Kantata

Pros

The best feature of Kantata is that is provides a combination of Professional Services Automation (the ability to track time, assignments, tasks, project margins, etc.) along with an end-customer collaboration capability to jointly track project task progress, shared documents, and shared task progress.

Cons

The more challenging part of Kantata is the custom reporting aspects. During implementation, we have several custom reports built by the Kantata team. These are working acceptably, but if you want to modify or change those reports it takes a pretty high level of knowledge and experience.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Kantata

Pros

There is a lot to like about the product. Easy task management with lots of capabilities, time and expense tracking that is simple. Extended resource management options for minute details or broad allocations and a really engaged Customer Success team.

Cons

Not a lot to write here. I think the only issue is that it is hard to use at a hourly scale where you need to set time deadlines in the day.

Pros

We like the ability to share a work space with clients

Cons

It is cumbersome and tough to get reporting out of. Also just the general space used for reporting leads to scroll bars inside of scroll bars.

Pros

Super easy to setup and get started. Works well.

Cons

Sometimes froze. Seems to have some software limitations, but I can move past that.

Pros

It has made it easier for me to assign tasks to each of my colleagues to ultimately bring them together in a single project and be able to make better decisions based on real graphs and thus reduce the final delivery time of each project. I can develop multiple projects at the same time, managing to advance faster in each one without confusion.

Cons

I only ask kantata to improve customer service in terms of response time not being so long since sometimes they are responses that take a week to give a solution, it is the only bad thing I see in kantata

Pros

It has been a good ally to improve project delivery times, by being able to divide the tasks into different groups and having the follow-up of each one makes time work and gather all the final information already finished. Since I used kantata I manage my way of working better with improved administration with my colleagues and thus we all work more organized and fix in real time what needs to be changed with the monitoring of the progress that is updated

Cons

There is nothing to change or to say that I dislike it, personally the entire system has always worked well for me.

Pros

Customization and the integration with Jira

Cons

Some features could get and improvement to make ir easier to user

Pros

Great to track / approve timesheets and allocate resources in your plan

Cons

Bugs stands forever and it’s not easy to use and navigate for first time users.

Pros

It was available at the moment . It easily helped reorganize my project and was able go recover lost time and get the project back on track

Cons

Price was. Out of reach for me currently and had to pause it.

Pros

Designed specifically for professional services and benefits are measured over time

Cons

The application could be more up to date and visıually simplified

Pros

Resource managementRelease processTime tracking

Cons

Project management features could be improved

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Kantata

Pros

Resource planning was made 1000% better by using the Mavenlink product. It is an intuitive modern UI that is feature rich across the board.

Cons

There are some gaps in the product and areas where I wish it had been more configurable. For instance, invoicing could use more flexibility in terms of how you build out an invoice (and how you display things on the invoice). Also, time tracking is easy but notes aren't required nor is there a config to make them required which has been a big pain for us.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing Kantata

Switched From

Reasons for Switching to Kantata

Pros

I love that it has given our agency a central place to track all projects/tasks as well as time/budgtes.

Cons

You have to constantlty seek out information that pertains to you. Email is outdated in the digital world so this being the primary means of notification is not helpful for us. Things like push notifications and in application notifications are a simple feature that would be massively helpful fo the user.

Also, the mobile version of this project is basically unuseable, it seems like as a whole this software is very slow to update and integrate new features that are requested by its users.

Pros

Robust reporting, integration to NetSuite, hierarchical team management, Activity feed

Cons

Ease of use needs significant improvement. Needs user configurable workflows and fields. User roles and security have no flexibility. Interface and reporting designed by someone who never has to use the application to run their day.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing Kantata

Switched From

Reasons for Switching to Kantata

Pros

It was relatively easy to use and teach others how to use

Cons

Overall it felt a bit fussy. There were more options than we needed and it sometimes felt overwhelming.

Pros

Project setup and resource allocation entry is easy.

Cons

Scheduled hours and allocations seem to have a disconnect for resource assignment use.

Pros

It's great to have a single tool to manage projects, time and expenses, also it gives you a great visibility or resource utilization. Also it gives you a great overall analysis on all of your projects

Cons

I takes time to configure Kantata to your business needsrequires some training due to configuration complexityvisibility of uploaded files against a single project is not great

Pros

When I integrated it to my business, it was easy. It is also easy to use. The features that I find most impactful are the resource management, resource planning and forecasting. With the forecast feature, I can plan for the next month's possible performance as well as even the following year. Using the full suite of forecasting tools to maximize is my secret for future-readiness. I just like to manage and plan effectively that's why I use this software.

Cons

I liked the software but I think it can be improved with the color scheme. Maybe try to develop a dark mode or something. I mostly work at night and I prefer to see a contrast in when I'm on screen. I do that in some of my apps.

Pros

Kantata's intuitive and user-friendly layout, which makes it simple for anyone to get started with the application, is one of its most notable features.

Cons

Additionally, users can customise Kantata in a number of ways to suit their unique requirements and work processes.

Pros

The tool is quite easy to learn and is very intuitive. It was easy to set up and customer support was great (at least in 2016 - we've been clients for almost 5 years). It integrates with a few other platforms like Salesforce and can be customized using API. In addition, it provides client access and we see constant improvements.

Cons

Two biggest concerns:
1. You can't perform mass actions on tasks/milestones/issues. I.e. if you need to update multiple tasks with the same dates or status or assignee - you can't do it. You'll need to edit each task manually.
2. There are issues with email notifications - there were a few outages last year that resulted in delayed notifications which impacted our work.

Pros

I like the ease of adding tasks, making templates for projects, logging time for tasks, and scheduling shared resources.

Cons

I would like to be able to color-code things (tasks and projects) to more easily tag similar items.
I would prefer to see when posts were added to the activity feed and not just which day.
I would like to be able to see a resource's task list from their perspective.
It would save a lot of time if you could duplicate a project if all but a few details were going to be identical.

Pros

The activity dashboard is the best part of Mavenlink. A feed that allows you to keep track of official communications and notes is perfect, plus it keeps clients involved. The API is also very strong and allows us to generate reports FAR beyond what is offered by Mavenlink. Our ability to manage projects and people has greatly increased due to the features that have been implemented since we switched to Mavenlink.

Cons

The Gantt chart needs a lot of work. The interface is slow and clunky, plus it is not a great view for the executives and sponsors, visually speaking. The purpose of this chart is not really to "manage" the project, but instead show a high level overview of everything. There is currently no great way to show this to execs and sponsors. There needs to be a better mobile experience as well. We need a fully functional way to log time, complete tasks, post activity and generally manage projects from Android and iOS.

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).

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.

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.