Accelo vs. Certinia PS Cloud

The best services management, easy operations reporting, and data analytics features from Accelo are impressive and easy on data visualization and workflow management software. Accelo was very helpful in collaboration and easy to collect feedback from integrated platforms and the scheduling ability is very unique. The Automation tools are also cost-effective and the ability to manage time through Accelo is perfect.

Incentivized

Simplification of multiple operations within the business and easy scheduling and task management through FinancialForce PSA is effective and easy tracking multiple previous project activities is easy. Automation tools stability is good, and flexibility on services production and even the connection of customers with services providers is amazing and the development life cycle management is incredible.

• Tracking customer interactions. Nice integration with G Suite, could be a lot better if they acknowledged that contacts may actually have more than one email address.
• Support Ticket system is integrated, so we can view support history and other email correspondence easily. It's cheaper that Zendesk.
• Support is reasonably good, usually prompt and responsive.
• Constant development - lots of updates, just not often to areas that we use.

Incentivized

• Simplicity. I never felt like the system was too complicated to figure out, even as I was just starting out using it.
• Efficient. I like how easy is it to get through the entire process and see all of the data in an easy to read manner. It's good for the company to be able to organize its expense data using the product.
• Fast. I was able to complete my expense reports fast and pain-free.

Incentivized

• The client portal needs to be improved. It does not have the same user interface as we have within Accelo and we get a lot of client complaints about it.
• It needs more executive-style reporting and the ability to create your own reports and filters.
• It needs to be faster. With all of the things Accelo is doing to give you all the data, it is kind of slow compared to other systems in the browser.

Incentivized

• The only part of FinancialForce that is very frustrating, is that we are unable to edit an invoice after it has been posted. The invoice is permanent and any small error can't be fixed, which means I have to create another invoice. Because of this, we have multiple "discarded" invoices in the system--forever!

Incentivized

Looking forward to seeing more refinement of features provided and upcoming features promised :)

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.

From my standpoint, FinancialForce PSA is relatively easy to use. As a System Administrator, I am able to maneuver around the software with ease. As a user of FinancialForce PSA, I am able to input my timecards and expense reports without any issues. I have received very positive and very negative feedback about using FinancialForce PSA, however, from users in other functional roles in my organization.

We have maybe had 1-2 outages over 3 years.

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)

From the beginning the Accelo team has been very invested in ensuring our success and overall happiness with the platform. The initial implementation specialists and trainers did a fairly good job of learning our company and needs, and tried to tailor the trainings accordingly. However, once we made the formal switch to the platform, meaning we no longer were using our legacy systems, we found that we had a lot of questions....and a lot of ideas and recommendations. The support team is extremely responsive and seemingly happy to receive our continual feedback. And if we encounter an issue that seems to be a system issue, they work diligently to fix it (we've actually had an engineer join a call with us to learn of the issue - and subsequently fix it)

Incentivized

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.

It was fine.

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.

Harvest and Asana combined don't even scratch the surface of what Accelo can do. Harvest is nothing more than rudimentary time tracking. It's about as easy to use as they come, but it stops there. There's no tie in to project management, invoicing, capacity planning, etc. and the reporting isn't great. Asana we found to be very difficult to use for complex projects with multiple deliverables, multiple deadlines, multiple teams - and it didn't tie back to budgets and hours worked. So the deficiencies of those two tools are what led us to Accelo. In terms of more comparable systems, I had previously used Workamajig. The sophistication of Workamajig was there, but it didn't seem to have quite as much flexibility and customization. ProWorkflow we evaluated just based on sales and marketing information available on the platform and felt it wasn't quite as good.

Incentivized

PSA comes with a lot more data and reporting capabilities than were available at the time we switched from BigTime IQ. You get more features and functions with PSA, but the user interface is much much more difficult than BigTime. It was a fairly big trade-off to get more data and increase user accountability vs. a clean and simple tool that was easy to understand and use.

Incentivized

• Save Money on Lost Time. You won't go over your client retainers in any given month if you use Accelo properly. This ultimately saves your company time and money.
• Lost or Broken Communications. They need to get it together with their email system, aka "request inboxes" ... There are too many lost or broken emails for them to be trustworthy with this. My suggestion is to make sure you know everyone you communicate with (including outside sources like Google or other companies) and set them up in Accelo, then send test emails. Also, when in doubt, use your Outlook or other primary sourced email when you want to make sure an email goes through with all appropriate files.

Incentivized

• We are a boutique consulting company and having FF PSA has allowed us to concentrate on the pre-sales side of business instead of being mired in the admin of projects and people.
• There is some redundancy for our consultants in managing Project Tasks and timecards, however, this is more based on our business process than the product.
• As a Managing Partner I love the 360 view of our business we get with SF and FF PSA.

Incentivized