Planview AdaptiveWork vs. ZilicusPM

I've been an AdaptiveWork (Clarizen) admin for the past 14 years, so I've seen much improvement since I started working with the product. I'm very happy we can utilize the hybrid mode by using the cards, I think this was long overdue but it works very well.

Incentivized

ZilicusPM is suited for any business that has difficulty managing and keeping track of office related work as well as project management. Its an efficient way to manage just about anything necessary. It is well-suited for our office, as structural/civil engineers - we are able to keep track of our projects as well as office/human resources related work.

Incentivized

• Many ways to acclimate to the system; documentation, videos, community, and contacts.
• Planview provides scalable customization options tailored to the unique needs of each business unit or department. Easily add or remove fields in the system. As the admin, it was easy to learn how to configure.
• Offers flexibility to adapt to existing systems and align with organizational workflows and processes. There are multiple ways to customize each part of the system to meet our needs.

Incentivized

• ZilicusPM is great for an office regarding meetings and site visits. It's hard to keep track manually of where everyone is at. By sharing our calendars through ZilicusPM, we are able to access where someone is within a few seconds!! It is very convenient and less of a hassle.
• This a great tool to use to manage all documents that enter in and out of our office for certain projects. It is hard to keep track of everything through our office, so this programs helps us manage things very efficiently.
• This is great for prioritizing! I know many people in our office have an issue to do so. With the Project Issue Management feature, we are able to do this more effectively without causing any stress to our employees!

Incentivized

• Planview AdaptiveWork's ability to create relations between work estimates, resources, and time is one of its strengths but also one of its drawbacks. The average user is a little less considerate of the way these things interact with each and the automatic way in which Planview AdaptiveWork will affect one or the other can occasionally create a confusing scenario if the user is unaware of how changing one will affect the other

Incentivized

• The only thing I would suggest that needs room for improvement is that you should break down Zilicus PM into different sectors. What I mean by this is that you branch off this program into different areas of expertise like accounting, engineering, etc. Every business is managed differently, so other options should be provided to accommodate each field.
• Other than that, I am very pleased with this program. It was WELL worth the investment. Saving a lot of time and money spent per worker by using this!
• N/A

Incentivized

I give my renewal of this product a 9. It's only because we never know what product may come out next and how other factors in our office political environment may cause impact upon this. If I always had my way, this is what we'd settle on as our de facto project management system.

It is easy to configure, intuitive. The customization process is in some ways better than Salesforce.com. It has a great UI. It does however depend on how it's implemented.

The design of it is generally fine, however the ability to data upload people from a spreadsheet is an obvious miss.

Sometimes it is slow when everyone is entering their time on Fridays or Mondays but other than that we rarely see downtime and maintenance notifications are well in advance.

Reports: Quick to Reasonable

Most Ancillary Pages: Quick to Reasonable
(By "ancillary" I mean lesser used/master data maintenance pages - e.g. People, Customers, Individual Tasks, Milestones, etc.)

Work Plan (with 100 sub items): Reasonable to Slow

It's a good experience overall. Clarizen was useful when needed. It's mostly needed for advice on how to do more sophisticated actions or how to change something that was set up administratively. It's seldom used otherwise. The product consistently works, the documentation is acceptable, and the generally intuitive product is easy enough for most staff to pick up without much issue.

Incentivized

• We worked with a Project Manager on their side. He was very good about developing a project plan to hit our goal. I think we had weekly or twice weekly calls – very steady cadence over 3 month period.
• Their PM skills were great – kept us on task. For the last week, they sent 2 people on site and they did training for power users. After that a couple of them revisited here

It's easy to access and frequently offered. Often I'm amongst only a few people on the call and get virtually individual attention. I also learn and share with the other attendees and we can see how we've each solved similar challenges.

We have been able to implement AdaptiveWork pretty easily but it requires updating of resource availability and continuous training as roles change and new people join the company. Other documentation is used such as spreadsheets for longer range planning and project approval

Incentivized

Planview AdaptiveWork was the right size, at the right price point that fit our customization and integration flexibility. It is intuitive to use but allowed us to add complexity as our needs grew

Incentivized

We have used Microsoft Project for years. We loved it until we found ZilicusPM. ZilicusPM is more efficient and directive in our field. Microsoft Project does not provide as many features as ZilicusPM does. I am extremely grateful for having found ZilicusPM. It was recommended to us by an architectural firm that swore by this software.

Incentivized

• Planview AdaptiveWork allows us to report out on the status of our real estate projects on a regular basis. We have internal objectives that need to be met for on-time delivery and Planview AdaptiveWork provides us the data to be able to show how the teams are tracking on delivery.

Incentivized

• A positive impact that ZilicusPM has made is we are able to work more efficiently and prioritize what needs to be sent out, what invoices need to be sent out to clients, where are project engineers at certain time of day, etc.
• We also have a higher ROI. I am able to manage what invoices need to be sent out without having to track people down for a summary of the work , which is extremely time consuming. I am able to get more invoices out while returning a higher investment for the company.
• A negative impact it has made is we had to hire someone to manage this software entirely. It is very time-consuming for myself to manage and make sure everything is entered in correctly. We hired someone who is familiar with ZilicusPM and is able to certify all work.

Incentivized