Kimble has been the best PSA tool that I've used

We are going on something like 7 or 8 years of running Kimble PSA. We're happy that they have expanded functionality into more parts of our business. It's been hard to keep up with their innovations.

Pros

Implementing Kimble has provided us with many out of the box best practices. Time tracking is easy enough to us for consultants but the integrated system provides us with the operational flexibility to engage in so many different way as more importantly understand the financials behind

Cons

We initially were attracted to Kimble because of its integration with SFDC overtime we have found the salesforce experience to be sluggish and bloated.

Kimble gives the visibility of the business while providing a platform for accountability

My experience, and our company's experience, has been good. We learn more all the time, and the ease of visibility of business revenue is amazingly powerful. Our teams have taken initiative to expand their use of the tool and are open to trying new features.

Pros

The instant visibility of how your company is doing - everything from proposals to invoicing, it shows revenue flow, resource availability, and project status. There is always more to implement, and we have the ability to implement what features we want, when we want it. By doing so, it also requires us to evaluate our business practices and align with best practices based on the way Kimble functions. Our Customer Success Managers have been amazing, responsive, and the team is always willing to help us implement additional functionality.

Cons

The administrator training and resources are lacking, where we need to depend upon ZenDesk and our Customer Success Manager to provide support. Most of the technical resources are based on how the technology functions, but it's difficult to find details on some of the options on the administrative side, and best practices on how customers use different features (such as usage of the Other Activities fields, and such). I think what is missing is the practical usage and governance suggestions around how to setup and use features, particularly as you are implementing them.

Good, needs work.

There have been good things and bad things. At this point 5 months after going live I still cannot say definitively it was the right call. We certainly have had benefits in our financial, and resource planning areas, but we've also taken steps back in those areas as well, where the functionality was either over-promised, or it just can't quite do what we need it to.

Pros

Kimble provides a lot of functionality and flexibility for project management, financial management, resource planning, etc. Being on the Salesforce platform allows further customization, within or outside of Kimble.

Cons

Very clunky UI which hurts user adoption. Some of the out of the box reports simply weren't set up correctly and not working, there are far too many, and due to how the system was configured, and Salesforce's own reporting limitations, certain reports are unnecessarily complicated (utilization, resource availability by capability, etc.). The Visualforce pages/UI need a complete overhaul, there are hyperlinks to administrator areas (products, cost behavior rates) right on the engagement dashboard, there are links all over the place to the proposal, engagement, product, opportunity which greatly reduce user adoption as it takes many reminders to understand the difference between Proposal/engagement and where a user is at a given time.

Managing Complexity

Our previous enterprise experience told us we had to invest in a PSA to run the business from the start. The Kimble of 2009 was much more basic than now but even then it reflected the end to end nature of the business much better than the corporate systems that we had known before. Since then the product has matured in fucntilaity, in ease of use and in support. We have exploited a lot of the improvements, and used this to make improvements to our business,

Pros

Attempting to manage a business efficiently where your people are very different and the your clients (or at least their requirements) are even more varied is a challenge. Kimble has helped us to bring order to our practice management by imposing consistent process but also adapting to variety of delivery models, client requirements and resource capabilities/capacity/contracting models. Another benefit from Kimble is the user base/networking. Advise you to subscribe to any opportunity to find out how other people use Kimble at webinars or at the in-person events (eventually!) I always pick up good ideas and contacts from others in a similar business (with whom I have at least one thing - Kimble - in common!)

Cons

Whether you are a large or small professional service organisation, this software will be driving or confounding your business strategy. It needs to be implemented just as you would advise your own clients: prioritise you requirements to align with your strategy; set out a budget and plan; and make sure that implementation is carried out with your best people who exemplify your business. That will be expensive. You need to spend time planning, configuring and testing the functions that support your competitive advantages and just let Kimble's standard config take care of the rest. So expect the implementation to be a challenge. This will apply to to any PSA, but the functionality in Kimble is particularly rich and compelling. So the discipline to keep focus is more.

Excellent PSA solution

Since implementing Kimble, we have been able to grow substantially without increasing our back office operation. We are now fully reliant on Kimble as our core system and very happy that it supports our business extremely well.

Pros

Kimble is a fully featured product that is growing in functionality with each release, with much of that led by the user base. Being based on the Salesforce platform, the integration facilities are excellent and the ability to customise the application are also very good. The support team are also very good.

Cons

While the application is fully supported within Lightning, most screens are not fully Lightning-enabled as yet and it is not yet possible to customise them fully.