Planview ChangePoint vs. Unanet ERP GovCon

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.

As I said, Unanet is great for timekeeping and expense reporting. It's very easy to navigate and intuitive for my staff to use. On the other hand, reports are a challenge. The ones that are "canned" only come out as PDFs so I find I waste a lot of paper each month. Customized reports are better and come in Excel, but setting them up is not that easy. We've been working with Unanet just over a year. We went "live" effective 1/1/2017 and we're still avoiding the reporting functions even though that was one of the main reasons we purchased Unanet in the first place

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.

• Near real-time visibility into project financials. As soon as the employees save their time for the day, you can get a good measure of project financial performance. Work authorizations are embedded into Unanet so unintentional overruns are virtually eliminated.
• Nice integration with the Joint Travel Regulations. It is easy to import the latest rate tables for both CONUS and OCONUS destinations.
• Good customer support and highly responsive. Webinars on new features are free and broadcast on a regular basis. Feedback to suggestions for new features are addressed in a very timely fashion.
• It is easy to structure Unanet to support DCAA practices to be able to get approval for cost plus jobs.
• With exports to .csv files, it is easy to extract data for further analysis beyond the relatively rich built-in reporting features.

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.

• Adding hours for subcontractors must be done via import because the hours don't update on the reporting if put in via vendor invoice.
• Make posting dates less complex.
• Should be easier to figure out roles needed for managers in the organization.

Incentivized

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.

Every time I have reached out to customer support, they have been very helpful and resolved my issue very quickly and efficiently

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 were previously using Deltek GCS. Deltek stopped the support for this software so we were forced to change to a new product. We reviewed Costpoint, a Microsoft product and Unanet. We selected Unanet because it had all of the features we were looking for in a new software and it was very user-friendly.

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.

• Unanet has had a very significant ROI on several fronts. Our payroll department spends much less time managing and processing time in general.
• Unanet has allowed all of the project managers teams bill on a much more granular level which has saved significant time over the previous Excel based processes of gathering project level data.
• Using Unanet companywide has also saved many hours of time that were previously spent translating data from other platforms, and consolidating data via Excel for reporting purposes. Using the same tool (Unanet) with the included reports has saved significant time and hassle which has had an enormous impact on the ROI of Unanet.

Incentivized