Broadcom Clarity Reviews

We use PPM for strategic portfolio management across our entire organization, and for managing all of our strategic projects.

We're on the latest release of 15.3, and so far it's performing great. It's meeting all our needs.

The benefits are that it creates visibility across our whole organization. People that were often left in the dark wondering what was happening with projects. Now have an easy solution to see all the information they want to see across the whole portfolio.

It's definitely improving our ability to make better decisions, and improving the quality of data that we have, to make the decisions for the strategic good of the company.

• Flexibility
• Easy user adoption

Those are valuable because the tool should be an enabler and not a barrier to people getting their work done.

Ultimately, I would like to see them keep moving in the direction that they are, and get everything over into the new UX, to modernized portfolio management; To get all of the project management capabilities moved over into the new UX. 

Also, they should continue to listen to their customers for influence and feedback.

I wish patches would be quicker since we're a SaaS customer, and just be a non-event, so we don't have to go through a whole - essentially - upgrade cycle, just to do a patch. As a SaaS customer, I'd like the patch to just happen.

We're a SaaS customer, so stability has been pretty much in line with our expectations.

Scalability has been good. We initially rolled it out just for IT, but it's been growing to other areas of our organization. So it's proven to be quite scalable for us.

Technical support has been helpful for us, in particular with the second-level support engineers. They've been very helpful. When we have problems, they're not typically the simple end-users problems that can be solved by front-line support, so the second-level support engineers have been very helpful for us. They are responsive.

We were running all manual processes, and using Excel spreadsheets, and investing far too much manual effort to try and run a process.

One of the main drivers in our choosing CA was that it was one of the recognized industry leaders. Also, we had an existing relationship with CA from other work that we had done with them in the past.

It was a long time ago. It went well. It was challenging because we thought we knew everything we wanted to get out of the tool, but we didn't know what we didn't know. So there are a lot of things, now, that we would have gone back and done differently, and made a lot simpler in the beginning.

Upgrades have gotten better each time. We just, a month ago, upgraded from 15.1 to 15.3. It's been the smoothest upgrade that we've ever done. Past upgrades, we certainly had some challenges, especially going from 14 to 15 or 13 to 14, but they've gotten better each time.

Last time, when we upgraded to 15.1, we had some challenges around Jaspersoft, and also some issues with supporting some of the complex process work flows that we had designed internally, that were affected by some changes in the process engine. But recently, with this most recent upgrade to 15.3 there were really no problems to speak of. 

We looked at CA and we also looked at Planview and HPE.

The new UX is great because it has helped remove some of those barriers, so that people who are not classically trained project managers can easily get up to speed in using the tool without having to learn a whole other tool set. It's very intuitive, and very collaborative, and very easy to adapt to their existing work styles.

Regarding choosing a vendor, for us the vendors need to understand how we do business, and understand our unique needs and requirements, and be responsive.

Start simple. We tried to do too much in the beginning. Just start simple and grow into the tool.

We use the solution to manage projects and provide reports for management.

You can find the statistics of the products, share reports, and open boxes. Additionally, its ease of use helps with project management.

The solution could improve the experience for the simple user by converging the comments and dashboards.

The stability is very good.

I rate the solution's scalability a six out of ten.

Support is complicated. You should probably try contacting Broadcom Clarity if you're seeking the best experience for end-users within your company. They have the expertise and resources necessary to address any issues promptly and effectively.

Positive

The initial setup is easy. It's an easy platform but primarily used by the IT team. The engineers usually use Primavera.

The solution is not more expensive.

A long time ago, I worked as an engineer and administrator for a device company. However, I worked there only briefly, handling importation for my company. I suppose it's because I lacked experience. The package had various tools available. We decided to try using it for our engineers and IT staff in the Philippines. However, it wasn't suitable, so we decided to buy Primavera for the engineers.

The company offers low-cost support and service. We don't need to change anything because the box code and tools are good. We have a code for configuration for our users. If they understand the new system, it's easy to request changes. They can modify the dashboard and configuration for specific data.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We use it for project management, resource management and, to a lesser extent, portfolio management.

