Function Point

Puntos a favor: Depth of information and availability of data. The amount of information can be intimidating to a new user, but with experience, the ability to not simply keep track of projects, but to be able to monitor the health of your agency is essential. Function Point's robust reporting tools make that possible.

Contras: Lack of ability to customize and support workflow options that are outside of established understandings within the system. Additional client portal functionality for example.

Puntos a favor: The company pages in Function Point provide us with all the information we need because we're able to customize them to our needs. We can include the client information, but we also have team information so one page tells everyone who is involved with that client's projects. The customizable dashboard also allows each person to view things that they feel are important to them.

Contras: I find Function Point to not be as "functional" as its name might suggest. It is often laggy when you click on links. Getting to pages that you want to be on takes many clicks instead of just one (for example, it seems strange to me that clicking on the name of a "schedule" within a company takes me to a jumbled list of tasks rather than the actual schedule page where I can see things laid out in order). There isn't a good calendar view that allows a person to drag and drop tasks (and since I manage our company's design calendar, it would be great if I could do this since it's basically like putting together a giant puzzle). The customization seems to have stopped with the "dashboard" type of views of the main page and schedule pages. If you want to view, for instance, the time allotted to people within the company for a day, you might visit the Work Planning View, which overall is a great view (shows tasks assigned and a total number of hours allotted to each person). The downside is it always only shows everyone in the company, which isn't ever what I need. Being able to choose who I see in this view (and others like it) would improve the functionality a lot. There are also too many different ways to view things. There are at least three different ways to see how many hours of work a person has scheduled for the day. There are a couple of different views for tasks within a certain project. It can be overwhelming.

Comentarios: Function Point has helped to consolidate and digitize a lot of the things that would have been done either in physical, print form (such as recording time worked on each task), or in a less efficient way (such as creating estimates).

Puntos a favor: What I like most about Function Point is the ease of creating estimates and saving templates. It allows us to provide very in-depth estimates to clients and prospects, which we have received compliments on. Very rarely do I see estimates that are as detailed and clear as the ones that Function Point allows us to create with relative ease. Likewise, the simplicity of creating an Invoice from an existing Job also streamlines the process tremendously. We also make extensive use of the Notes function to create easy-to-follow instructions for our artists to follow. The fact that these are then saved automatically with the Job and are easy to go back to and reference is very helpful. It makes organizing them and trying to keep track of them much less of a hassle.

Contras: One thing I don't like about the Function Point software is that, when a Job is "closed," any tasks that remain un-completed just sit on the Tasks/To Dos page on the homepage of FP. Sometimes we find that tasks we initially think will be required are not needed in the end. Once the Job is closed, I'd much prefer that the "left over" tasks automatically get marked in some way as to indicate that they were not completed, while still being removed from the Tasks/To Dos list. My list is constantly cluttered by Tasks for Jobs that were finished weeks ago, but which I know nothing about because I was never required to actually complete that task. It ends up that someone has to manually close out every individual task that is not needed. Feels like a waste of time.

Comentarios: Their client services team is great! it provides integration of different metrics and views of projects and agency management.
We actually used this software in a couple different ways and got enough support from their team to accommodate the product to our needs, and re-engineer the processes.

Puntos a favor: This software has a great integration of project management, time management, budgets, suppliers and many other features that make it unique.
Constant improvements and features make the software quite competitive when compared to other industry standards, although it is not as common

Contras: Could use better visibility for task management in a more agile friendly manner such as sticky notes view.
Missing multiple currency integration for agencies working in multiple countries

Comentarios: It works for us, but the sun doesn't rise and set with it. Function Point lets us log a lot of information and communicate tasks with people who are out of the office well. But there is a steep learning curve, we've never been super happy with the billing integration for retainer clients, and the reporting is subpar. It works great for people who exclusively work on a project-by-project basis. But their "Retainer" integration leaves a lot wanting. It works, but it's not seamless.

Puntos a favor: It's really great for projects. The structure for setting up estimates and Jobs and Tasks works great when you're focusing on individual projects. And creating Tasks are straightforward, we love that you can pass tasks back-and-forth between team members. We can pretty easily communicate new tasks and jobs/projects to people who don't work in the office. Between Job description, Tasks descriptions and comments on tasks, Notes and comments on notes, and the ability to upload files, there's a lot of power there. Nice to have a track record of things. And when you're billing for an individual project, the billing function is great.

Contras: Billing for retainer clients is not simple or easy. Integrated billing was a big reason we went with Function Point, and it works great for individual projects, but I think the retainer function was added on as an after thought, and is very clunky. To the point that we're thinking about only using the FP billing feature for projects, and just billing Retainer clients straight out of QuickBooks. Also, the Reports are fairly worthless. They are so complicated to interpret, and confusing to create. Most of the reports don't pull up in the browser, they are automatic downloads to an .XML file. And some of the files names are completely different from what they are called in Function Point. I once spent half a day trying to recreate a report I had made a few months ago, but could not find the report listed anywhere in the Report section. It took a support ticket for me to find out that even thought the file name that had downloaded with the report was called "Cost Recovery Rate Report By Client", the report I had to run was called "Billable Hours Recovered By Staff". And the Jobs are pretty great, but it is annoying that you have to create and Estimate every time you create a new job. With Retainer clients, we don't always have to get an estimate approved before we start on a job, so it's just an annoying step. And it's another level of settings you have to go through to get things in the Job right.