What is most valuable?
Logging hours is not painful, there are several choices to input them.
The collaboration features are very good: comments, sharing of documents, approvals, etc.
Work requests via assignments are clear and provide accountability.
Integrated document proofing and versioning is a must for any creative department, and this one works really well.
How has it helped my organization?
Working in an in-house marketing department, we have been using Workfront for three years to manage our projects and operations. We need overall visibility on all the activities of our department, plus a powerful collaboration platform.
Our main aim using Workfront is to manage the capacity vs. workload of our department and to be able to forecast the demand.
Workfront is fulfilling our basic needs, but we feel that there is a lack of ability to create clear dashboards or to have a better visibility of critical tasks between multiple projects at the same time (which happens when several campaigns overlap).
What needs improvement?
Reporting is a bit limited; while basic reporting is completely fulfilled and you can present the information in clear graphs, when you try to create complex relations (historic vs forecast, capacity vs demand) things get more complicated, there are limitations and you need workarounds to obtain the desired (or closest to the desired) information.
Sharing of information is cumbersome; although you can send automatic reports by email, it's difficult to distribute more elaborated pieces of information.
Resource management is limited; there are tools in the system, but they are not intuitive and are a legacy of previous versions of the system.
For how long have I used the solution?
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
We are using the cloud (on demand) service, so we haven't found any issues with the deployment. The website is working good and there are no compatibility errors.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
There have been some service disruptions, but they have been very punctual. Workfront has a status panel to check how the fix is progressing and the help desk is very helpful at those moments.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have initially started using Workfront with 10 users, now there are close to 30 people using it and is still a suitable option. Sometimes it's also opened to external partners, so they can collaborate on our projects.
How are customer service and technical support?
Customer Service:
Workfront support is quick and responses are elaborated, always providing a workaround if there isn't a functionality to match your need.
Technical Support:
Quite good. As soon as a bug is reported, they provide a workaround for the time it's going to take to get fixed and you receive progress updates on the fix, until it is deployed and you're asked to confirm it's working as intended.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
No, previously all Project Management coordination was done without a Project Management Information System and we were relying on spreadsheets and other basic collaborating tools (Drive, Docs, etc.).
How was the initial setup?
Learning curve is steep, it doesn't take much time to get familiarized with the common request-collaborate actions (which most of the users will do), but it needs much time and training to carry out actual project management processes within the system.
What about the implementation team?
We have implemented it with a Workfront consultant. They have helped us configure the system and refine our workflow. After 2 years, once we have gained the sufficient know-how, we have done a review on how we used the tool internally to improve our processes and take the most out of the tool.
What was our ROI?
Return On Investment is hard to measure. Basically what we have gained is to be able to show our internal clients the effort we are dedicating to their projects as well as tracking if our dedication is in line with the resources they invest in our department.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The on demand solution is quite flexible. You can add or remove users as you need them, so the investment to start using the tool is not prohibitive and allows more users to be added easily.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Yes. We have conducted a review on alternatives. Workfront turned to be more specific and useful for a Marketing agency or in-house department in comparison to the others.
What other advice do I have?
There are some points to improve, but it seems that folks at Workfront are committed to improve those areas and correct the product weaknesses.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.