Adobe Workfront vs. Planview ChangePoint

Workfront enables us to manage all our projects effectively while providing a comprehensive overview of team resources. The Resource Planner helps the team identify their capacity to determine whether they are over- or under-allocated. This information is crucial for project planning and ensuring team members do not experience burnout.

Incentivized

Changepoint is well-suited for consulting firms and other companies that charge clients for their time and have a need for significant project-management capabilities along with reporting and invoicing. It is not well-suited for companies that want a more basic solution to time reporting and expense reimbursement. The key questions to ask during the selection process revolve around this basic question: how are you going to use this software? Though it has a lot of functionality, the learning curve is steep and basic functionality is not as easy as one would expect.

• Routing. Workfront's capabilities to route tasks to multiple people far exceeds the capabilities of SharePoint in terms of back-end configuration required and ability to track task status.
• Form Creation. Workfront forms have a better UX than SharePoint as well as the ability to customize forms based on certain responses.
• Project Management Tracking & Reporting. The ability to track task and project statuses and send reminders/alerts when parameters are set are very helpful. Additionally, the reporting capabilities are very helpful when tracking multiple projects across multiple functions to deliver to leadership.

Incentivized

• There are lots of reporting options. Once you figure out how to work the parameters of a report, the system is able to provide detailed and accurate compilations of data. There are also many custom reports than can be setup, as well. In my experience, we have told Changepoint PSA administrators what kind of report we were needed and they set it up for us, available in a 'custom reports' folder.
• You can have several things open at once -- 'portals'. These are up at the top of the screen, much like how Google Chrome has tabs at the top. This is useful.

• Notifications (sometimes I am emailed when I am tagged, other times I am not)
• Certain file formats do not render correctly in Workfront Proof (eg, .XLS files)
• It can be difficult to manage projects if you have not been assigned the correct permissions.

Incentivized

• The site could become slow with high volumes of traffic. This may have been due to the way that our infrastructure was setup.
• Analytic reporting was not available in the version that we used. We created external reports to slice and dice the data and view it as the business demanded.

All that I've said already is why. I suppose the clearest way to say it is that at this point? I cannot imagine running the 300+ active projects in eMarketing without AtTask; it simply wouldn't be possible and even more; I wouldn't imagine why we'd try to find an alternative tool when we have one meeting our needs.

Sometimes the decision to renew boils down to an old adage "if it isn't broken don't fix it". Previous to moving to Changepoint, it was obvious that we needed a better project management tool. Projects we completed on time but the time zone difference between the teams and several iterations of back and forth caused a number of communication issues with projects. The difference is night and day.

For my needs, it's easy to jump in and out of, make changes and update projects, and check in with my employers. I haven't used to it create my own projects, they're created by my employer as we go, I suspect it's not hard to use in that way, but I don't have first-hand knowledge.

Incentivized

It could be more intuitive and user friendly.

Maintenance is required, but usually after work hours, Some days the proofing tool function is not operational, but this is a new function of the tool that WF is working out. the kinks on. Chrome is the best browser to use the system in and we find Firefox and Explorer lose some view functionality - Gantt Chart, Resource Grid

Incentivized

Workfront's performance has been very good. Everything always feels very fast and snappy in my experience. We have integrated it with custom scripts to create folder structure for media managing our projects. It works very well.

Incentivized

I haven't directly interacted with the Workfront support team, but my sense, from speaking to the person in our organization who's job this is, is that they are generally very responsive to support requests, and very supportive an pro active in making sure that those requests are taken care of in a timely manner.

Incentivized

It was from my boss, not a rep from AtTask.

The training is very easy to use and you can simply choose the topics included in the course(s) that are most important to your training needs. After each training course, you are tested on what you have learned. If you need a refresher course, they provide Course Catalogs as well as instructor-led courses & workshops.

We have implemented and integrated Workfront into three departments (R&D, Marketing, and IT). All have experience overall performance gains in productivity. R&D has developed a record number of new products, while streamlining and reducing workloads. Complex projects are now easily managed and delivered. Marketing has expanded the management of media and collateral, implemented more campaigns and increase brand value. IT projects are all now visible and managed. Helpdesk is being converted to the system allowing for better visibility and management of day to day requests from our growing company

While I consider Jira to have a somewhat different targeted use case from Adobe Workfront, they definitely overlap in some of their capabilities. As mentioned earlier, I find that Adobe Workfront is better at tracking progress and managing resources for larger projects that cross a number disparate teams or stakeholders. Meanwhile, Jira is better for tracking individual projects within a single team or smaller tasks, something that can be a bit harder to do at scale in Adobe Workfront.

Incentivized

The system predates me as I was not working for the company when the solution was chosen - I understand this may have been an 'overpromise, underdeliver' scenario. However, we are now moving towards replacing it with Supportworks - and having seen Supportworks in action I genuinely cannot wait to switch from Changepoint and move on...

Incentivized

We have been using Workfront for about 3 years. During this time they continue to be a very stable project management system. Workfront's overall scalability is able to handle increased loads of work. When using Workfront for a project management tool for the web team, we store documents, images & video's without any issues. They work with their customer's to provide the best project management system in the market today! I highly recommend Workfront for all project management needs. Workfront strives to deliver unique technology solutions to growing companies!

• Positive - we get more work done in a timely fashion because all team members are using Workfront.
• Negative - projects can get held up quickly due to user error (e.g., someone not using Workfront or checking notifications)
• Positive - we have a good gauge of where personally we are with projects, and how are team members are spending their time.

Incentivized

• Our ability to maintain a global IS Scorecard helped us to maintain a focus on completing projects on time and within budget.
• Having a single instance of Changepoint with projects aligned to specific portfolios helps senior management to maintain a focus on the investment of IS resources. It is foundational to our governance processes.