In my last blogpost on this topic I discussed the five software packages we were evaluating and had promised to post the evaluation method and findings for each for our civil engineering firm. What I failed to take into account was that I was so busy evaluating software that I just didn’t have time to write a blogpost about each package we reviewed – my apologies if anyone was looking for this!
However, I can tell you that we selected a software package: Easy Projects and we are working toward implementing it into our office environment.
Why did we select Easy Projects? Several reasons:
- Easy Projects is Canadian developed and supported software. It seems so many software packages are out of the US and while they may be great solutions and indicate they handle Canadian terminology, sometimes they are confusing. Often it is quite obvious when they ask for a “zip code” or “other” value rather than a “postal code”. As well, we found comfort in knowing the company was within an hour or so from our office and, if need be, we could jump in the car and drive to their office instead of silicon valley. Lastly, but not least importantly, we like the idea of supporting Canadian businesses.
- The Easy Projects “demo” was personal. We were not one of 22 people on a con call – we were the only people talking to Easy Projects. They did not have a “canned” sales pitch and the call did not feel as if the agent was just following a script. It felt like a normal telephone call with someone who asked a lot of questions about our business, found out what was important to our business, and then showed me how we could accomplish those goals with their software.
- Easy Projects is not written specifically for a civil engineering firm but the agent indicated they did support engineering firms who used their product and was able to talk intelligently about how the software was configured for our civil engineering purpose using their existing clients as examples.
- I had provided a checklist of features on my previous blogpost on this topic. Easy Projects met or surpassed my expectations on that checklist.
- The support we have received from sales and support has been fantastic. Questions are answered quickly and their process for helping you get started fit our needs.
We are in the initial stages of training on the product and we anticipate it will be 2-3 months before we have integrated it successfully into our operations. Moving slowly, yet with purpose, we feel will have positive results. I will continue to write on this subject as we move through the process.
