Please make this tool fully functional for small creative agencies
What do you like best?
The 'modify grid' function gives users the chance to tailor their views to suit their needs
-- however, it would be super handy to be able to further tailor a jobs list more so that we don't need to flip through different lists for different tasks. Also, there are bugs where I am not able to give advanced users access to the Basic Jobs List
The Costs (Job Tracking) function within jobs is great to slice and dice data within a job
- to see hours used for a person, month, department, within a time period
- to quickly check purchase and invoice details on a job.
The ability to tailor dimensions against jobs and also being able to export out data via databoards
-- this means we are able to tailor our job reporting analysis to our business needs.
A lot of the other tools don't seem to have the dimension capability.
What do you dislike?
Resourcing in WorkBook is super buggy and hard to administer for small lean/agile agencies.
- this is key to planning capacity and managing projects, however, we are duplicating efforts outside of WorkBook as it is easier... which is not right for a tool that is supposed to be the solution from end to end.
We do not have the luxury of traffic managers as I think the system is tailored to, and when there are many performance bugs in the resourcing functions this stops PM's from using this as an up to date source of truth.
Over the past 3 years, I have sent many queries and had video calls with different Deltek Customer service, Product Development and Product Managers, but have not seen much improvement in this area which I think is the heart of any project management tool and need to be improved.
Feature updates in the last few years have not been UX/UI focused so it doesn't create good engagement with users.
The end-user needs to be key for all updates.
- e.g. if you take the bold total line off the top of the timesheet in the v12.2 upgrade and have no option for users to add it back on (through modify grid/grouping) then this disengages users as they find the new un-bolded total at the bottom of the timesheet grid not easy to see.
Please also make sure to put focus on improving the existing core functionality rather than integrating it with new tools. We don't want new tools like ConceptShare, we want an end-end project management tool that works.
As an admin I would also like to be able to turn more non-applicable fields off for people visually, to make the UI less cluttered. We design/build simple UI solutions based on thorough CX/UX research for our clients, yet WorkBook is often criticised by users for the UI and functionality.
I would also like to tailor components within the NRF so that it is actually usable for us
- The ability to set what should show as tentative vs confirmed Revenue.
- To set these figures to only show fees revenue
- The ability to export out NRF data for external analysis
What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?
We implemented WorkBook 2017 - 2018 and went live in April 2018, with the aim to have 1 tool instead of 7 desperate tools.
WorkBook was sold to us as an end-end tool for managing pipeline, budgets, capacity planning, project management, resourcing, forecasting, timesheets, supplier costs, invoicing
However, we have only been able to realise some of these components - budgets, timesheets, supplier costs, invoicing and some project management, forecasting.
We have not been able to show our custom KPI calculations in the system, which means we have to do a lot of analysis outside of the system.
The data once in the tool can be useful - but if it is not easy to enter/update then it does not always give good data out.
This means we do not yet have the 1 source of truth in our business. We have some truth and then many external workarounds.
As the lead administrator, I am being challenged to improve this tool or find a better one.
I really believe this tool could improve which is why I continue to give such detailed feedback, I am in the business of finding solutions and I want WorkBook to be better.
- however my confidence is reducing over time as I have not seen the improvement I had hoped for in 3-4 years, and the Deltek Customer Care seems to be getting worse rather than better :(