We are definitely doing well in resource management, although struggling to adjust to the agile environment. As far as project management, we are doing risks and issues, status reports, change requests, all your standard issue pin box stuff, and that is going just fine. In the portfolio management space, we are going to be growing our usage, and we are excited to see the stuff in version 15.

It is shifting as we go through our agile transformation. In terms of being able to do quarterly status reports, board reporting, resource reporting, and that kind of thing, that has been ongoing at Schwab for a number of years. As we are shifting into the agile space, and having some differences of opinion between our card carrying PMPs and our card carrying agileists about what level of detail needs to be where, our agile community wants to manage things in terms of stories and sprints, but upper leadership still wants to see the status reports that we have always done. So, how do we make both camps happy? That is not a tool specific issue. It is really an industry issue right now.

The ability to have all of the data in one place from risks and issues to resource capacity and actual utilization. We are currently undergoing an integration with our financial systems that will allow us to bring in financials into our cost plans and minimize the need for project managers to be going into both Clarity and the financial system. They will have everything all-in-one place, so that will be really beneficial to our users.

We are still on 14.3. We have not used the new UX. I did laugh at Kurt's presentation yesterday, because he said, "You know what? Three years ago, we were up here, and I was standing in front of a bunch of PowerPoint slides. Now we actually have the functionality behind it," because that was my observation. Two years ago, they were basically just screen mocks, and it all looked great, but what do you do?

My concern with the new UX is that my core users, the folks who are in Clarity day in and day out, are not going to get the full benefit of the new UX until we have OBSS and all of the other functionality available. I understand the need to tailor the new UX to make time tracking easier, make resource management easier, and do those kinds of things. I get that, but folks are going to track their time anyway, because they want to get paid.

The most vocal folks in my stakeholder community are those day-in day-out PMO analysts and resource managers. I struggle also from a maintenance and support perspective. Now, I am going to be maintaining both new UX screens, which the blueprints make look like it is going to be really easy, but we would still have to be maintaining new UX screens as well as classic views for those functionalities that are not yet available in the new UX.

I have this idea. We currently have the ability to allocate from assignments. Something that we are doing in our organization is we have created a report which we give back to the resource managers, "Hey, based on the last three months of actuals, here is what your work projection looks like." 

I would love to see that go the next step forward and just allocate from actuals. If you can look at it and say, "Okay, based on actuals for the last six months, here is what we think this is going to look like." That at least gives the resource manager a place to start, and a way to have a conversation. Particularly, as we get into agile teams, those teams are working on the same thing for extended period of time. It is not like they're on and off. It is more of the agile approach, where it is ongoing, continuous improvement, and deployment. That is something that I think would be interesting, and I do not know if it is something that CA has looked at before.

We have been quite stable. We are on-premise, so obviously any stability problems that we are having is on my infrastructure guy. He might be the better person to answer that question, but we have not had challenges. 

We are relatively new to Jaspersoft, and are running into some speed and performance issues (not necessarily stability issues), and also some unpredicted behavior. I think that we are on the initial release of Jaspersoft, so maybe some of these things have been addressed in later releases.

I will reference my last job where when I first started, nine years ago, working with PPM (Clarity), we started out with a PMO of about 20 people, and keeping track of IT resources in the couple hundreds. Over those eight years, we scaled to a PMO of 250 people and thousands of users. 

So, I have seen it scale up. I have also, unfortunately, seen it scale back down, which is why that is where I used to work. So, it is definitely a scalable system.

I have worked with CA Services in the past and felt they were knowledgeable. We have a few open tickets. 

In terms of tech support, I would refer you to my development lead. They do most of the work with tech support.

It was already installed when I came to work for my current employer.

In my previous job, I was doing a side-by-side pilot with PPM and a competitor. There were pros and cons to both. Nobody is perfect in the space. Some of the downfalls and frustrations are when, coming into a new organization, it has been over-customized or they have over-engineered things. So, keeping us safe from ourselves, while still giving us flexibility, would be a great way to do that.

