Function Point

Overall: When it comes to project and operational management, there are loads of options that talk a good game. However, the Function Point team is actually changing the game with how agencies and production companies can run their businesses successfully. Function Point set our business up for success in navigating a pandemic, remote work, and new sales structures. Changing our project management system to FP has been the single greatest immediate and long term benefit to our company's profitability. Our business is healthier and our employees are happier because of the things we can do and see now with the FP operating system. The sheer amount of usable, reliable and readable data that the Function Point platform can produce matched with the top notch customer experience and support makes the perfect software to support busy creative agencies.

Pros: The ease of timetracking against specific jobs, service lines and tasks; financial and project/task management tracking in one platform; estimate creation within the system that has all the information transferred automatically when making it a job; the BI reporting with bar graphs and pivot grids.

Cons: The lack of reviewing software; how difficult/how many extra steps it takes to move a task to a different assignee or different date; no seemless/single channel communication tab; no quick search functionality; it's not an easy system for account or project managers to keep tabs on mulitple projects/people at once.

Alternatives Considered: Workamajig and Wrike

Reasons for Choosing Function Point: At the end of the day, our decision really landed on the fact that we felt understood by the Function Point team. They became trusted advisors throughout the process, truly taking the time to understand the complexities of our businesses and problem solving with us to find the right solution.

Reasons for Switching to Function Point: In April of 2020 we decided to completely overhaul our company's workflow operating system. With so much uncertainity during the pandemic surrounding our business, team members and clients, we needed a system that could support our business objectives of higher visibility, greater efficiency and an all-in-one platform.

Pros: The company pages in Function Point provide us with all the information we need because we're able to customize them to our needs. We can include the client information, but we also have team information so one page tells everyone who is involved with that client's projects. The customizable dashboard also allows each person to view things that they feel are important to them.

Cons: I find Function Point to not be as "functional" as its name might suggest. It is often laggy when you click on links. Getting to pages that you want to be on takes many clicks instead of just one (for example, it seems strange to me that clicking on the name of a "schedule" within a company takes me to a jumbled list of tasks rather than the actual schedule page where I can see things laid out in order). There isn't a good calendar view that allows a person to drag and drop tasks (and since I manage our company's design calendar, it would be great if I could do this since it's basically like putting together a giant puzzle). The customization seems to have stopped with the "dashboard" type of views of the main page and schedule pages. If you want to view, for instance, the time allotted to people within the company for a day, you might visit the Work Planning View, which overall is a great view (shows tasks assigned and a total number of hours allotted to each person). The downside is it always only shows everyone in the company, which isn't ever what I need. Being able to choose who I see in this view (and others like it) would improve the functionality a lot. There are also too many different ways to view things. There are at least three different ways to see how many hours of work a person has scheduled for the day. There are a couple of different views for tasks within a certain project. It can be overwhelming.