BrightWork

Pros

BrightWork went above and beyond to help us roll out a project management solution on SharePoint. They recognized our need for a small amount project management to get us started, however we know the full capabilities of the product lie waiting to be utilized to help us improve performance as an organization. BrightWork's support is excellent and always there to help us when we need them. Highly recommended for any organization who would like to leverage their SharePoint site for Project Management.

Cons

Very happy with the support we received and their ability to roll out the product within our organization.

Additional Comments

BrightWork also provides great content on their support site, website and blog which we can constantly refer to.

• Pricing: 5
• Responsiveness: 5
• Customer Service: 5
• Product Quality: 5
• Level of Expertise: 5

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Pros

Brightwork offers excellent project reporting and management tools at an affordable price. Brightwork is a good niche product for organizations that are not ready to do full enterprise resource management for projects.

Cons

Reports are difficult to build without expertise. Recommend a wizard for building custom queries.

Additional Comments

Great support and valuable bolt on tools for Sharepoint and project management.

• Pricing: 4.5
• Responsiveness: 5
• Customer Service: 5
• Product Quality: 4
• Level of Expertise: 4.5

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Pros

Great product and I was able to talk to a customer service representative to guide me if I had issues.

Cons

Hard to understand all the technical items you need to know with the online training materials. Need a class or technical help.

• Pricing: 5
• Responsiveness: 5
• Customer Service: 5
• Product Quality: 5
• Level of Expertise: 5

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Pros

We've been on PMPoint for a year now and are just starting to learn what it can do. Excellent Tech Support. They know their "stuff" and are a pleasure to work with !! Hung in there until our issues were resolved. Excellent support website and knowledgebase. Very prompt in getting back to you. Love the fact I can log in and "play/test" in their sandbox !! Had an excellent upgrade document so upgrading to the next version was easier than expected.

Cons

BrightWork PMPoint can do so much. Sometimes you don't know what it can do until you ask.

Additional Comments

Would highly recommend to everyone looking for a good project management tool !!!!

• Pricing: 3.5
• Responsiveness: 5
• Customer Service: 5
• Product Quality: 5
• Level of Expertise: 5

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Pros

Easy to customise pmPoint and easy to work with. The support provided by BrightWork during the customisation phase was very professional and always tuned into and understanding what we as customers where asking for.

Cons

The reporting tool in pmPoint is less easy to customise

• Pricing: 5
• Responsiveness: 5
• Customer Service: 5
• Product Quality: 5
• Level of Expertise: 5

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Pros

pmPoint is a fantastic tool that adds on seamlessly with SharePoint. WIth pmPoint, we successfully created a central team project dashboard, stadardized PM practices, and ensured all project related documenation now reside in a central location. The support team was very hands on, and stepped with us each week to train and answer questions as we were ready to design, deploy and launch PmPoint to our organization

Cons

There were some initial challenges in sync MS Project Plans with pmPoint. With the latest release (v10), the syncing issue seems to be resolved

Additional Comments

pmPoint is a great tool for individual and team to manage their resources, schedules and project in a central location. I highly recommend.

• Pricing: 5
• Responsiveness: 5
• Customer Service: 5
• Product Quality: 5
• Level of Expertise: 5

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Pros

We have been using BrightWork since 2006. We are in the Automotive parts industry and the BrightWork team has customized our APQP process and Project Management portal. They are the best partners to have when either designing or re-designing your site. Weekly meetings ensure everyone is on the same page as you see the modifications shape the pages. Technical Support is out of this world. They do the modifications in Ireland so the timing is perfect. We are in California and Michigan so by the time we get in, we can review the work they did a few hours earlier. Never had an issue they couldn't fix. The pricing is also very reasonable. Can't say enough good things about this company or Product.

Cons

I am happy with everything they do. Very professional orginization that I trust 100%

Additional Comments

The BrightWork Team made using SharePoint much easier. They go out of their way to simplify as many task as you may find difficult.

• Pricing: 5
• Responsiveness: 5
• Customer Service: 5
• Product Quality: 5
• Level of Expertise: 5

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Pros

BrightWork is a great organization to work with and pmPoint is a great product for getting Project Management inside of SharePoint. We use it at our organization and it has helped a great deal.

