Kantata Reviews

Awesome platform that's only getting better

Comments: Overall, using Mavenlink has been great - it has made a very positive impact on day-to-day functions as a business. I would recommend it highly to agencies for its flexibility and extensive functionality to manage resources and projects.

Pros:

The reporting functionality Mavenlink offers is extensive and has enabled us to get much better visibility to our project, program, portfolio and resourcing data. Which in turn has allowed us to set/adjust our KPI/KRIs and better inform business decisions with the data we have available. In using Mavenlink how it's meant to be used, not only have we improved our business practices but our PMO has gained valuable insight into important aspects of the business that were previously siloed. The fact that Mavenlink actually continues to improve its platform based on user feedback is a massive plus, as new functionality becomes available to better utilize the platform.

Cons:

There are some small (very small in most cases) problems we have with some functionality i.e. the naming/categorization of metrics in the reporting suite could be clearer, when approving/rejecting timesheets, adding a comment to a specific entry would be preferable, rather than the comment being published to all entries.

Alternatives Considered: WorkflowMax and Adobe Workfront

Reasons for Choosing Kantata: Budgetary reasons mainly but we also needed a platform that would allow us to manage resources more efficiently as well.

Switched From: Adobe Workfront

Reasons for Switching to Kantata: Fitted to our budget and offered functionality we saw as essential to resource management.

It's a fantastic time and task management system

Comments: Mavenlink sits directly on our Salesforce platform, and it has been great for our business to have a more comprehensive perspective from Pre-Sales through project close-out ever since we implemented the product about three years ago with the help of Mavenlink's amazing support. From the perspective of Resource Management, I find everything about Mavenlink to be extremely well executed.

Pros:

My preferred time management application is extremely feature-rich, allowing for extensive customization of how time and money are spent. Mavenlink is a great addition to our corporate finance tools since it provides us with a new way to examine data and monitor progress on several fronts simultaneously. For me, it's a plus that Mavenlink is always working to enhance its platform and provide new educational resources for its users.

Cons:

I haven't utilized many goods or features, but it would be helpful to have a consolidated dashboard where I can observe how everything is interacting with one another.

The complete solution for efficient project management.

Comments: I love it a lot, from creating and assigning tasks to tracking the time spent on each activity and managing resources, I can have a more complete view of my projects in real time.

Pros:

It is very good and I no longer have the need to jump between different tools or documents to be able to have a clearer view of the status and progress of my projects.

Cons:

Well, the platform allows me customization to a certain extent, there may be limitations in terms of completely adapting to the more specific needs of certain organizations.

Good system but some frustrating issues

Comments: Useful overall, but the more time I spend with it the more I realize it is missing some key functionality that would save a lot of time. It's much more difficult to update a project in Mavenlink than past systems I've used, and I think there are some beneficial tweaks that could be made

Pros:

From an ease of use standpoint, time entry and project creation is fairly straightforward. It's also nice to have access to so many reporting features, although I imagine that's even more valued by the leadership team rather than staff.

Cons:

Three major issues stand out to me and my colleagues: 1- the software is very slow at times, and the more time I spend making edits to a project the longer it takes. In some cases, the lag is so bad that a task that should take 10 minutes ends up taking 30 since I wait so long for the system respond. The more tasks and individuals assigned to a project, the worse it is. Customer service suggested I delete my cache, but this was a temporary and fairly ineffective solution 2- It'd be great to have a simple place where I can see exactly how many hours a team member has on a project. Right now, we can only see time assigned to individual tasks, and then need to calculate the total manually 3- When tasks get extended or shortened, it'd be great to have a way to have Mavenlink automatically distribute time accordingly. For example, if I have 1 hour assigned for a 1-week long task, it'd be nice if I could automatically change this to 30min/week if that task were extended to being 2 weeks long. I know time can move automatically if the gantt is updated, but that only works if the task stays the same duration and hasn't started yet. Other systems offer this feature

Comprehensive product offering

Comments: Great

Pros:

Resource managementRelease processTime tracking

Cons:

Project management features could be improved

Alternatives Considered: Resource Management and Smartsheet

Reasons for Switching to Kantata: More comprehensive offering and better customer service

Kantata is a great way to handle project/task management for your business.

Comments: A great way to monitor and build your project management, tasks. Simply and easy to use application.

Pros:

It has multiple ways to use for project management, task scheduling and follow-up, many other things unlike available applications.

Cons:

For me it is doing the job required and I have never faced an issue with the system at all. Maybe it could require some work on the interface on the mobile.

Alternatives Considered: Taskworld and ClickUp

Reasons for Choosing Kantata: Cost is acceptable, support is great.

