Clarizen Software

Pros

Customizable
User friendly
Web access
Easy to scale as our company and departments grow
Can be customized for various use cases

Cons

Doesn't function well with detailed project plans. If you want to push the dates of s project out or adjust a schedule, it's difficult if you have too many tasks

We got very little benefit from this software, as it did not perform as expected.

Pros

Project management tool is comparable to MS Project. Users that are looking for a subscription PM product rather than purchasing MS Project may benefit from this software, but I am not sure if all PM features are available out-of-the-box at cheaper subscription levels.

Cons

Although the PM tool is comparable to MS Project, it also comes with a level of complication also comparable to MS Project. Full functionality of PM (i.e. including resource management) requires buy-in by all departments/users in the company, and this is difficult to acheive in large or diverse organizations.

Our company implemeted this software with the goal of bringing project management together with time reporting, expense reporting, and invoice processing. The purpose of implementing Clarizen was to have a centralized system where we could report project status by including all relevant metrics on the project in a list or detailed view, e.g. planned time vs. actual time, planned cost vs. actual cost, and project manager comments/narrative on goal vs. result. This purpose was never realized. Clarizen underestimated the work effort to develop customizations, which resulted in the time module never being completed, the expense/invoice modules were cumbersome to use, the related approval workflows had many problems, and support from Clarizen management was almost non-existent.

We are now taking a different approach. No longer do we believe that one system can handle all our needs, and so we have adopted different systems with some integration between them to try to bring together all project-related data.

Pros

Clarizen is the first project management software I used and it has so many features. My favorite is the customizable dashboard. Let's me know all the information I need to know.

Cons

I kinda wish it was less expensive or had more options for purchasing. If you are a first time project manager there is a little bit of a learning curve you'll need to get by.

Project management, resource planning, baseline/planned/actual work comparison

Pros

Basic use is very intuitive. I can add a new user for time tracking, provide a basic tutorial and tips and tricks, and they are all set to be able to report time correctly.

Cons

The table relationships and keys are not obvious so creating a report that includes the data I need to show takes more time than I have.

Pros

We used this for a work project and it had all the bells and whistles needed for thorough project management

Cons

Clarizen was overkill for basic project functions and made it difficult to manage a simpler project due to the complexity.

Pros

work management and workflow automation is sorted . Team flow control is unique feature. Task management is done beautifully.

Cons

Assigning and Allocating tasks could be bit better I think. This will increase productivity and Team communication

This solution allows me to develop team work efficiently, integrating conversations, tasks and projects in the same application. It really is very efficient.

Pros

This software has excellent functions, is configured quickly and is very easy to use. You can reliably organize all the tasks inherent to any project you carry out. The truth, it is very helpful to have this software.

All in all, it is the best time-tracking solution that is quite scalable and flexible. If you're ready to work manually for the time being, it has flexible, scalable and can be implemented very quickly. If you are prepared to work with a few manual steps, for the time being (that hopefully will improve), it is a great value product.

Pros

It has a great interactive interphase and amazing functionality. Its easy to enter and track the time via this software. The planning tools allow me to plan and define my project, its functionality, its feasibility, and the resource available.

Cons

Bit expensive, the level of functionality for lower-amount licences is seemingly poor compared to advanced versions. Reports corresponding to calendar days require manual entry.

Pros

Provides an organized work environment for all the Projects and activities in a company. It adapts to any size or kind of Projects.

Cons

Not so easy to track all the activities and Projects. Not everyone can afford it. The Price per user.

Pros

Definitely feature packed. Easy to use and navigate considering all of the features packed into this application. The social media integration enables your team to expand its reach and capabilities. You well be both pleased and surprised with the built in analysis tools!

Cons

More features than I found use for, however this should allow it to reach and serve a broader customer base.

Pros

Cloud based , good collaborative environment for project management activities like plan and workflow. Cost effective solution.

Cons

Tracking is not easy, need some improvements on functionality. Interfaces development is not easy take long time.

Pros

Clarizen gives an organized work stream to showcasing ventures that empowers various clients to team up on the expectations and track advance. Generally speaking, it accomplishes this objective well.

Cons

Maybe not an abhorrence: Clarizen is centered around its advertising coordination highlights. Might it be able to offer all the more supporting usefulness for related necessities of advertisers? Maybe, however that is not the expected objective of Clarizen, I would induce. What's more, that is fine. Spotlight on what you're great at.

Pros

This tool can be used for simple project management or complex projects. It can be used to do both simultaneously. Great tool!

