Kantata Reviews

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.

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.

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

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.

The UI is simple to use most of the time. It's easy to see your projects listed out, even though the organization tools are pretty weak.

The software is slow. Updates happen at a snails pace. Our team worked directly with the development team at Mavenlink and their process is just plain slow. The program is bogged down and sluggish. It lacks sub-tasks beyond 5 layers, the estimating feature is a joke and they only just recently implemented a basic WYSIWYG in the activity section. You also can't undo activity unless you go back to the feed. Talk to PMs who actually use this product!

Thank you for your insight and feedback regarding your experience. We have forwarded your feedback to our product team and will continue to strive to do better. Your CSM has reached out out to you to learn more and continue to advocate on your behalf, regarding these product enhancements and all your concerns. We look forward to continue to working closely with you regarding your experience. Have a nice day and happy holidays.

I appreciate the feature of being able to personalize and construct our own reports and metrics that suit our distinct business requirements. This ability to customize the reports and metrics allows us to better track and measure our progress while also enabling us to obtain the information that is most important to our company.

They have introduced numerous new features that have significant potential, but there have been some delays and technical issues that they are still addressing. Also, I would appreciate having more options to personalize the project setup. In particular, the percentage-of-spend projects do not fit neatly into the Kantata system, unlike fixed-fee or other project types. The Team Builder tool has room for improvement, and it would be beneficial to have more customization options that would make it more valuable to our organization.

I am able to view tasks for current projects, track upcoming projects, add notes and tag team members easily in a very organized way that allows me to save time and resources on a regular basis. My coworkers who I interface with closely have had a similar positive experience and I cannot recommend it enough.

The ability to customize what is viewable and editable in the main menu ( such as projects, tasks, insights) based on user permissions would make it easier tailor the overall product experience to our teams needs.

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

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.

We are new to having a PSA and PM tool. So it was great to go from each department having their own spreadsheets to one point of truth and full visibility across the project. But as well - all the in built finance management and integrations we setup has streamlined so many additional administrative elements of managing our work. And the real time visibility to project performance (timelines and finances) is great.

Navigating some of the integrations has been a little longer than I would have hoped for the roll-out. The support to get things implemented was not as timely as we would have hoped.

Customization of task lists, project fields, etc.

Gantt Schedule (hard to display), Reporting (albeit powerful, application for creating reports is not user-friendly in the slightest)

- Time Entry - Management of individual projects - Integrations w/ Jira - Forecasting/Planning - Happy to have approvals, but they could be more flexible. - Managing budgets against project timelines.

- Invoicing - Reporting - Happy to have approvals, but they could be more flexible. - Granularity of permissions

Budget tracking is easy and effective, although depending on configuration, it can differ between the finances and budget tabs within a project. Gantt view is super helpful for changing timelines and communicating with client.

The task tracker sometimes is really slow to load when moving tasks around within a given project. There is often a huge number of notifications, but you can configure those to limit them significantly if necessary.

Flexible, provides the ability to set up multiple templates for different types of projects, supports T&M and Fixed Fee contract types, integrates to SalesForce, provides multiple views toward project status, continually adding new features and capabilities

Gantt charts are still in need of a lot of work and help. Still buggy, no user-defined view preferences can be saved.

The best thing about Kantata is the ability to see project burn rates at a glance. The time-tracking system is a huge part of that being accurate as well. There are multiple options for our team to track their time so that we can see project burn rates.

There are several things that haven't been improved at all in the 6+ years that we've used this software. For example, basic things like not being able to customize your task statuses (or at least new options being added), being able to mark a task as complete even when none of the checklist items have been checked off, and not getting a notification when a due date is coming up to remind a team member of a deadline before it is missed, etc. The mobile version is pretty much useless which is sad now that the working world is mostly remote.

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No cons were added to this review

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!

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 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.

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.

I like the ease of updating time tracking and making changes after the fact. I like the ability to quickly see project run rate and status. Our last CRM had very limited skills and resourcing capabilities, and so this was both one of the big reasons why we switched to ML and one of the best things about the product.

I don't like the limitations on setting boundaries on projects. Mavenlink requires much more manual work than our last CRM in the invoicing and expense categories. There are some things that just don't make sense to me, like having the ability to mark expenses as paid. We've had to create a tracking system outside of ML in order to deal with expenses. I also don't like that administrators can't update/edit expenses.

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.

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.

The workspace was professional, branding gave the sense of personalization. The file space seemed to be unlimited at the time.

They don't have an app, the mobile equivalent site is not as user friendly as an app would be. Some of the screens are not responsive on a desktop.

Easy for resources to book time against multiple different projects - good data contained in time entry exports (granular, gives lots of information that I can pivot off of to provide different views to the end customer)

Mavenlink rounds time entries billed at an odd number (such as $171.77/hr) that are logged in half-hour or quarter-hour increments differently than Sage IntACCT - this makes reconciliations arduous when it's time to invoice the customer.

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

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.

- Mavenlink works fantastically in the background to give the whole organization a seamless front end view that allows for efficient project management, time tracking, managing client billing to technical teams receiving their tasks & tickets. - The functionality works well for all different roles in the business and provides a top-level view.

- Around the end of the month when the majority of the organization is completing scheduling for the next calendar month, reaction time on the site tends to be lower than usual. It still works well but just the speed can be slowing down especially when you need to schedule time for multiple different projects and tasks.

The ability to keep up with each individual project, its tasks and subtasks and everything else involved, without worrying about it getting lost in our Google Drive or desktops. It's a good place to store information, communicate with coworkers, and stay up-to-date on the project's status.

The recurring projects (which make up about 75% of our company) sometimes have trouble repeating correctly each month. The dates will be off and we have to go in and manually adjust a few things, which isn't a huge deal but it's an inconvenience that we'd prefer to avoid.

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...

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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.

I dont think I can think of one thing in Mavenlink that another tool did better. It is simply inferior in so many ways, even to free project management tools.

It is extremely slow! Every click results in a loading.gif. In comparison to Asana which is INSTANT no matter what you click. I cant find my projects where I need them, I cant find my tasks where I need them, I cant get to important information without clicking 10 things and sifting through scrollable windows and sliding boxes. They are HIDING content behind and Show More; links. They are using PAGINATION on lists of projects... omg. No. Show everything, list everything, please stop making us bob for apples every time we need to find something. Oh yeah, and the proofing system doesnt even notify you or the task about a conversation happening within it. Changes to your proof? No clue. You cant mention someone in each area, only in the activity feed.

Thank you for your feedback. We value your insights and I have shared your comments with the team to help us improve. I see you have some concerns and would like to address those a little more directly in order to improve your experience with us. We would like to have your CSM reach out to you, but due to the anonymity of this review, we are unable to do so. Please feel free to contact our support team at support@mavenlink.com, for further assistance or to give us more information on how we can connect with you to assist you with your concerns and answer any questions you may have. Thank you.

Mavenlink has saved us a TON of time that we were using communicating and threading multiple products together. It gives one single source or truth for project planning and management and has eliminated many meetings and replaced multiple softwares.

Every task takes a LOT of clicks. I have very basic needs and it takes a lot of clicking to get the PM info that I need just to monitor my projects. It's there but, I'm always about 7 clicks away from it. Also, the scheduling of tasks is very labor-intensive. It's so complicated that only 3 of us are trained on it and I am glad to not be one of them.