Brilliant agency management software. (I've tested them all and this is best)
Updated November 29, 2015
Brilliant agency management software. (I've tested them all and this is best)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with TrafficLIVE
TrafficLIVE is being used for estimates, quotes, resource allocation, time tracking, expenses, purchasing, and invoicing. Primarily controlled by our client services and delivery team; it is critical to the day to day running of our business. Integration with Sage Line 50 helps to keep Traffic aligned with our management accounting.
- Quote and job templates are incredibly valuable. Not only do these save time, but the team are less likely to miss crucial work packets from their estimates.
- Dashboards provide a clear picture of finances on every quote or job, with the added ability to drill down to the detail.
- Being able to go back to any job and analyse time and resource usage is priceless. You might see where you have overrun, or maybe missed something in your original estimate. This will help you to continually improve the accuracy of your estimates.
- By nature, having everything in one system (quotes, expenses, purchases, jobs, time, resource, invoices) makes it far easier to get the true picture of what's going on in your business.
- The user interface is clunky. Like its competitors, Traffic is hindered with legacy code, features and interfaces. It often feels like they're running out of space for buttons! That being said, I think it's the best of a bad bunch! And it works!
- The support portal and documentation need a complete overhaul. The Traffic support portal declined when it migrated into Deltek's portal. It now feels like you've stepped back in time!
- Content needs restructuring and rewriting. It's a mess and it's hard to find what you are looking for. PDF downloads are a nightmare. Needs clean html pages.
- The UI screens for resource planning (the 10,000ft view screens) are cumbersome and in need of a design overhaul. We don't use them at all, they're pretty useless. The new Work Planner looks promising, but overly complicated and hindered by the general UI weaknesses of their legacy Adobe Air App platform.
- Projecting agency capacity is something we do outside of TrafficLIVE. Because we're often trying to predict against things that aren't yet jobs in the system, alongside jobs that ARE in the system. For this kind of flexible/lightweight capacity planning, we end up using another third party application. TrafficLIVE is best used when you have definitive estimates/bookings.
- Integration with Merlin Project is non-existent. Mac users don't generally use MS Project, so this is a bit of a failure on Deltek's part.
- Being able to assign multiple resources to one task would be a better way of structuring quotes and jobs in Traffic. It would save time. It would reduce the number of tasks needing to be created for every job. Project plans have been created this way for years, why doesn't Traffic allow this?
- Increased employee efficiency - often takes less time to create a quote because you can start with a template.
- More accurate estimates through use of templates. Less chance of missing a critical task from the estimate. By being able to go back and review similar job performance, you can improve your estimates on your new quote.
- You know where you are on every single job going through the business!
- Having data on every job has helps us to make smart decisions again and again. This has had a huge impact on job profitability.
Synergist - does the same thing, but the interface was far more complicated to use. Looked like a bit of a nightmare to use. Didn't get too far reviewing this one. Was too concerned about on boarding with our workforce.
Paprika - saw a demo, looked 'OK', heard bad reviews from friends in the same industry. Appeared to be plagued with the same issues as Synergistic. Paint to use.
Streamtime - Tested this thoroughly. Loved the interface, and very nearly bought this software over TrafficLIVE for that very reason. In the end it did not allow us to separate time into distinct categories such as 'estimated', 'quoted', 'scheduled', and 'actual'. In Streamtime, if you stretched the time next to a task, it seemed to also adjust the estimate as well. In contrast, Traffic separated time into these dimensions for every task, resulting in a far more useful data set for reporting.
Finally, Traffic was cloud based, which meant that I didn't need the added hassle of hosting and maintenance. In my opinion, Streamtime is suited to a smaller business, maybe 5-20 employees. It might have improved now but it's been two years since I reviewed it.
Paprika - saw a demo, looked 'OK', heard bad reviews from friends in the same industry. Appeared to be plagued with the same issues as Synergistic. Paint to use.
Streamtime - Tested this thoroughly. Loved the interface, and very nearly bought this software over TrafficLIVE for that very reason. In the end it did not allow us to separate time into distinct categories such as 'estimated', 'quoted', 'scheduled', and 'actual'. In Streamtime, if you stretched the time next to a task, it seemed to also adjust the estimate as well. In contrast, Traffic separated time into these dimensions for every task, resulting in a far more useful data set for reporting.
Finally, Traffic was cloud based, which meant that I didn't need the added hassle of hosting and maintenance. In my opinion, Streamtime is suited to a smaller business, maybe 5-20 employees. It might have improved now but it's been two years since I reviewed it.