Likelihood to Recommend PSA is great at capturing all the data you would need to accurately track and report on consulting projects. It captures project financials, calculates projected GM%, and (among others) allows for hourly tracking of employees, which breaks it up between billable and non-billable for utilization tracking to accurately understand costs. However, the user interface is tough to learn, and the stability of the data reporting functions is questionable. This tool would be great for smaller consulting shops that fit the standard contracting mold. If your business is fairly straightforward without a lot of shades of gray, you shouldn't have much trouble with the tool. However, if your business practices have a lot of exceptions based on clients, then you'll have a tall administrative task on your hands.
Read full review Kantata (Kimble + Mavenlink)
It is appropriate and even exceeds expectations 90% of the time. It makes project tracking very easy and visually accessible for most cases. The only occasion where Mavenlink came slightly short was for a special project that required more interaction options among project members. I am certain there are ways to work around that issue, but we did not find them.
Read full review Pros The biggest strength of FinancialForce PSA is that it's built upon the force.com platform, which means it is very easily customizable to our business needs. Projects are easily created, as well as milestones and assignments. "Actuals" (dollars and hours) are calculated automatically, and are easily reported on. Resources are easily managed by using the Resource Planner FinancialForce PSA support is outstanding! Read full review Kantata (Kimble + Mavenlink)
With Mavenlink when starting to assign tasks to people, set deadlines and milestones, and add files to our projects we can look at it all from a variety of perspectives, including a task tracker view and a Gantt chart view Through Mavenlink each project also includes an activity stream where we can view all project details as they come up, as well as an activity feed for all the projects it is linked to. Read full review Cons The product is still maturing as a full featured PSA tool. The feature roadmap is compelling but is still being built out. Tool is ideal for managing a services business. It is not yet a project manager tool. Limited reporting Maturing change order process Limited integration to back-end financial systems beyond Financial Force Financials. We use Netsuite. The underlying SalesForce UI is constrained and can be keystroke intensive at times Limited archiving of historical data Read full review Kantata (Kimble + Mavenlink)
The Gantt chart does not allow for baselines to be stored There is no means to upload an excel task tracker and build a plan using an upload The schedule does not allow for planning of holidays The status report functionality needs to be improved Read full review Likelihood to Renew There is another PSA software program that we have been looking into (DreamFactory) that could potentially replace FinancialForce PSA in our organization. Like FinancialForce PSA, it is cloud based on the force.com platform. Licensing is slightly less than FinancialForce PSA, and the Resource Management tool is far superior to FinancialForce PSA. With that said, our renewal falls in Q4 2014 and I don't foresee us implementing a new system this fiscal year.
Read full review Kantata (Kimble + Mavenlink)
Although the company I currently work for does not use the product I have recommended that we do switch to Mavenlink. We will be opening some new sites internationally this year and I can see that Mavenlink would be a great product for us to use
Read full review Usability It is maturing and does what it does well although it is not fully complete. Integration to SF is great. Gives great visibility to incoming services projects and allows the staffing process to start on pipeline deals. There are certain processes that take more click-throughs then needed so there are refinement opportunities around the UI. The resource management screen and project status views have really matured since our original purchase, and while not perfect, allow business leaders to do their jobs. Configurations vs. customizations. We seem to have to bring in an Apex developer to do a customization for changes I would think could be configuration settings
Read full review Kantata (Kimble + Mavenlink)
I think Mavenlink is the most robust and best project management tool out there for an organization like ours. However, some of our staff feel like it isn't as user-friendly as it could be. From a Director point of view or a Project Manager point of view, Mavenlink is exceptional. From the point of view of a task-doer, it could be more visually appealing. Also, the mobile version isn't great.
Read full review Reliability and Availability We have maybe had 1-2 outages over 3 years.
Read full review Kantata (Kimble + Mavenlink)
Mavenlink gives advance notice for system upgrades, and they're not during our business day. Mavenlink has always been available when we needed it.