No tool is going to fix your process problems. You better have a pretty good process in place, and know exactly what it is you are trying to do. Implementing a tool in parallel with implementing a process, you are potentially going to do that sort of over-engineering that I was talking about. The tool is not going to solve the problem. The tool can help you automate, but it is not going to solve those problems.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: Being available when we need them, and leaving us alone otherwise. Being available to us when we need the assistance. It is great to have a relationship where you are not always trying to sell us something, but when you see something that is a good fit. It is sort of like crying wolf. If you are always trying to sell us new features and so forth, we are not going to want it unless we really need it.

I will throw another thought out there, which is I am getting a lot of pushback from my management about, "Hey, we need to upgrade, because this is coming end of life." We hear that a lot from our vendor partners. "This is becoming end of life. It is going out of support." The feedback that we get from my management, and what I am going to be asking my account team to tell me is, "Do not tell me it is going to be out of support and we have to upgrade. Tell me what it is going to do for me over and above what I currently have, then I can sell it to my leadership."

The use case is for us to be able to use PPM for its "true" program and portfolio management. We have not used it like that in the past. We want to get back to using it the way it was originally designed.

I would say to date, because we are on version 14.4, it has been doing what we need for it to do. We are looking forward to moving up to 15.3 with more of the capabilities.

It is easier to use than most other products that are out there. It will provide us the transparency we need in our organization to see how work is being managed and moving along.

We are also trying to do an integration with Agile Central because we are moving into that transformation. For us, it will be interesting to find out how we use both systems: Who is in what system, who is in the other system, and how all that data will flow.

The most valuable feature is the portfolio management tool and the new project management, and the way it will all look from the user experience.

We are so configured and so not out-of-the-box that we have not been able to utilize a lot of the functionality because we are so customized. It does not work like we would like for it to work, but we know that we are mostly responsible for that. We want to move away from this and move back to industry standards.

If you want to transform to agile, these are the roles that should be in agile: 

• You need your scrum master.
• You need your team. 
• These are the ways it should be mapped into PPM.
• This is the data you will want. 

It is almost like giving us those little details that we all kind of scratch our head and go alright, how would we do that? They have tested this. They have gone through lessons learned with other companies. Share that, so we are not making the same mistake.

They should say, "Hey, we have companies that did this. It did not work. You might want to consider doing this." Almost like a little cheat sheet on how to bring the systems together and things to think about. Because, like our company, we didn't know what we didn't know yet, so we are taking very infant steps and we are getting stuck on some really simple questions that I am sure that CA has resolved. 

However, we want to know. Share them with us!

I do not see any issues. I think if you were to ask my application manager, she said they have had some downtime issues. I am not on that side, so I have not seen any problems.

There are some performance issues in our financial areas, but we are not using the out-of-the-box financials. We are using our own. So, we have to kind of rip that out and put ours in. In that specific area, we have been asking and we are trying to get some stuff optimized, because it just takes a long time to get data.

I know our application manager is working with the technical support team. They have been trying to look at doing some things, but I have not heard what solutions they have been coming up with.

In the community, I do not see a lot of answers. A lot of people asking lots of questions, but I am not seeing a lot of answers come through.

We were on an older version of Clarity, version 9.

I was there in the initial set up of our upgrade, so we upgraded to 13.4 and I was part of that.

It was not straightforward. It was complex because we pretty much upgraded from our old version. We could have done a lot more out-of-the-box functionality, but we chose not to.

It was hard. Even the lessons learned from CA were like, "Wow," this was a lot bigger than we thought it would be.

We have different tools that we use at where I am at, so we use different PPM tools, but the goal is eventually to move us all to CA PPM. It is just because we are using that as more of a global tool. Some of our other areas of our company use different tools, and we are just trying to get them off of that and really focus on using the PPM tool.

Make sure you have a really good roadmap of what you want the tool to do for project and portfolio management, which is really what it is supposed to be doing. From a financial, what kind of data you would think. From a resource management, what you expect. There are other systems, like PeopleSoft. A lot of people use PeopleSoft. That is your true resource management system. It should not be used as a PPM. For finance, a lot of people use Oracle, and other things. That should be your sources system, it should not be PPM, so do not make PPM more than it is supposed to be.

Use the other source systems to feed data into PPM to get what you are looking for from a financial transparency of the work that you are delivering. That would probably be the number one thing, because we did not do that.