Switched From: Microsoft Project

Reasons for Switching to Kantata: Could not find all the features required as found in Kantana

OK for the basics, advanced functionality is either missing or not well implemented

Comments: Implementation was not very well executed. We basically had to figure it out on our own. THe "integrations" through thier integration tool are very poorly built and the tool is terrible. It gets the basics right but more advanced features like the Insights reporting add on are poorly executed.

Pros:

Ease of use, Reporting, Project Financials

Cons:

M Bridge integration platform is a complete failure. Its terrible. Training during implementation was not good. We've learned more on our own in a few classes. Time entry is weak and poorly designed. Lacks subprojects. User permissions are all or nothing in most cases.

Alternatives Considered: monday.com, Hive, Wrike and Asana

Reasons for Choosing Kantata: Workfront was too dificult to use, our clients could not or would not engage with us using it. THe functionality was there, but the interface was very poor.

Switched From: Adobe Workfront

Reasons for Switching to Kantata: Simple workflows, reporting and ease of use.

A steep learning curve

Comments: Mavenlink is not a bad service. it does keep everything you need to manage a project in one place, as well as help you track hours spent on various tasks within projects and organize a timeline. It is somewhat difficult to use and difficult to learn how to use - I don't find it very user friendly or intuitive. I'm still getting over this learning curve, since I'm new to using the software, and will likely find that it becomes easier over time. At least I really hope it does.

Pros:

Mavenlink is a great way to keep track of everything you need for multiple projects across various areas. Budget burn is clear to see, it's easy enough to add and message people on a project. Easy enough to track time, develop timelines, break projects down into tasks, etc. Good for very type A people who like to extremely organize everything.

Cons:

It creates a lot of work for project managers. A lot goes into designing a project and filling it out, which is very time consuming. There is also a steep learning curve, especially if you are adapting to Mavenlink after being used to different systems. The trainings were somewhat helpful, but long, boring and repetitive. While it does keep everything in one place, it is difficult to adapt to using it where you would have used email, Skype messenger, google docs, etc. especially if you're working with colleagues who are not so technologically savvy.

Kantata has transformed project and cost management

Comments: Using Kantata , we finally have a way to track the time and effort put in by our engineers across all of the projects they're working on. We were able to respond to questions from our leaders much more quickly, which helped us avoid certain personnel problems.

Pros:

Kantata has revolutionized our approach to budgeting and task management. The opportunity to centralize all of our initiatives in one place and provide individualized reports that tracked our development in relation to our key performance indicators is something we are really grateful for. We also take pleasure in learning where we may be under- or over-allocating our engineers, so that we may swiftly adjust our course.

Cons:

As far as we can tell, employing Kantata does not come with any major drawbacks. Reports are not sorted alphabetically or numerically, however these are minor issues.

The definitive tool to manage projects and maximize results.

Comments: It has been great I have experienced a significant improvement in my ability to plan, execute and control my projects efficiently.

Pros:

I love how it combines all the necessary tools in one place, which improves efficiency and communication across the team.

Cons:

I have occasionally experienced some occasional technical difficulties, such as errors loading large files or slow system response at times of high demand.

Too complicated time entry

Comments: Too complicated as an end user just trying to get my time entered.

Pros:

There's a lot of functionality at the higher up space

Cons:

As a user who enters their time the time entry screen is an extremely overcomplicated experience. It should be as simple as picking a project, sub-code and then entering time. My experience so far is vastly overcomplicated with different places and ways to enter it. I came from using harvest to track time and their weekly view with a row of the project and code i use frequently is most excellent.

The Ultimate Services & Operations Management Software

Comments: The only way to describe this would be "It has been and still is fun to work with". It's a great piece of software, and once you get used to its logic you will be able to do great things - and by great things I mean measure exactly how much you sell your services for and how much resources you are actually using.
This, plus see employee performance, project performance, you can create custom fields to cover for any special requirement.

Pros:

- Integrations and API - An excellent Salesforce bridge is available and can be fully customised (if you know Java!). You also get other connectors for Jira, Slack, and an API that allows you to do virtually anything. - Integrated GoodData reporting - If you are technical enough you can improve your workflows by adding custom fields and creating custom metrics. I used this solution to monitor the performances of the entire Professional Services team at Emarsys. - The software itself is essentially like Microsoft Project but online and with conversations & invoices generation - you can manage anything from a very small and basic project to a massive 2 years project thanks to the versatile task management interface. GANTT charts are available and, of course, if you know how to use GoodData you can dig even further into the project reports. - Resourcing wise it has a Master Planning tool which looks a bit like Resource Guru but completely integrated with the software, so you are really buying the full package with Mavenlink.