Cons

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• Pricing: 5
• Responsiveness: 5
• Customer Service: 5
• Product Quality: 5
• Level of Expertise: 5

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Pros

Besides of having a very well developed product for work and project management, BrightWork offers a fantastic support, very effective and assertive. We never had a question without a rapid response.

Cons

We believe that individuals time tracking is one of the last features missing to have a very comprehensive project management solution. The integration with Microsoft Project still needs some refinements, that we know will come.

Additional Comments

It is a great company with passionate people and a great product that makes our work easier and more productive.

• Pricing: 5
• Responsiveness: 5
• Customer Service: 5
• Product Quality: 4.5
• Level of Expertise: 5

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Pros

The BrightWork people have excellent project management skills and provide great support. Their product, now called BrightWork, is also available as a hosted service allowing us to roll out in no time and without involving internal IT. Very cost effective!

Cons

The lack of time tracking

Additional Comments

I can highly recommend BrightWork for streamlining project management processes and provide up-to-date project status across projects.

• Pricing: 5
• Responsiveness: 5
• Customer Service: 5
• Product Quality: 5
• Level of Expertise: 5

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Pros

Very easy and quick rollout. Less than a week and all of our PM's are using pmPoint as natural as MS-Office. Powerful customization options.

Cons

Some restrictions apply when synchronizing with MS-Project Professional 2010.

Additional Comments

We found pmPoint from Brightwork the perfect solution for a fast and friendly rollout with our PMO implementation and also better than using MS-Project Server, which was oversized for our needs.

• Pricing: 4
• Responsiveness: 5
• Customer Service: 5
• Product Quality: 5
• Level of Expertise: 5

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Pros

Brightwork is a partner-like company. Many high level PM Skills. Great Support for end customers and partners. Well tested releases. And last but not least a very useful product: pmPoint

Cons

We wish more functionalities like time tracking or document management.

Additional Comments

As the regional Partner for DACH we see pmPoint as a very well positioned product for our market.

• Pricing: 4
• Responsiveness: 4.5
• Customer Service: 5
• Product Quality: 3.5
• Level of Expertise: 5

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Pros

The staff! From Sales to Deployment to Support, they have all been great to work with. I have gone through two implementations with them now at my current company and previous company and they have been very supportive and great to work with. The first company required alot of customization and the end product was wonderful! For my current company, I am currently in the customization and implementation stage, the Project Managers globally are excited to have a tool that will help them in their day to day management of their projects and the Executives are happy to have a visible view of all the projects and their status to make educated business decisions.

Cons

The customization on the webparts is not very intuitive, still have to depend alot on Brightwork support to get stuff developed, would be very beneficial to make this more intuitive and easier to customize, specifically the Reporter customization.

Additional Comments

Overall, a GREAT product and GREAT staff to work with! Has been a key factor in the implementation of the PMO at both companies!

• Pricing: 4
• Responsiveness: 3.5
• Customer Service: 3.5
• Product Quality: 4
• Level of Expertise: 4

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Pros

BrightWork pmPoint is a project management add-on for Microsoft SharePoint, making the deployment and customization process quite straightforward for an organization with an existing SharePoint implementation and existing know-how in SharePoint administration and customization. One of the key winning points for BrightWork over other solutions we were considering, is the flexibility it offered us to manage and track projects of varying sizes and levels of complexity from a single dashboard in a seamless way. Ability to synchronize with Microsoft Project 2010, gave us the option to cater for more complex project requirements only when a specific project mandates that. Flexible and roll-up reporting allowed us to monitor various project metrics and resource utilization at different levels of the project management office.

Cons

Although BrightWork utilizes SharePoint user and group site permissions, it lacks the ability to define permissions as part of the project template for example, or to integrate with the various project roles. Furthermore, the custom reporter provides additional flexibility to customize dashboards, but is relatively complex.

Additional Comments

The level of support that we have received from BrightWork, particularly during the early customization and implementation phase, and at any point after that, has been exceptional. Implementing BrightWork pmPoint has enabled us to streamline our project management processes and provide up-to-date project status across our project portfolios.

