Projector PSA vs. Upland PSA

We think Projector PSA is a great tool to track and manage people in a professional service environment like management consulting. This system is easy to set up, easy to understand and should easily suit the needs of smaller and medium sized firms. It may be less appropriate for firms that rely very heavily on project management through another system (like MS Project) or firms that rely very heavily on a sales pipeline tracking system. While still very much possible to use, you would (I believe) have to do some re-keying between systems

Tenrox has been the only solution we can find that can make a simple timesheet that basically turns the old Excel timesheet into an online cloud based glorified Excel sheet. No drop downs for employees to pick through and little room for error. The reporting could be great but not in the way we have customized it. The reports are useless most of the time and writing a report is very difficult. If you want a nonprofit adapted timesheet for multiple funders and contracts without any frills or reporting then this is it!

Incentivized

• Time tracking. For a service company that typically bills retainers, it is very important to be able to assign a direct cost to your resources at all levels and analyze your profitability.
• Expense reporting. Projector easily tracks expenses of all types and allows you to categorize them under non-billable projects, client billable projects and/or client development ventures.
• Reporting. Projector has a large list of standard reports right at your fingertips. These reports can be extracted as Excel docs, mdp files and other useful formats. They are intuitive, clear and easy to analyze. For those you need on a standard basis, you can set them up to pull on a recurring basis. It should be noted that all reports are easily customized and Projector's support team is always there to help get you the information you need.

Incentivized

• You can create a report combining virtually any field that the application tracks, so in this way it's a very flexible tool. There are also very flexible workflows and security settings within the app so that you can really make it fit your organizational structure, whatever that may be.
• You can download the report into Excel and work with the data in Pivot tables to get even more customized reports.

• The split between the desktop and web environments was awkward at times.
• While the reporting modules are powerful, creating reports can be complex and required a fairly deep knowledge of the product.
• The appearance and interface of the desktop application appears somewhat dated.

• Their customer service is horrible, every email I send they insist on following up with a scheduled phone conference to tell me they can't help me. I have wasted hours on conference calls over the years.
• They upgrade their products but none of their upgrades will work with their current customer's system or "customizations". We are stuck with a 5 year old product that will only work with Internet Explorer on a PC and only when the browser is in compatibility mode. Even this functionality is touch and go.
• They have continuously failed to make time off accruals for a semi-monthly payroll a possibility.
• Anytime you ask them to upgrade you to their latest product they first tell you that will be another $3,000 and then they find out their upgrade isn't compatible with your settings.

Incentivized

We have been using this tool for a year now and find our use of it continually evolves and broadens. We are also very excited about the overhaul that's under way and feel many of the improvements being put in place will help make us that much more effective and efficient. The Projector team is also very responsive and collaborative in terms of user feedback and improvement suggestions, which helps us know they will work hard to help us get what we need out of the tool.

I am not in charge of renewing the Tenrox contract. However, if it was up to me, I would renew in a heartbeat. Tenrox is an asset to our organization and it keeps us focused. I am not aware of other products similar to Tenrox that provide the depth that they do.

Desktop interface feels complex to new users.

I feel like if the user interface could combine time and expense for users to be entered on one screen rather than two completely separate locations it would greatly improve usability. If the expense entry process could be improved completely, it would greatly improve the usability as well. Everything else within Tenrox, makes everything very user friendly.

Incentivized

In 5 years of use we have never experienced an unscheduled outage.

The support team is always very helpful and strives to ensure they have met your needs and corrected your issues in a timely manner. If they need more information or cannot recreate the issue themselves, then they will follow-up to gather the necessary data themselves. They are constantly striving to meet the needs of all users and understand so many different industries and types of environments out there, it is very impressive.

Incentivized

The main thing with implementation is to make sure you have taken full advantage of the "sandbox testing" site that Tenrox provides to you during development. Try out every scenario you can think of, have other people enter information if needed, so that you can make sure you have not missed any big items. If you have the opportunity, roll out implementation to small groups of users. Depending on how your company is set up, I would choose groups that are not all in the same department so that you can address questions across all areas before adding in more users in the next wave of implementation.

Incentivized

We switched to Projector from Open Air. While Open Air was a good tool, we found it wasn't really designed for project management at the level of detail we needed from our PSA and used MS Project and Excel to supplement Open Air. We also struggled with the invoicing side of it, manually combining invoice summaries with custom time and expense reports in Acrobat. Projector however, was designed for project management. We are able to manage projects, track time and expenses, and invoice all out of one system. The project setup can accommodate a wide range of complexity, including milestones, dependencies, etc. Project and resource dashboards also help see the services portfolio and team at a summary level and allows us to zero in on particulars easily and more meaningfully than we were ever able to with Open Air. Invoice templates are also easily customized and we were able to get several set up quickly to meet our needs. Lastly, Open Air required us to purchase and pre-pay licensing for a year, so if we lost staff mid-way through the year, the unused seat was not prorated. Projector licensing is paid monthly based on actual number of active users that month, which makes more sense for a team with fluctuating headcount.

Tenrox as a system is one of my favorites, if not my favorite. I really like the system-structure and its capabilities. Previously, the only negative mark I gave Tenrox was customer service and as stated that has shown great improvement in the past months. Conversely, our other primary system (Advantage) has always provided us with excellent customer service as one of their strongest points, which made it even more frustrating to have those issues with Tenrox support. I did not select Tenrox myself, but if I were shopping around now, I would be very very likely to decide on Tenrox. I would recommend it, so long as the system fits the needs of your business and staff

Incentivized

• Even in the small time that I stayed to see Projector PSA reporting I saw ROI projections become more realistic. There was real data to analyze that proved we were spending way too much and charging way too less on some projects.
• Although employees were not used at entering their hours, this single reporting improved operations management and validated employees concerns that more people were needed to manage workload
• Project proposals were more realistic because they were driven by real data.
• Decision making overall for the department became more efficient and effective

Incentivized

• Tenrox has caused headaches across offices and the frustrations with reporting is huge. It's been great to have a starting point to track hours and try to see what is billable and non-billable, but after this was implemented across our company where are seeing the negative ROI as its been so difficult to pull these reports accurately across teams, individuals, and clients!

Incentivized