Then I think the number two thing is you have really have to get with a partner that knows the industry and does not just say they know the industry. They can actually give you the data to back it up.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: I need a vendor that will partner with us. Not just show us a new shiny tool, then walk away and we have to figure it out. I need somebody that will teach us to crawl first, then walk, and finally to run. Being there all the way with us. Not giving us a nice presentation and then we are on our own. That is where we will kind of get stuck.

The best thing is one single source to capture all our IT project information. We are a very big company all over the world. We have all the data in one spot. The product is easy to access, easy to compile and pull up reports, with everybody working to the same tool. Training makes it easier. There are other things that we can add-on or we can expand upon. Because we're going to be implementing Agile, Agile Central, there are benefits of using the software as a service (SaaS) as a service platform We don't have to accommodate physical infrastructure for it. It's maintained on the cloud. People can access it anywhere. It makes it a lot easier too. We have people all over the world. I'm sure cost is probably a big benefit as well for us overall.

We are still early on. For the leadership, they see it as, perhaps, a more accurate way of gathering information for their decision making and as a single source. They don't have to go to every site and ask questions, try to gather and compile data from different sources or different Excel spreadsheets. We can collaborate with various teams running projects or portfolios around the company and we can gather data in different ways. We are using fields such as master programs. If we have major programs for the entire corporation, then we can compile and see what everybody is doing that is actually effecting, or not effecting, those programs. We make sure that we leverage resources and that we're not doing redundant work. If we have people working on the same things, why do we have different teams working on similar items? Maybe we could just put them together or maybe we can reapply those resources.

It helps us align to the overall business IT strategy. We had a bit of a restructuring and reorganization. We also try and demonstrate to the business the added value that IT has. I think this is a good way of being able to manage our own resources, and show that we are adding value to the organization.

We're pretty new so I don't know all the capability that the tool has. From what I'm hearing here, I see there's a lot more capabilities. We are running with version 14.3, straight out of the box. I don't think I've explored everything it can do. I think one of the things that I would like to see is more workflow. I would like to see more ability to send out communications from the tool, feedback to remind people, and let them know the things that they need to do. That would be very helpful. There are a lot of fields in the tool. When people first see it, they are overwhelmed by the magnitude of it. It probably could be more customized and configurable to the site so that we don't throw the stuff out there and people get overwhelmed by it. At the same time, I know it gives flexibility. I think it probably can be managed. I just don't have the technical side of it to see if we can do that.

We just started using it in May.

I think the stability has been pretty good. I really haven't had any issues with it. I see, from coming here to this event, that it's very widely used. I didn't grasp the magnitude of it. It has been used for many years by many companies. It's something that's been around and it's not something new. It's been proven and tested.

I think scalability has been easy. I think it works well. We have almost 3,500 users and licenses around the world. I think it was an easy transition to do that. I look forward to see how we can do this with Agile Central because that's the direction we are going now.

We have folks inside our group, our liaison, that deals with technical support. I haven't had to directly deal with the folks in CA. I think our folks, internally, are doing a good job. I think we probably need more internal resources or maybe have a direct link to those technical resources. I think that was, maybe, an internal way that our company is trying to handle it. Instead of having everybody going directly to CA, we want to have a middleman to whom we can funnel our issues.

We were using a SharePoint site in our Aerospace Group and our SBG, our Strategic Business Group, which is Aerospace. We had another couple of homegrown applications, the ones that were used for the financial piece of it. Now that we're going to this tool, it's great because it offers a lot more flexibility.

I was involved a little bit towards the tail-end of the installation. I was definitely involved in delivering training to our users because we had different business groups.

in-house team

There were some other tools we tried. I was not at that startup. I think it we looked into Accolade because I think that's being used by the Aero Engineering Group. We do have JIRA. We've tried moving to JIRA and I don't think JIRA had all the flexibility and the robustness that CA PPM does. To me, why even go there?

I think we moved to it fairly quickly once we got going. I think it's easy to move to. It seems to offer a lot of advantages, tools, and functionality. Just try it out. The company has been around and the solution has been used for a while. It's been proven and tested. It's not something new. Just give it a try.