Cons

It was intense to get started with the tool as there were so many options. Once you figure out what is best for you, then the tool is much easier to use.

Pros

ease of use
scalable
Social
Service and Support
customizations
Updates
Adaptability
Financial Management

Cons

Cost
Agile framework needs attention
Reporting Graphs are limited in selection
limited amount of Graphs per report
Scheduling options are limited to 24 reports , 1 per hour

Pros

Easy to use and manage. Using reports and dashboards to show major value and insight to senior leadership. End users are able to use the tool itself with little training. Interface is responsive, modern and clean.

Cons

Security model is strange at first, but can be made to work great with some patience and thinking differently.
Reporting has some limitations that feel frustrating but can be solved with export to an enterprise data warehouse.
Brought in external vendor as solution integrator, but has issues with them delivering over complicated customizations.

Pros

I love the accessibility. I can access my database from all of my devices which is so important since I'm always on the go.

Cons

Setup is a bit time consuming but the software is amazing overall. I can't really complain. It's a must try.

Not only entering timesheets, but also do proper estimations for the project budgeting and resource planning!

Pros

The ability to automatically track the tasks start/end dates if there are dependencies set up as well as when there are vacations or holidays for a person. The automatic smart systems make huge help for any human mistake on those calcualtions and future possible changes. Thanks for this!

Cons

When someone creates a vacation request in Clarizen, it would be good to have a notification mechanism to inform the project manager about it, if the person is assigned to a task of this PM's project(s). Otherwise, only the direct manager of the person is being announced. And if there is no established manual process, the vacation request gets approved without the PM being informed about it. This is really serious problem.

Pros

One single platform where both project information and customer information meet, thanks to the Salesforce.com integration. This enables salespeople to keep a real-time view on margins and project progress, without them needing to ask a project manager for a status update or a meeting. The information is right there, up to date and accurate.

Cons

You need to make a solid business case and build a real plan to get the budget approved. Most companies have a lot of tools and some work together with others and... but none beat Clarizen if you ask me - it is a "one-stop" to get all information. So do the math to show you can save money by centralizing the tools, and that you can lower the time spent on managing different solutions. It helps if you show dashboards: management likes dashboards (and numbers).
Clarizen was not so easy to explain to the whole team, it is a very complete solution. So we decided to "drip-feed" it to the teams.

Biggest benefit is "one source of truth".

Pros

The ease of use that comes from being a SaaS solution has been the strongest feature. In addition, because it is web-based, some of the configuration can be done using CSS, which does not take a lot of programmatic experience to implement.

Cons

As a PPM, there are still gaps (as of this writing) in some basic PPM functionality. The most glaring to me is the lack of Capacity Planning functionality. It can handle Resource Allocation, and Resource Loading, but if you are looking for a way to forecast out what your expected capacity for future work is, you can only do it through heavy configuration.

As for configuration, it has pros and cons, but one of the more challenging limitations is in changing a custom field. If, for example, you decide that the data type on a field must be changed from string to number, you cannot simply change the data type. You must create a new field with the correct data type, find all the configuration instances where that field exists (in, for example, custom actions you've programmed Clarizen to take) and replace them, then delete the old field. It's a very clunky process.

The last big con we have found is that there is no archiving of data. If you want to archive your data, you must dump everything out into a EDW of some sort. This is doubtlessly to keep the database slim, but that means that the system is always an "As Is" system, and you lose the ability to analyze trends.

Visibility into projects across the entire professional services portfolio. This gave us a better understanding of our teams and how they were utilized.

Pros

The ability to customize Clarizen is one of it's strongest features. While not as advanced as some of the bigger SaaS players like Salesforce, it still provides a robust set of features to allow you to create custom business processes to accomplish your companies goals. They compete pretty well against other companies with much larger teams.

Another great feature we use a lot is the expansive and complex WBSs you can have for projects. This allowed us to have a better sense of project flow and visibility to where our projects are at.

Cons

Our biggest struggle comes with the idea that a PSA should be a three legged stool (projects/task management, time tracking/resource management, and project financial management). We can only seem to make two work at a time with Clarizen. Our PMs want some pretty detailed project plans to really understand where tasks are and who is responsible, but when you implement that with time tracking it becomes a nightmare for resources to know where to submit there time entries.

As our organization grew, the financials and resource management became more important that detailed project plans so we struggled to find a balance of how detailed our WBSs should be because everything within the project plan was tied to time entries and drove project cost. It has become pretty administrative for some of our PMs.