Celoxis vs. Planview ChangePoint

Celoxis is great if you'd like to implement a project management tool to a company that hasn't had one in the past.

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.

• Project managements is great.
• Well packed features.
• Easy way to schedule reports.

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.

• It's GUI is not very useful on mobile devices
• Doesn't have program or portfolio management features, some can be tailored using custom attributes and workflow apps
• Some system catalogs (like customers) should be made available as custom fields

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.

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.

It could be more intuitive and user friendly.

I used an evalaution matrix built with input of several stakeholders in the company. In the end the matrix included 100 features (non of them was price related). The matrix was heavily focused on waterfall project management, agile related features were only 5 out of 100 features. Features were labeled as mandatory, required or optional. Products which lacked a mandatory feature (like providing technical support) were disqualified. Then a price vs features evaluation was made and only the products with the best combination were seleced to continue: Celoxis, ITM Platform and Mission Control. A final technical evaluation was made comparing the full evaluation but also the evaluation of only the 40 required features. Overall, Celoxis was the better evaluated (76% vs 65% of the second place), for the 40 required features, Celoxis got 91% against 78% of number 2. In the end we chose Celoxis even when it had higher licensing cost.

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

• Positive in most cases

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.