It is mainly used for project management, developing the portfolio of the project and the budget process of all projects.

For a very long time, Broadcom Clarity had not developed the old interface that Broadcom no and we were not able to see any new features on the system because of the older UEX. We switched to the new UX at the end of March and it needs some time for the user to react to the new features.

But if overall main features are being talked about, the financial part of Clarity is really appreciated.

Among things to be improved, Clarity can really work on its SAP interface. The current interface lacks out-of-the-box connectors for different applicators in the system. Therefore, this requires external support, which is beyond our expertise. In-house development is done for the interface, but as the system becomes complex, there is a building need to maintain the necessity of updates. If the updates aren’t maintained, then the system might be compatible. Additionally, the report generation process using a different software poses difficulties, leading to the need for external consultancy to create specific reports. Certain features, also face compatibility issues with our existing system. Despite these limitations, we find the system satisfactory overall, although a learning curve exists, especially for those unfamiliar with its particularities. 

I have personally used Broadcom Clarity for seven years.

It is very scalable. Currently, we have around 350 users, the majority of whom are from various governmental services. Though some smaller organisations, such as the tax service, use the software for their projects, their numbers are limited. Despite offering a variety of services, there is an underutilization of its features. We have the capacity to activate more choices to improve the information flow between the system and SAP, particularly in the financial area. Previously, node two was the option, but we're now lobbying for modifications that may need changes to the system's financial structure. Furthermore, we have forthcoming services that are interested in using the product, and thankfully, supporting them will not need large setup modifications.

Yes, we have contacted technical support and customer service. The transition to the new UX has unlocked new adjustments in certain areas compared to an older version. The features like information handling, planning and resource allocation have made it a little unstable. We contacted the support team and their response has been quick and swift. Although they didn’t offer us the exact solution, we have got almost appropriate workarounds for the solution whenever it was needed. 

In recent times, I have been involved in the purchase of the license for this solution. However, the process of procurement changed and the option to buy individual licenses was no more available. The new subscription model was introduced, as a followed-up trend in the industry. The subscription costs put us in shock because it was double what we paid in the past as the yearly maintenance. We negotiated and the price was dropped. But this incident made me observe a lack of transparency from Broadcom in terms of licensing expenses. This isn't unique to Broadcom but seems to be a broader industry issue.

We are the support team that administers the PPM tool, currently addressing over 3,000 customers in 28 different business units.

PPM is awesome. We do have an on-premise system and we use our developers that we partner with, both CA and one of the consulting agencies for them, to make sure that we're implementing things correctly and taking on things as they come.

Right now, it's the PPM piece of it, the scheduling, the Gantt, the task view. It gives that full visibility to the team. But we're wanting to take that further and start building upon the financial piece of it, doing extracts from contractors to employees, to determining resource planning and future planning, and doing "what-if" scenarios.

I think the biggest benefit right now is the reporting. It gives that quick visibility and it's consistent data; versus everybody just trying to go out there and look at their own individual pieces, looking at it as a whole.

We're looking at adding the Agile piece to it. I want to make sure that that integration is very smooth. And I'm here this week, at CA World, to see how that's going to play out for us. So, it's understanding, when we have multiple customers using both Waterfall and Agile, how that can come together, because we are still supporting HR, finance, and business planning for their outputs. Regardless of your methodology, we're going to be giving them streamline information.

Stability is awesome. Not to criticize any other tool, but we actually have some customers right now that are migrating from another tool because that tool has been down so often. Part of our success, we believe, is that our team administers the tool, we don't give out administrative rights to our customers. It's fully owned by our team, but we have a 99% "up" rate so we're very excited about that.

It's nice that we have the options. We try to tell our customers not to "drink from the fire hose." It's important that they start off and have some discipline before they take on more. They come to CA World, they see all the exciting things and features, and they come back and say, "I want it all." So it's kind of my being the "pacemaker" for them. I have to say, "Let's start here and build off that," while building their disciplines. They're getting their PMs engaged because everybody adopts change a little bit differently. So we want to make sure we're doing it smoothly.