• Pricing: 4
• Responsiveness: 5
• Customer Service: 5
• Product Quality: 4.5
• Level of Expertise: 4.5

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Pros

I've worked with BrightWork (the company) and pmPoint (their product) for about five years. Our team members were already familiar with using SharePoint for their departmental needs. pmPoint leverages SharePoint's user interface and does not "prescribe" a certain workflow to accomplish tasks. Most project-related information are "data" and "documents," at which Sharepoint/pmPoint excels. pmPoint provides many "smart" webparts that go beyond SharePoint's capabilities, incuding cross-site reports. All of the project data is available via SharePoint's integration points, which enables use to bring project data into Access for custom reporting and analysis. BrightWork the company is a pleasure to work with.

Cons

pmPoint continues to evolve and improve. Two necessary improvements are time tracking (by person, task, day, etc) and interactive schedule development/management. Currently, hours are tracked by person, task, and cummulative actual work hours. We've had to create an external Access database to compute actual work hours per period for reporting purposes. We use the pmPoint schedule webpart in a simple way, i.e. tracking assignments and capturing time. It's user interface is too cumbersome for detailed schedules.

Additional Comments

I'd highly recommend pmPoint as a program and project management solution for any sized company. It is highly scalable so that small companies can simply use lists to capture and management information. Larger companies can use it's rollup and cross site reporting capabilities manage programs, portfolios, etc. Finally, it is an excellent solution for companies that want to create their own management tools. For example, we manage defects, changes, and other things in custom lists using pmPoint capabilities.

• Pricing: 4
• Responsiveness: 4.5
• Customer Service: 5
• Product Quality: 4
• Level of Expertise: 5

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Pros

BrightWork's pmPoint project management suite was an obvious fit for our college. Our accreditation requires that we engage, track, and report on continuous quality improvement projects across campus. We had already deployed Sharepoint but found its native capabilities inadequate. pmPoint has stepped in and saved the day! It has given our Departments a fabulous tool to collaborate and track their activity, and it has given the Administration reporting capabilities that keep us on track with our Strategic Plan.

Cons

The level of customization is a strong point, but it is still limited by some lack of testing/development in integrating the use of InfoPath forms into BrightWork lists -- but their engineers are actively working on adding that functionality.

Additional Comments

Out of the box, pmPoint could have been deployed in our organization and would have served admirably. The customizations we've been able to add to the system have taken it to a whole new level. The system is intuitive, easy to deploy and train the "less techie" users, and the materials they provide are fantastic. The folks at BrightWork are EASY to work with and really know how to leverage the power of Sharepoint.

• Pricing: 4.5
• Responsiveness: 5
• Customer Service: 5
• Product Quality: 5
• Level of Expertise: 4.5

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Pros

BrightWork is a small flexible company, very customer-focused with regular inputs sought and updates provided. They understood our requirements from the outset and have worked with us to tailor and re-tailor pmPoint - and we may do it again! For those many companies making increasing investment in SharePoint, this tool offers the advantages of familiarity while delivering what it says it will.

Cons

Indeed the Brightwork reporting engine add-on to SharePoint is a little unwieldy, the project schedule functionality limited (in v9 for 2007 anyway) and our loosely planned next tailor is to improve on resource planning & scheduling.

Additional Comments

We knew at the time of purchase that pmPoint was just the right size for us, and so while we didn't get endless functionality (which we may never have used) we didn't get a horrible deployment exercise either. We find it very effective for project management and time recording. One year from deployment we are keeping pace nicely with each other

• Pricing: 4
• Responsiveness: 5
• Customer Service: 4
• Product Quality: 4
• Level of Expertise: 4.5

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Pros

Brightwork is a forward thinking, innovative ISV who saw the potential of SharePoint as a collaborative platform for project and work management and set about the business of building a product that delivers on that potential. They did so in an affordable, reasonably easy to deploy and configure and architecturally sound way.

Cons

Like most ISV's, Brightwork has to battle two challenges: features versus complexity and end user empowerment versus best practices. In that regard, their reporting tool is very powerful but not that easy to use.

Additional Comments

Brightwork is an ISV that is genuinely passionate about their product. Their responsiveness to improvement requests from their customers and partners as well as their post-purchase support reflects that passion.

• Pricing: 4
• Responsiveness: 4
• Customer Service: 4
• Product Quality: 4
• Level of Expertise: 4

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