Promys Software

Since implementing Promys we can quote more competitively, mange projects and managed service contracts more profitably and turn around customer support issues more quickly.

Pros

Before Promys PSA we had Salesforce.com for CRM & quoting, Remedy for Help Desk and PM’s used MS Project or Excel spreadsheets. The disconnects between those software products meant we were constantly re-keying data and having to pull data from multiple systems to create management reports, which always seemed out of date. It was difficult to get good visibility into Job Costing, Managed Service Contract profitability or cycle lessons learned from one department to another. Promys brought all of those modules and data together in one system, which has made our employees much more efficient and effective. Promys PSA has given our management team great visibility into line of business profitability and profitability leaks.

Cons

The Great Plains integration took a little longer than we had hoped, but now that it's up and running it's a very robust integration.

Promys will allow us to bill more quickly and accurately, get better visibility into project profitability and provide an even higher level of customer service.

Pros

We selected the Promys PSA business software in order to reduce the amount of time our managers and employees spent chasing down data, which will allow us to bill more quickly and accurately, get better visibility into project profitability and provide an even higher level of customer service. The Promys fixed fee implementation approach is just as impressive as their software. The Promys implementation team is exceptionally patient and helpful and many of their best practice suggestions have made our business processes even better.

Cons

There are a few things I'd like to differently but almost all of it is making our business processes better - very satisfied so far.

Likes Best

A big part of our PSA evaluation process was focused on finding a PSA that would ultimately enhance our customers experience, while supporting our very aggressive growth plans. Most importantly, we wanted invest in a solution that would handle the increasing complexity of our company as we continue to grow. With PROMYS, no matter how aggressively we grow, we won’t outgrow our PSA software.

Likes Least

Their live interactive training and support was excellent, but it would be nice if they had more self serve training documentation as well.

Recommendations

We looked at all of the major PSA software solutions before selecting PROMYS. Most of the other PSA's were ok/good at managing Help Desk, Resource Calendar and Time Sheets, but PROMYS was the only Enterprise PSA solution that was also strong in Quoting, Project Costing and tracking inventory, along with the customary PSA functionality. Make sure and look at your entire business process before selecting a PSA.

Likes Best

PROMYS PSA allows us to provide real time information to our teams for better collaboration and decision making. That translates into more effective service delivery to our customers.

Likes Least

Some users required convincing as to why an enterprise mobile device independent technology approach could provide a similar user experience as an app-based approach.

Recommendations

I would suggest working with a software vendor that is specifically designed for your industry in order to minimize customization to meet your needs. Leverage their best practice knowledge for companies your size.

Likes Best

It's clear that PROMYS was designed as "Enterprise Business software" for more complex Professional Services organizations. In addition to the traditional PSA functionality, PROMYS is very strong in areas such as forecasting/planning, real-time project costing, equipment handling, and reporting/analytics, which is critical for our continued growth.

Likes Least

They're working on some enhancements for multi-ticket billing, which will bring it up to par with the rest of the functionality. The current functionality is okay, but it requires a few extra steps.

Recommendations

The business software that got you to 10 employees is not necessarily the solution that's going to get you to 25, 50, or 100 employees. At some point, you need to review your operational infrastructure to make sure it can take you to that next level.

Likes Best

PROMYS is very easy to use, and all the modules share data, which makes PROMYS very efficient for a company where people are wearing multiple hats. The PROMYS combination of strong forecasting, robust project management, and extensive profitability analytics are going to be crucial in providing our executive team with the information we'll need to keep existing customers happy and to make our growth investment decisions.

Likes Least

They're a little behind on releasing the device- and browser-independent version of their software, but I hear that will be out in a couple months now.

Recommendations

Several Concordis Solutions Inc. executives had previously worked for a large Cisco Gold partner using PROMYS, so we had an unfair advantage regarding familiarity with the PROMYS software in a company that resembled the one we intend on building. My advice would be to look carefully at the profile of the majority of that vendor's customers. Do they look like your company? Are they the same size? Are they in the same industry? That customer community is where the majority of the future development suggestions are going to come from. If you're an apple in a sea of oranges, then the likelihood of those future enhancements benefiting your company is low, so the only way you'll get the functionality you need is by paying for customization. You're not just buying the software based on today's features, but for what's it's going to look like five years from now.

Likes Best

The integration between the PROMYS modules, CRM, Opportunity, Quotation Sales Order, PM, and Help Desk is pretty seamless. This virtually eliminates re-keying info and provides our management team with excellent real-time visibility into the business. Support is responsive and knowledgeable; the implementation approach introduced best practices; and they're proactive with education about new functionality.

Likes Least

The install took longer than targeted, but the implementation team was excellent.

Recommendations

Software is only half the problem; mapping your business process to the ideal use case of the software is the other half required to get the most out of your software investment. Make sure the vendor you select really knows your industry and has a library of business process best practices that they can introduce and share when you're going through the requirements review process. Even if you currently have perfect business processes (which most of us don't), unless you're dealing with a vendor who really knows your industry and can educate you about the best use case scenarios for the software, then you'll end up wasting a lot of that functionality potential.