Tech support is very good. We've had our challenges in the past with MSP interface connector, especially because we're on-premise and we've got configuration settings that are required. Sometimes it's an issue with the PMs themselves just not following instructions. But other times, you realize that there is a known issue or defect. Support is really quick to identify that, let us know, and either there will be a workaround, or we need to upgrade to the newest version.

Not in my current company. In my past life, we had been using a different PPM. And I was instrumental in doing the proof of concept. We interviewed several customers and put them through the gamut before choosing Clarity.

I wasn't involved in the initial setup, but as a support team, my team will do a lot of the testing in the different phases of upgrades. We test it from an administrative standpoint, but also as a user, as a PM, different rights permissions. We'll swap those out to make sure that everything is fluid.

The updates are straightforward. We have a development team that helps to make sure that we're migrating properly.

We're excited about the new UX. We're actually going to do the 15.3 upgrade in 2018.

When looking for a new vendor, our criteria include combining all the "asks" from our customers, but also with what we can manage. What's ready out of the box versus what we're going to have to customize. I'm a very big fan of CA's configurability. It's not necessarily something that is custom-built, but people can rearrange their filters, they can set up their criteria based on their needs. 

I give it a nine out of 10 right now. I'm not giving it a 10 because I have to see how the Agile piece works. Past life, we were using Rally and CA PPM and their integrations were just really wonky, and we ended up backing out of it. That was kind of cumbersome. So we're looking forward, now that CA has obtained what was formerly known as Rally, the Agile Central. I'm very curious to see how's that going to overlay. If it makes me happy, it will definitely be a 10.

In terms of advice to a colleague, I would say know the data that you have and what you want your output to be later. I think it's important to think about the future, because if you start off - for clarity purposes - using that idea, there's not a step before that. So you really want to have to make sure that your idea is your goal-point from the beginning. 

Also knowing what you want to extract from it later. Permissions and securities are going to have to dictate, "Are you going to access that?" or "Are you going to want your customers to be able to pull their own information?" Do you want to utilize partitions? Because everything has that downstream impact. If you know what you want or you think you know what you want, take that step back and look at your long-term goals and how they fit into it. From everything, from work streams to tasks.

We were doing projections. I happen to work in an IT organization for the past couple of assignments, however, at the end of the day, my background is in finance, internal controls, and business operations. We were also using the tool for forward-looking projections, to kind of get our head around where we think spending is going to be at the project level, and where there might be holes, either financially or in the need of certain kinds of human resources type kinds of things, just classic project missions.

Sometimes you get applications where there might only be one user, or five users, or a very, very small group. Maybe we could migrate them from a little-used application to something that we could bring to the attention that might be better suited for them. There was a variety of things, why we gathered information and collected it inside Clarity. The more important and heavier use of the tool was program management.

There was a need to keep better track of hours spent by employee type and how their times were allocated to given projects, or if not on a project, if it was just like a general administrative type kind of thing, how were we using our time. Of course, at the employee level, they would have their profiles. There were a variety of data fields that were made use of in order to identify the person by name, their skill sets, their charge-out rate, whether they were assigned full-time, or part-time, or not at all to a particular project or projects, plural. It was, of course, like a lot of things in life, it could be as simple or as complex as you want.

One of the things that we found out very quickly was when we went from kind of dabbling in program management and using Clarity, where management at the highest levels of our IT community, it was decided that this right here is our tool of choice. We're not going to be making use of any other tools. Everyone needs to make use of this project management. What they did is, they swung one way and then went to the other extreme. It was everybody who had to log their time. This was done at the highest level. Whether you were a contract employee, whether you were a full-time badged employee, whether you were part of supervisory, or management, or even a member of our senior leadership team, our executive management team, everyone had to account for their time.

There was tremendous pushback in doing this. The counterargument was, well, there's a lot of companies, high tech, defense industry, et cetera, et cetera, they always do this. This is nothing new. If we're a "high-tech" company, we should follow suit and get on board with doing this. This is actually fairly common practice. Inside of the tool, there were performance metrics, things that could be tracked, graphed, and what have you. I began distributing to my internal customers at the management level where we were relative to other family groups if you will, or sub-organizations within the IT community. Where we were relative to entering our time sheets on a weekly basis on time.

