Workfront's ease-of-use is what makes it #1 for me
Updated February 04, 2017
Workfront's ease-of-use is what makes it #1 for me
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Workfront
Workfront is used by several departments: Professional Services, to manage all of their customer engagements; by Marketing, to manage internal requests and projects, and to extract data on PS projects and customers; and by the Business Process team, also to manage internal requests and projects. Sales enters new deal information which triggers the PS project and ensures information flows between the two groups.
Workfront helps ensure consistent delivery processes are followed and that nothing gets forgotten. As well, over time we have amassed a lot of valuable customer information that can be mined by the Marketing and Sales teams.
Workfront helps ensure consistent delivery processes are followed and that nothing gets forgotten. As well, over time we have amassed a lot of valuable customer information that can be mined by the Marketing and Sales teams.
Pros
- Ease of use, both for end-users and administrators. It's very easy to navigate between projects, tasks, issues, etc. Custom views are easy to set up and data fields can be edited directly in views and reports. It's very easy to set up custom forms and data fields and build reports and dashboards.
- It's a very versatile ticketing system. It's very easy to set up request queues for any department with custom forms that help speed up prioritization and assignment. Metrics and dashboards are also easy to set up and navigate.
- External views (if you have collaboration licenses) allow customers to see project plans, charts/dashboards, add their own issues, put comments on tasks, upload documents, etc. It's a great project portal for collaborative work, across all internal departments AND with external partners and customers.
Cons
- There is a lot of resource management functionality but it's difficult to get it to work effectively across a large organization. This challenge isn't necessarily specific to Workfront or related to how they implemented the functionality. It requires very strict discipline to ensure all resource assignments are always up to date on all tasks.
- A better data loader would be helpful. There is "kick-start" functionality to load initial data sets but it seems limited in making mass updates.
- Ability for PS team to manage more projects and ensure customer satisfaction.
- Ability to track all requests for proper prioritization and planning.
- Ensures a consistent project delivery process.
- MS Project and Salesforce
MS Project provides similar core project management functionality (task lists, Gantt charts, resource allocation) but it does come close to Workfront's capabilities related to custom data, forms, ticket queues, notes (updates), and especially reporting and dashboards.
Salesforce provides similar custom fields and reporting capabilities, but lacks the task management, project planning, resource planning, etc. of Workfront.
Salesforce provides similar custom fields and reporting capabilities, but lacks the task management, project planning, resource planning, etc. of Workfront.
Adobe Workfront Feature Ratings
Using Workfront
100 - Primary users are Professional Services and Training (to manager their projects). Marketing and Business Process teams use it for ticketing (and some project management). All staff use it to submit tickets to Marketing and Business Process teams, and the Sales team also uses it to submit Product & Services requests to the PS team. Finally, all R&D staff use it for time tracking.
2 - One business analyst who performs needs analysis, process implementations, creates advanced reports, and leads continuous improvement initiatives.
One system administrator who sets up new accounts, companies, profiles, etc., adds new custom fields when necessary, creates basic reports, provides general support.
One system administrator who sets up new accounts, companies, profiles, etc., adds new custom fields when necessary, creates basic reports, provides general support.
- PS project management
- Ticketing queues (managing support requests in various organizations)
- CRM - we store a ton of data on our customers and often report on this information
- CRM - the amount of data we've accumulated on our customers over time is amazing; we can now extract lists for Marketing and Sales and do trend analysis based on services and/or products sold, customer profiles, etc.
- Learning Management - our Training department keeps all of our trainee profiles in Workfront, tracking progress, scores, attendance, etc.
- We've created scripts that run and automatically update project information, such as task %-complete based on checklists associated with those tasks, and automatic resource assignment based on who is assigned to each role on a given project.
- Customer dashboards, allowing customers to see the status of their projects, upload documents, and enter issues and comments.
- Integration with Salesforce (to pull pre-sales data into the post-sales Product & Services request for PS).
- Product management using it to manage product release timelines.
Evaluating Workfront and Competitors
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- Third-party Reviews
Usability, including the system's flexibility. It's very easy to navigate as an end-user, but also very easy to administer, including setting up new fields, forms, reports, views, etc. I truly enjoy using the system, and am logged in all day long.
Wouldn't change a thing. We reviewed 3 vendors, looking at various criteria including functionality, ease-of-use, and price. Workfront was the clear winner.
Workfront Implementation
- Vendor implemented
- Implemented in-house
Yes - First implementation met the needs of the PS organization (plus the Product & Services request used by the Sales team). Future phases expanded the usage to other teams (ticket queues), and recently we got the entire company using timesheets.
Change management was a big part of the implementation and was well-handled - Don't make your project plan templates too complex. The PS team doesn't need every minor task listed out on the project plan.
- No major issues.
Workfront 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 |
No - We put a lot of effort into ramping up on Workfront in the first year (training, consulting, etc.) and we have staff dedicated to administering the system and keeping on top of new features. The Workfront community, help center, etc. are all top notch and provide all the support we need.
Yes - Yes, always.
They implemented one of my feature requests, which was to allow more rows of data to be displayed in dashboards (the original implementation only allowed 15 rows, which could lead to confusion if the user didn't realize more data was available). Their solution met my needs by allowing report creators to specify how many rows would be displayed when the report was used in a dashboard. I'm sure many other users benefited as well!
Using Workfront
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using Familiar | None |
- Reporting
- Custom forms
- Ticketing queues
- Resource management is a bit cumbersome
Yes, but I don't use it
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