Projector PSA vs. Workday Professional Services Automation

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

Workday Professional Services Automation is a great product for large companies that have standardized, repetitive processes. The ability to automate tactical HR tasks is essential for business productivity, and Workday Professional Services Automation delivers well in this area. However, when a non-standardized process occurs, it is difficult to modify the system in a way that doesn't create confusion for the end-user, resulting in a less than desirable HR experience. For example, when my small company was acquired, our parent business utilized the software for transferring employees from the acquired business to the parent business to ensure they could sign up for health benefits, payroll, etc on Day 1; but, because every form is interrelated, the in-house Workday team was either unable or unwilling to change their workday "standard" fields for offer letters. As VP of HR for the acquired team, I had to meet one-off with each acquired employee to reassure them that certain clauses in the standard offer letter would not apply, explain why their personal email addresses were being used instead of their business ones, and assure them that they were being fully vested/transferred employees and were not considered "new employees" like the offer letter stated, etc.

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

• Keeps all of your personal information safe and private
• Has all the documents needed for the time being with the company
• Has extra important information about the company for your knowledge

Incentivized

• 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.

• Would like to be able to use it for clocking in and out
• The dashboard user interface could be improved to include more pertinent information
• Would be nice to hide features that we use other applications for (i.e. org chart, pay, expenses)

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.

Desktop interface feels complex to new users.

Its getting more streamlined with update but still has many tools that are unexplained/ not defined well

Incentivized

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

With workday support options, I would like to see a more immediately responsive response option. Possibly a chat or a responsive email response team would be helpful.

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.

Workday Professional Services Automation is a happy medium between the other competitors. It is just enough to help you run your business, but simple to use that even smaller businesses can take advantage without a huge and taxing price tag. Its expandable and has been very well received at the companies I've worked at that use it.

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

• While I don't use the program at a high-level I can see the time-saving effectiveness for administrators.
• By giving a self-serve interface I feel in control of my pay/benefit management.
• Less time spent on HR administration frees up bandwidth for helping colleagues.

Incentivized