the default to track time is duration, which changes based on the selected dates (allotted work time). Work is the actual time it takes to do a task. For me, it makes more sense to have Work as the default constant and Duration to change according to start and end dates, as your allotted time may be more/less than the actual time it should take to perform a task.
  • I wish there as an undo button. Even though you're online in real time, when you accidentally delete a task or change a date, I wish you could say "undo" instead of redoing it.
  • I am still working on learning the expense area, but so far I'm not impressed. I wish I could easily keep a running tally of expenses on a project instead of adding separate expense sheets and tying it to a task. The expense side, in my opinion, is their largest flaw and makes the least amount of sense. Otherwise the system is very user friendly.
  • In the 3 months of use, I have yet to see significant ROI. Currently still fighting with employees to even change and use the system.
I am very happy with Clarizen and think it is a fantastic system. But, with so much push back from employees, it is hard to stay positive when your company culture is waning.
I believe a younger, more innovative company will enjoy it's social media aspects, ease of use and client transparency. When working with older, more stubborn employees, the system breaks down and becomes frustrating for everyone. This is typical with any new system and change, not necessarily Clarizen's fault, but rather nature of the beast.