Likes Best

It provides real-time visibility into project profitability (mid-project cost against budget), resource utilization, and resource forecasting. It also has powerful reporting analytics for margin (by manufacturer, line of business, customer, etc.), labor analysis, and forecasting for revenue, margin, and labor.

Their customer service is very responsive. They have good response and resolve times, as well as very a knowledgeable implementation and support staff.

Likes Least

There is currently limited bilingual support (for French), but I understand that their next version is fully multilingual.

Recommendations

A lot of vendors in the PSA space point to all their "self-education" resources (videos, documentation, etc.), but in my experience that just allows you to automate how you do things now, which doesn't really correct poor business processes, nor does it allow you to modify your business processes to line up with industry best practices and take full advantage of the software capabilities from a "best use case" scenario. You can use a screwdriver as a hammer; it's just never going to be very effective. So "figuring things out" on your own may lead to using functionality in a way that doesn't fully leverage its capabilities. I prefer to work with a vendor like PROMYS that takes the time to review and document our existing business processes, introduce best practice suggestions, help us optimize our business processes, and take full advantage of our software investment. It's a little more expensive implementation approach, but in order to get the most return on our software investment, I think it's well worth it.

Likes Best

The Managed IT Service solutions that we deliver to our clients allow them to focus on their core competencies and leave managing their IT infrastructure to us. But in our own business, our previous business software was becoming a distraction to running our business. Instead of the business enabler we had hoped for when we first implemented, slow system response and support issues were consuming way too much time and attention. We have very aggressive growth plans, so we needed to select a system that would not only support our current needs, but one that would handle the increasing complexity of our company as our growth continues. With PROMYS, we know that no matter how aggressively we grow, we won't outgrow our software infrastructure, so now we can go back to focusing on growing and managing our business, as opposed to managing our business software.

Likes Least

I would like to see more canned APIs, although their open Web Services/XML approach to integration is pretty flexible.

Recommendations

We selected our previous business software based on brand name recognition and didn't do as much due diligence as we probably should have to determine if it was an actual fit for our requirements because they were so well known in our space. Having done this a second time in a few years, I'd recommend ignoring the hype, documenting your requirements, and getting each vendor to walk you through specifically how they would handle those requirements.

Likes Best

In another life, I was a power user of one of the more heavily marketed PSA's, so I'm very familiar with that tool's capabilities. We did a very deep dive evaluating PROMYS compared to several other solutions. It was clear very early in the evaluation that for a Cisco Gold partner our size, PROMYS was a far better fit than traditional PSA's. PROMYS is significantly stronger from a forecasting and planning perspective and provides far better visibility into mid-project profitability. Margin and profitability reporting are in a completely different class. PROMYS didn't just "win" our PSA evaluation; for a business our size, the traditional PSA's weren't even options any more.

Likes Least

Initially it was hard to get our executive team to look at PROMYS because it's less well known than the big two PSA's.

Recommendations

I wouldn't recommend just focusing on a "functionality bake-off" between alternative solutions as part of a software solution evaluation. I've used several different solutions in this software category (PSA); each has its own strengths and weaknesses. It's more about "what does that vendor's 'ideal customer' look like, and are you one of those or not?" That will address not just what the functionality looks like today, but what it will look like five, six, or seven years from now, because each vendor is going to be getting feedback from their existing customer community and focusing on developing the enhancements that best satisfy their 'ideal customers.' If you're bigger or smaller, or if your business profile is different from that ideal customer profile, the likelihood of seeing enhancements from that vendor that will consistently benefit your company is significantly reduced.

Likes Best

The embedded quoting module in PROMYS is the glue that connects revenue and resource/margin forecasting with real-time visibility into mid-project cost-against-budget performance. This allows us to quote more competitively, plan more proactively, and deliver more consistently on our project margin targets. PROMYS has a very strong business process industry best practice knowledge base and a very responsive Customer Support team. We also really like the strong accounting integration with GP/Dynamics.

Likes Least

Accounting integration with GP is excellent, but it required some of our GP integrator's time.

Recommendations

For all the positives that come from having all of our operational data in one database and having that data linked (PROMYS has significantly streamlined many of our business processes), it also means that pretty much everyone in our organization in an operational role has to use the software in order for us to maximize the potential benefit, especially from a real-time reporting perspective. In hindsight, we may have underestimated how much effort and reinforcement it was going to take to make sure everyone used the system properly. Ultimately, we prevailed, but I'd counsel anyone going down this path (no matter which software they choose) that you're only two-thirds done once the software implementation is completed; the other third is making sure people actually use the system.

Likes Best

Our company supports multiple lines of business, cloud solutions, managed services, project-based solutions, as well as break-fix support. PROMYS was the only PSA solution that was equally strong in CRM, quoting, project management, project costing, customer inventory/assets tracking under support contract, along with traditional help desk and service management functionality, so that we could support our customers equally well across all of our lines of business.

Likes Least

Installation took a little longer than we had hoped.

Recommendations

Make sure you understand the vendor's implementation methodology. If they're just going to set the system up and let you figure it out (self service videos and documentation), then you'll probably just end up automating how you do things now so that you can make the same mistakes only faster. I really like PROMYS's implementation model which included a formal business process review, best practice sharing, and access to a test environment to test and tweak the configuration before we went live.