Nicely said, Kevin. When I look at the objections to WorkFront, they boil down to: I love MS Project and don't want to learn anything else. WorkFront is too complex and too difficult to use. To them, I say "Legacy Gantt"; We can't trust the financials for labor, because WorkFront has no concept of different labor rates for different time periods. Yes, they are changing that for billing, and we can struggle costing projects out using Billing instead of the native labor cost (argh!), but as it stands, we use WorkFront as the system of record for hours and our financial system (argh!) as the system of record for dollars; WorkFront is so hard to use. I spent hours working on a plan and now its gone. It doesn't support linking projects together. I can't see what my burn rate is. There is no way to see if I'm overloading resources or not. I can't add any custom attributes to tasks or projects. There is no way to get a report that shows all tasks that are overdue...and on and on ad nauseum. These are all attitude issues. See, if they had a positive attitude they would ask for help, attend training, watch the YouTube videos, they would do something to find out how to get what they want. What they really want, however, is to complain and be cast as the victim; I think number 2, for us, is the only valid reason we look at other packages. Financial management is really important here and WorkFront can't simply or easily give us accurate labor cost. We renew our contract annually. Each year, I am required to do a market analysis (which is actually fascinating) to see what the competition looks like. So far, people who have complaint number 2 recommend Innotas to replace WorkFront. People who have complaint 3 will never be happy with anything, ever. People who have complain 1, surprisingly enough, recommend MS Project. I am well aware of MS Project's limitations and ask them how we overcome them, and their solutions are generally convoluted and cumbersome, so logic and reason obviously have nothing to do with their selection. They "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_the_Kool-Aid">drank the Kool-Aid , as it were. When I ran Product Management at another company, I spent a lot of time talking to my competition's Product Managers (at trade shows usually) about the strengths of their product. I even got demos. I always gave demos to the product managers of my competition when they asked. I told them that if they are going to compare their product to mine, they better get it right. I learned a lot, and mostly learned that our "sweet spot" as it were, was materially different, and as such, our target audiences were different. There was only one company that had a directly competitive product and it wasn't as mature or feature rich as ours, but I think (don't know) their price point was lower. Anyway, I think that holds true for work management software. As I survey the market of work management software, it becomes readily apparent that they are all trying to carve out their niche in the overall work management tool market. I think WorkFront is really wanting to own the Marketing work management market. I have to say, having worked for another company who years ago went after the Marketing work management market, it think WorkFront has chosen the least travelled, most bumpy, difficult to traverse market there is. Anyway, Innotas is really good at some things WorkFront isn't. Workfront is good at a significant number of things Innotas isn't. The market is diverse enough that we need a diverse range of products. No one is going to "own the world" of work management. So let me provide an analogy. We're cooking a dish and want to have an onion-y quality to the flavor profile. We can choose from white onions, yellow onions, sweet (Vidalia) onions, shallots, green onions, spring onions, leeks, garlic, onion powder, and so on. Each one is in the onion family (okay, the allium famiily), but brings something different to the flavor party. You have to select the right onion for your specific dish. Likewise , there are lots of Work Management products, and you need to find the product that best aligns with your need. I know, I'm stating the obvious. When selecting software, I think sales people tend to want to focus on their product, not on fulfilling your needs. I worked with a sales guy at that other company (I think he is still there) who did fabulously. His trick was simple Рfocus on satisfying the customer's needs and wants, and don't focus on "selling" them something they may not need using emotional inertia. He only discussed features and capabilities that aligned with their needs. He made the value patently obvious. He was a rare sales guy. Anyway, when looking at software, spend more time determining and prioritizing your needs than looking at software. Don't buy into the emotional pull that some sales people employ. Its all about you, baby. Thanks for reading my ramble. I do love chatting about this stuff. Eric ------Original Message------ Hi Again, I too asked myself that question Lucas and also feel the same as Michael.¬† I think we can all agree that there is not one perfect solution and not one solution for everyone.¬† It really comes down to requirements and requirements will help drive to the correct solution (hopefully).¬† However, I have a couple questions for anyone thinking of potentially switching from any solution:
Can you work with the current vendor to accommodate the changes that you require in the solution, and if so what would be the potential costs?
Switching solutions especially PMO tools can be quite costly for licensing, infrastructure, architecture, integrations, training and more..., is there really the appetite across the organization to support the change?
Considering the change will provide the desired results, would that be worth costs and efforts?
These tough simple questions make people think differently about working to fix the solution they are using or provides comfort that they are making the right decision moving to a new solution. Either way, the more we keep talking and asking for improvements the better the solutions will become while strengthening our partnerships. Cheers, Kevin Kevin Fortier RBC Capital Markets