Cons:

I believe the biggest flaw in Mavenlink is the absence of a "real" administrator. Essentially, you can be an admin but if a project is set to "Invitation only" you cannot join it unless someone invites you. So being a Mavenlink admin is not like being a Jira admin where you can do anything you want, you are more of a "open projects administrator". The workaround is to have an integration user creating the projects and a good integration with your CRM that allows you to update fields that would be otherwise not accessible. Mind that you can still remove the integration user from the project, and at that point the only way to re-enter the project is to ask the project lead to invite you. This should clear any security concerns, if your projects require extreme privacy.

Software well tailored for our business needs

Comments: Overall, the experience is become better and better. I'd say the UI still has some usability issues.

Pros:

Great master planning for resources and allocations.

Cons:

Two biggest pet peeves are the following: 1. It's irritating that you must delete a recreate a time entry if you enter it on the wrong day of the week on the Timesheets view. Should be able to just change the date of the entry. Other similar software allows this. 2. On Master Planning, I want to see how many hours are represented in the allocation every week not just how many hours by percentage across the span of weeks the allocation runs. This make it hard to determine quickly how many hours the resource has for each allocation for that week.

Mavenlink feedback

Pros:

The reporting and overview of the project is very helpful. .I also like how you can budget towards individual tasks/milestones. It's also good to see an overview of staff's availability and schedule them on specific days for projects.

Cons:

It's very frustrating when you need to allocated in the same amount of time per user across a long period. You have to go in individually to each week to add that time. When you have to do this for multiple users across different projects, it takes a lot of time!!! Should be able to do a recurring staffing - define the time period, how many hrs for which user and project. If there are changes to hrs or staffing for a project, you then have to go in and change across the board - should be able to change that recurring staffing to a different number/person

Mavenlink is a Great Project Management Tool

Comments: Mavenlink has allowed us to track everything coming in and out of our department on a daily, monthly and yearly basis. This has shown the demand for our services and how well we manage our time with this demands. We are also able to easily invite those outside of our department to join in and collaborate, which has simplified our daily request process. Everything can be found in one place.

Pros:

Mavenlink allows for our team to easily collaborate on projects from beginning to end. We can cater our tasks to our specific needs and show the progress along the way for everyone to see. The updates that are sent via email keep me on track with the numerous projects I have at hand. The time tracking integration is beneficial to us when we are working with outside clients. This function is simple to use!

Cons:

I find it difficult to access archived projects when I need to refer back to them. It appears that you need to know the exact title of the project in order to search it. Even though the time tracking function is simple to use, I do wish I could pause my time on one project without tracking it and move to another project where I start tracking time as well. I feel that I have to submit small increments of time often because I cannot do this.

Mavenlink is feature rich and user friendly

Comments: Mavenlink has been a feature-rich tool that has been adaptable to our unique model.

Pros:

Mavenlink has a lot of custom features and functionality which was an important factor in that we needed to find a tool that met our many custom processes and workflows.

Cons:

Mavenlink does not allow customers to see budget in hours or dollars, so clients can't see any sort of project burndown. New features and functionality are slow to be released, but for a platform its size, ML does a decent job of staying on top of squashing bugs.

WRIKE to MAVENLINK USER

Comments: Used Wrike for ~8 months and moved to Mavenlink over a year ago. In write you can't track time and expenses. The wrike issue tracking isn't great too. Before moving to Mavenlink, I looked at ~12+ project management tools. It's a pain to move platforms. So we didn't want to make the wrong move. There are so many tools out there. For us, a big priority was being able to track time and projects all in one place. Mavenlink does that and more. It's an awesome tool esp. for design teams and if a lot of your team is virtual.

Pros:

- Time tracking integration. Don't have to use a third party tool. - Smart project task management. - Easy to track if "to do" is a "task" or an "issue" (very helpful for website projects where you have a TON of issues to deal with). - Easy to move tasks around and see the overall items you're working on. - Google docs integration. - You can track conversations all in one feed-- on more email. - You can respond via email.

Cons:

- So many features. I don't use all of them. - They add on cool features... but want you to pay for them. - Expensive -- but worth it when you're managing a team and don't want to login to a ton of applications. - No dropbox integration. - Takes awhile to get used too. - You can't rename the issue or task items. For example, sometimes I want to change the status title from "needs info" to "client review" -- and I can't edit the status (I could do this in Wrike).

Mavenlink Rocks

Comments: We use Mavenlink to project management all new school openings and are now starting to use it for all of our large national events. Mavenlink has definitely helped us open more schools worldwide efficiently and effectively. Before Mavenlink, communication and documentation were major issues around our projects. With Mavenlink, we are able to document our calls and follow ups within the system itself. Tasks linked to communications are also very helpful. The features I like best are ease of use, Dashboard view of all projects, Templates, sync to Google Apps, and Gannt.

Pros:

Ease of use and communication. The ability to start threads regarding specific tasks, upload/share google docs, post messages that also go to email, etc. has been critical to successfully completing projects.