Read full review Performance Most of the time it is fine. There are peak periods of usage where performance noticably slows down (i.e., Monday mornings when time is due and many reports are being run)
Read full review Kantata (Kimble + Mavenlink)
Very good integration with Google apps. Some complexity is called however in the synchronization between Google Tasks and Maven links tasks. This can sometimes lead to duplicate records in Google Tasks. It has been dissolvable that becomes cumbersome if not properly curated.
Read full review Support Rating Every time I submit a new help request, whether it's an actual help request or just a question about FinancialForce PSA, I always feel that I'm receiving world class support. The support we receive from FinancialForce PSA is always very detailed and professional. There are some requests that take longer than other for the initial response, which is why I did not give a full 10.
Read full review Kantata (Kimble + Mavenlink)
Mavenlink support is fantastic! Any issues that arise are always handled quickly and efficiently. Granted, we haven't had many issues to report. Typically, my team tends to only reach out to support if they need assistance remembering how to do something or asking about an improvement. We had Mavenlink build an integration when we first started using the software, and the support team worked hard to listen and improve the integration.
Read full review In-Person Training It was fine.
Read full review Kantata (Kimble + Mavenlink)
We prepared questions in advance, and our trainer was an expert in what Mavenlink was and wasn't able to do. We were able to have multiple people trained at once.
Read full review Online Training Kantata (Kimble + Mavenlink)
The training was very well-organized. We were able to send questions in advance so the instructor knew what to cover, and the brought up related topics to maximize the usefulness of what they were teaching us.
Read full review Implementation Rating Appirio did a good job, however, the user team didn’t know enough to make all the right configuration/customization choices. The team focused too much on replicating existing processes vs. reengineering them. In hindsight we should have had deep dive reviews at key milestones and enforced more focus on how the software would operate. We didn’t have access to true best practices expertise. In hindsight, a consultant from the outside would have been helpful to drive this.
Read full review Kantata (Kimble + Mavenlink)
Dedicate as much internal time to the implementation effort as possible, even if you're using a 3rd party or Mavenlink services. Your team knows your processes the best
Read full review Alternatives Considered FF PSA is a robust Project Management solution that can be configured to fits any size business. We have tried several other applications and PSA so far has met and exceeded our needs. We run our day to day operations on Salesforce so having a solution that is native was a must have. PSA met that requirement and much more.
Read full review Kantata (Kimble + Mavenlink)
We have since switched over to
JIRA and let me tell you, it was probably the best decision we have made as a company. We chose Mavenlink based on promises from the sales team about future roadmap work that really never happened. We thought Mavenlink would easily integrate with our billing software but we couldn't have been more wrong. We ended up never utilizing Mavenlink invoices as they don't even allow you to fully customize your invoices that go out to clients!
Read full review Scalability Kantata (Kimble + Mavenlink)
It's very easy to add users and contractors into Mavenlink. There's also an option that let's you manage access for teams in multiple locations.
Read full review Return on Investment FinancialForce PSA has helped us improve our data tracking and allows us to get more granular about our financial information and performance. PSA has given more tools and reports to individual contributors to take greater ownership over their own data, and has increased accountability across the organization. PSA has added a fairly hefty administrative burden to individuals, project managers, and our financial team. Read full review Kantata (Kimble + Mavenlink)
Manvenlink is perfect for showing expenses and income over time and across people. Manvenlink is adaptable for the integration and automation of the processes of each of our projects in order to optimize resources and improve operational performance. Mavenlink allows us to determine if our projects are profitable or not, as well as save significant time by automating components such as recurring tasks and having templates, among other things. Manvenlink is advantageous for our operations due to its simple portfolio management of our projects: manage several projects at once and receive a complete perspective of the development of each one at a glance. Manvenlink kindly provides us with robust discussion threads, access restrictions, and built-in document management, allowing us to contextualize communications. Read full review ScreenShots Kantata PS Cloud Screenshots