Certinia PS Cloud vs. Gainsight CS

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.

It's great for being able to capture all information in Gainsight CS. The only challenge is some of the task management and visibility into workload that is very clunky. After watching the roadmap for 2025, I'm feeling more hopefully that some of my pain points will be handled. However, it's still challenging that the task-management basics will still be clunky. I'm excited for the AI scheduling of tasks, but this would be better if the improvements to task /workload visibility is updated.

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

• Logging customer activity is incredibly intuitive and easy for team to do and reference.
• Using the rules engine to generate CTAs for our team to intervene where needed has been helpful in automating relevant activities in bulk. We have a churn prevention program run through CTAs where Gainsight CS will notice risk criteria we've built in, then alert CSMs and their managers of potential risk concerns, like low product adoption or negative survey response, with clear next steps and actions laid out for what to do.
• More broadly, it has inspired a new mindset on our team for how to work with customers. Through working with Gainsight CS, they have become less transactional and look at accounts more holistically. Success Plans allow for this, as they create plans with customized customer goals and the tasks it will take to achieve those goals.

• 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

• Would love to see a Gainsight OPs/Admin checklist that guides CS Ops team through specific pieces of information needed to execute specific playbooks (best practices)
• When creating reports, sometimes it's difficult to find the correct variable that you are looking for as it's nested under various categories
• Would love ability to "heatmap" specific individual customer engagement based on CSM inputted customer contacts at meetings
• Would love to see more analysis on engagements - how often, how frequent - built into the product

Incentivized

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.

Great tool and we've spent a lot of time getting it up and running. Unless something else comes a long that does a similar function for less money we will consider jumping cause we are always looking to save budget where we can. Till then I think we are satisfied with Gainsight at the moment.

Incentivized

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.

I give it this score based on the implementation at my current employer. I don't know if it could be higher based on if the implementation went better, or if there is something on the vendor side that could help. If this were asked at my previous employer, I would have given it a score of 9 or 10.

Incentivized

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

Rarely any issues with availability or outages. When they do occur, there is excellent communication and consistent updates. Bugs are usually addressed in a timely manner, and communication around those issues is also extremely good

Incentivized

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)

There are some times when it can take almost a minute to load some of our reports or the rules engine. Within a rule it can also take time to load the actions as they each load one at a time when scrolling. The ability to scroll without waiting would be ideal

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.

The CSMs are very hands-on and helpful, both Elaine and Lane have provided a lot of guidance and value over the years. Support is responsive and will jump on things as needed. The thought leadership and community is probably the most valuable part of our support from Gainsight.

Incentivized

It was fine.

The online videos are very good for basic tasks in the platform, but it isn't very descriptive or helpful trying to make your own specific variables fit the simple example that is typically used. Typically, I'll watch a video, try on my own and still have to get help from support or Customer Success team

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.

I was not part of the implantation (I took over later). However, based on what was passed to me, the tool was not well implemented at our org. I think this had to do with complexity, wrong person assigned in our org, and org buy-in. I think it would have been very successful if we had a better assignment process internally.

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

Gainsight CS simply had a broader set of functionality that we wanted. That said, if Vitally or ChurnZero were to close a few of the functionality gaps that mattered to us, we would prefer to use either of those competitor products.

Incentivized

It can lean a little heavily toward Customer Success, but the ability to customize many areas based on specific user or account characteristics allows you to make it work across many different roles. This also makes collaboration within the tool across teams possible. It a flexible tool if you have a skilled admin to help guide your process building.

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

• No metrics yet, but we have improved our at-risk customers by identifying risks earlier via our automated health score and with our Gainsight approved mitigation workflow, CSMs and leaders have better discipline with mitigation efforts and sharing at-risk customers across the org so other teams can step in and assist

Incentivized