Cons:

The only dislike I have is that I cannot push a change across multiple projects at one time. We use templates for almost every project we launch. Sometimes those templates get updated and those changes need to be applied to current projects.

Big Upgrade compared to our previous PM software

Comments: Overall I am very happy with the product, big upgrade compared to our previous PM software. (PM.com)

Pros:

It meets all our department's needs, I love the activity feed and the overall view of all our projects. Also great reporting tool!

Cons:

The gantt chart, I wish the reporting would be more user friendly.

Alternatives Considered: Smartsheet

Reasons for Choosing Kantata: Pm.com did not have any reporting features. Therefore the data was useless. Also it didnt have a portfolio view of all our projects.

Reasons for Switching to Kantata: Mavenlink met all of our needs.

Very easy platform to engage with clients and to manage reports.

Pros:

When a client assigns a project to our team we add a new page to our Mavenlink platform and share that with client and all the team members who will be working on the project. Clients can see updates, modifications and even daily reports. Our team don't have to update each time with the client or send them an email at the end of each day. Even if a client has different projects, they will see it on different pages which avoids confusion. The Gantt charts are the best feature included to avoid keeping multiple tabs open.

Cons:

One of the main cons is that it will take considerably more time setting everything up. One has to dedicate for at least 4-5 hours to learn everything pretty well. The date format is given only in US standard and troubled us a lot in the beginning.

Reliable tool but not ideal for Finance Reporting

Comments: Easy to use, reliable in terms of saving data but this tool feels outdated due to the manual staff allocation process. Also the finance and staffing reporting doesnt work for me. Im not a fan of that.

Pros:

I like that my staffing projections are easy to access, view and share across digital teams.

Cons:

Forecasting hours by the week/month needs to be automated - this is too manual and time consuming at the time. Need to be able to drag and drop hours, or somehow more speedily be able to populate staff allocations. Also finance reporting / utilization reporting is incredibly difficult of not impossible due to my current access level. I have to rely on the finance and resourcing department for all reporting - this is not sustainable for project management.

Kantana

Comments: My overall experience has been pleasant using Kantana. I continue to use their product today.

Pros:

The features I like and use the most on Kantana are the project planning features. It is reliable and well put together.

Cons:

I don't think there is anything about Kantana that I don't like. It is put together well and reliable.

Great Product to Bring the Team Together

Comments: Since our startup we've used basic spreadsheet tools to capture and analyze data. It was possible to generate project metrics and profitability, but the process was cumbersome. That information is just a click away now. We've also eliminated much of the possibility of our employees entering time to the wrong codes with the task assignment functions.

Pros:

Our organization includes some office staff, but is mostly made up of remote employees on our client's project sites. Mavenlink has given us a great tool for communicating with our team, as well as capturing time and expense entries via the Cloud. Our employees really like the interface and the ability to log time and expense from their mobile devices. Also, we've found the online workspace to be of great value in transmitting and archiving information and files. Our implementation included support from Laura Pierce and her BIASS team. Laura led us thru integrating our processes with the capabilities of the tool via a weekly meeting. Action items were identified and quickly addressed. Laura was always there to assist with answering questions and being a sounding board for my ideas. It was also a neat experience to have the BIASS team use the Mavenlink tool to setup and manage the BIASS project.

Cons:

Most of the opportunities I see with the tool could be considered enhancements to the time and expense processing function and invoicing processes. These include: * More flexibility in the Admin's abilities to review, edit and approve project charges in the invoicing cycle would be helpful. *The ability to provide greater detail of expense charges on the invoice (which is a current action item with Mavenlink for us), and * The ability to push transactions that are not time and expense entries, such as taxes, unit bill amounts, etc. to QuickBooks would be helpful.

Upped Our Utilization!

Comments: We took on Mavenlink when we needed a 50,000 foot view of our department's capacity. The levels of organization that Mavenlink has brought our team's creatives have gone way beyond our expectations. People know exactly what they need to be working on when they come in in the morning. Plus, it allows us to monitor our team's capacity so we know when we need to add more than one creative to a job or even gives us backup when we need to prove why we need to hire more staff.

Pros:

I love the way Mavenlink automates communication as the project moves on down through the workflow. By using dependency arrows on the gantt chart, our creatives are automatically notified when their tasks are ready to start. It's pretty slick!

Cons:

How unforgiving the gantt chart is. I realize it's web-based in a browser, but it really needs an "undo" button.

Program Manager Review

Comments: It has been positive and has definitely streamlined a lot of my work on a day to day basis as a PM

Pros:

The invoicing and billing functionality is great as well as allowing resources to be forecasted and allocated to multiple projects

Cons:

It is a bit clunky to use at first as there is a lot of functionality within it