LiquidPlanner vs. Planview ChangePoint

LiquidPlanner is amazing for any time of project management scenario where you have to manage several teams and details. Running a project through LiquidPlanner is so easy because it lets you break down the project into sections and folders and small tasks that you can assign to specific people. With a small to medium size team-- LiquidPlanner is amazing for organizing and tracking details. If you have a huge team or not a ton of details to track LiquidPlanner might not be right for you because it is a software that requires some good training to learn and has tons of functions that can be utilized so it seems better suited to be used by a smaller group looking to coordinate or for people who have lots of details that can be difficult to track.

Incentivized

Changepoint is well-suited for consulting firms and other companies that charge clients for their time and have a need for significant project-management capabilities along with reporting and invoicing. It is not well-suited for companies that want a more basic solution to time reporting and expense reimbursement. The key questions to ask during the selection process revolve around this basic question: how are you going to use this software? Though it has a lot of functionality, the learning curve is steep and basic functionality is not as easy as one would expect.

• Priority based planning. Every other planning software we've used relies on dates and therefore needs constant attention. Priority based planning means that the plan is always up to date.
• Ease of use. LiquidPlanner has a very short learning curve. This is critical to getting team members to use it.
• Forecasting. LiquidPlanner makes it very easy to run scenarios by simply dragging and dropping projects and reassigning resources.
• Awesome Support. I get personal responses very fast. Usually within a couple hours. And, they listen and ask for more information.

Incentivized

• There are lots of reporting options. Once you figure out how to work the parameters of a report, the system is able to provide detailed and accurate compilations of data. There are also many custom reports than can be setup, as well. In my experience, we have told Changepoint PSA administrators what kind of report we were needed and they set it up for us, available in a 'custom reports' folder.
• You can have several things open at once -- 'portals'. These are up at the top of the screen, much like how Google Chrome has tabs at the top. This is useful.

• LiquidPlanner's mobile app definitely needs some work. It doesn't display properly, having many things on the right hand side cut off. It doesn't update/refresh well. I can't imagine the mobile app will ever have the functionality of the Web version, but it needs to come a lot closer.
• LiquidPlanner requires that everyone actively participate in order to maximize its benefit. However, it can be difficult for everyone to be on top of all of their responsibilities all of the time. Not sure on a solution, but it can be a lot to manage.

Incentivized

• The site could become slow with high volumes of traffic. This may have been due to the way that our infrastructure was setup.
• Analytic reporting was not available in the version that we used. We created external reports to slice and dice the data and view it as the business demanded.

We may not renew LiquidPlanner's contract, but only because my company has recently been acquired and we'll be adopting some of the software that they're using to standardize process. LiquidPlanner's development team releases new features pretty often, so it seems like the gaps and inefficiencies are slowly getting smaller/less frequent

Incentivized

Sometimes the decision to renew boils down to an old adage "if it isn't broken don't fix it". Previous to moving to Changepoint, it was obvious that we needed a better project management tool. Projects we completed on time but the time zone difference between the teams and several iterations of back and forth caused a number of communication issues with projects. The difference is night and day.

Easy to learn and utilize. Can export charts and reports for sharing with colleagues.

Incentivized

It could be more intuitive and user friendly.

They have been great in trying to come up with creative solutions to help us do what we want to do with the platform. I would say their support has been exceptional because we have hit them with some complex requests.

Incentivized

We had a "homebrew" time track program previously. It did one thing and it did it well--track time spent on an individual tactic or project, and it was deployed across all departments. It did not, however, capture the conversations or the work that could shed light on where problems occurred or issues were encountered.

Incentivized

The system predates me as I was not working for the company when the solution was chosen - I understand this may have been an 'overpromise, underdeliver' scenario. However, we are now moving towards replacing it with Supportworks - and having seen Supportworks in action I genuinely cannot wait to switch from Changepoint and move on...

Incentivized

• LiquidPlanner has improved everybody's visibility into tasks, decreasing the communication load required and increasing client communication and status updates, effectively increasing client satisfaction and likely helping to generate more business.
• LiquidPlanner has improved our estimation and communication about changing estimates. Allowing us to keep a running estimate of the remaining work lets our account managers bill appropriately for overages ahead of time, preventing issues with customers who may not want to pay for work that was done.
• LiquidPlanner sometimes takes time to navigate, find the right tasks, etc. and in this way, it may have added time to our day that we are not getting paid for. However, this is fairly negligible.

Incentivized

• Our ability to maintain a global IS Scorecard helped us to maintain a focus on completing projects on time and within budget.
• Having a single instance of Changepoint with projects aligned to specific portfolios helps senior management to maintain a focus on the investment of IS resources. It is foundational to our governance processes.