Great PSA tool with deep focus on project management and resourcing, and much more!
Updated March 18, 2015

Great PSA tool with deep focus on project management and resourcing, and much more!

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

Overall Satisfaction with Projector PSA

We use ProjectorPSA to project mange, resource and invoice our professional consulting services. We use it to track time & expenses, project timelines, forecasting revenue and resourcing - basically every aspect of our PS firm's operations aside from sales & marketing.

Pros

  • 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!

Cons

  • One challenge has been the user interface of the management portal, but that is currently being overhauled. The new design is being rolled out incrementally, and so far we've been very impressed with it, both visually and functionally!
  • Projector is first and foremost a project management tool. Because of this, we had to come up with some workarounds for customized accounting tasks we needed that were not part of the native Projector logic, but we were able to get what we need done.
  • One thing we did have with our previous PSA tool and that isn't available in Projector is an integration with MS Outlook calendar. That would be a great feature for our team.
  • Efficiency is definitely a benefit. While we do have to put in some effort into set up and maintenance of projects, we were able to eliminate the use of external timelines and WBS documents. Now we can grab them right out of Projector to send to the client, push into MS Project or just have our team access.
  • Resource allocation is more detailed and efficient and allows us to grow and be able to manage a larger group of resources with a wider range of skill-sets.
  • We are able to more accurately track and analyze internal R&D efforts and projects.
We switched to Projector from Open Air. While Open Air was a good tool, we found it wasn't really designed for project management at the level of detail we needed from our PSA and used MS Project and Excel to supplement Open Air. We also struggled with the invoicing side of it, manually combining invoice summaries with custom time and expense reports in Acrobat. Projector however, was designed for project management. We are able to manage projects, track time and expenses, and invoice all out of one system. The project setup can accommodate a wide range of complexity, including milestones, dependencies, etc. Project and resource dashboards also help see the services portfolio and team at a summary level and allows us to zero in on particulars easily and more meaningfully than we were ever able to with Open Air. Invoice templates are also easily customized and we were able to get several set up quickly to meet our needs. Lastly, Open Air required us to purchase and pre-pay licensing for a year, so if we lost staff mid-way through the year, the unused seat was not prorated. Projector licensing is paid monthly based on actual number of active users that month, which makes more sense for a team with fluctuating headcount.
Projector is a great tool for professional services firms looking to be able to project manage, resource, forecast & invoice out of their PSA. While it is certainly more than capable of handling very simple projects and timelines for small project teams, I think that firms with more complex timeline & WBS tracking needs will get the full benefit of using this tool. It is also an excellent tool for revenue forecasting & reporting. The reports module takes a little bit of getting used to, but it is very robust and once you understand how best to utilize it, the data can be manipulated almost in every way possible. The main thing to keep in mind though is that to get the most out of the system, you have to put and effort into putting the pertinent information into the system. This may require an internal process overhaul (which could be a very good thing!) and depending on the size of the team and scale of projects, a dedicated person tasked with a lot of the "admin" functions of getting data in. The Projector team is fantastic! They're very knowledgeable, responsive and always open to suggestions for improvement. They were great in helping us get started, never pushed us to get more than what we needed and were very transparent about what may be possible but not worth the investment to do.

Using Projector PSA

20 - Consultants, Project Leads, Project Managers, Project Coordinators, Finance & Accounting, VP & Directors of Services
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.

Projector PSA Implementation

Comments

More Reviews of Projector PSA

  1. Home
  2. Project Management Software
  3. Projector PSA Reviews
  4. User Review of Projector PSA