N-able MSP Manager vs. Planview ChangePoint

It's a good company to grow with because as needs change there are more features available.

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.

• Help Desk Ticketing is very easy to use and organize.
• Billing is robust and keeps track of client contracts and time very well.
• Role management and ticket routing client are very robust.

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.

• Labeling/titling work "labels" without all the extra steps.

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 had the chance to talk to SolarWinds reps at their Empower conference. They asked how we liked MSP Manager. (For full disclosure, we use their whole suite of products). I told them it's the worst ticket software I have ever used. They said that it wasn't the first time they had heard that. I did not doubt that he was telling the truth.

Incentivized

I want to be clear. I did not choose MSP Manager, it was thrown at me, purchased by someone who did not understand how bad this tool was. I have used other ticket systems, Remedy, Spiceworks, and ServiceNow. Those all work, and do a lot of things this can't. We have to export a list of all tickets, then use BI tools to try and work the data, just to get reports on completed tickets. It's truly terrible. I would recommend having users send a carrier pigeon over using this awful awful tool.

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

• For my managed service clients, MSP Manager has seriously reduced the time I spend billing. Overall data entry time may be the same, but now it's focused on documenting the work that was done and the billing simply follows.
• The first few months of learning MSP Manager definitely meant doing lots of admin work twice, and double-checking the MSP manager invoices against the paper trail, to ensure it was accurate and working. Plan for this extra time overhead during the learning phase.

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.