We could follow what was the quality of the input, et cetera. There were probably about five or six metrics that we used. As a result, the groups that I supported were consistently ranked at the absolute top of the organization, as we were leveraging these built-in tools for tracking.

There were some groups that were laggards or not performing very well at all. It almost became some kind of internal competition. Whether it was program management, or just metrics and entering data, or keeping records up to date, because people would go out of the organization, there were tools that were inherent or built into Clarity that we leveraged.

I'm just an analyst at heart, I can take data from disparate systems. I can correlate them and provide management with what they need in order to make decisions and affect change in the organization or what have you. I did not have any issues with the system. The whole interface would fit on the inside of the screen of a laptop computer. I wouldn't say at 100%. Let's say the screen was brought down to like 80 or 90%, the entire interface would fit on the screen. At the top of being where the true interface was, where you were able to do your filter selections, things like that, that's where you were able to, an individual, depending on their access that they've been granted. I was actually given almost administrator access, where you could see all the options that you could drill down into.

I did create custom reports. Some people had great difficulty with that. To me, it was, what data fields do you need, and dragged them into the report that you want to create and save it. That, to me, was always a very simple thing. Some people have to be spoon-fed. Other people are naturally curious or inquisitive and will look at second-level, third-level options for a given application interface. That's what I did.

Whenever that second instance of Clarity came about, it was overwhelming even to people who were accustomed to working with program management tools. There were so many data fields that could potentially be leveraged, so many kinds of internal metrics. They actually brought in an outside consulting team.

I can't recall the name of the team, and where they were from. I remember they were from down South. They were actually on-premises for a week or so. Then, they came back periodically just to fine-tune things. I interacted with them on some occasions, as they wanted to pick my brain on how I was leveraging it to track applications and to run high level reporting for management on just basic metrics and also initially on just program management.

Overall, I found the tool to be fairly straightforward. That said, for people who did want to create their own reports, whatever instance we had, a lot of people found it difficult, and what they typically ended up doing is getting training.

They're very, very smart, certainly smarter than me, where they would come to me as a resource and say, "Hey, you seem to have a knack for this tool. Can you create a report that kind of sort of does this?" I would say, "Sure." Then, I would knock it out and they would say, "Great." Then, they would have a customized report that met their needs, where they could kind of fire at will and run the report whenever they wanted it to. However, many people didn't find it as easy as I did.

Many roles that I've had was the role of a financial analyst. There's been a number of sales organizations, sales organizations that I've supported over time. These are organizations that'll have anywhere from a couple hundred to as many as almost several thousand salespeople, the people who support them, et cetera. One of the organizations that I supported was the main sales force. These are like your rank and file sales representatives who go out and just sell equipment, that sells services, et cetera. It's everything from your entry-level sales reps, all the way to your highest-performing sales reps, all the supervisory management, and all the industry VPs and sales VPs, et cetera, right up to the highest levels of the sales organization for the United States. They had a variety of almost competing tools that were used to consolidate their prospects, and with their pipelines, et cetera. Salesforce had already been installed in Europe with great success.

There, you have, obviously, different languages, you have different management styles, organizational structures, et cetera, and yet they were able to install and make use of, Salesforce quite successfully. They actually did it fairly quickly. For us, Europe included Eastern Europe, Russia, all of North Africa, and the Middle East - they all installed Salesforce and did so fairly quickly and successfully. However, there was great resistance in North America. The primary reason was that Salesforce was a cloud-based technology. There was tremendous resistance in both the Canadian and the US communities to have anything other than something that was internal inside of our firewall.

The Salesforce people were saying, "We work with governments. We work with everything from defense contractors, to military organizations, to intelligence organizations. There's nothing to fear. This is the future." Yet there was tremendous resistance. It wasn't until someone at the highest levels of the corporation said, "We’ve got Europe covered. We got developing markets covered. North America, get together and get on board with Salesforce. That way, we have unified technology worldwide." Meanwhile, I was actually taking these two competing systems, where the sales reps focused on equipment and then secondarily services, as opposed to another sales organization that would focus on services and then would periodically think about selling equipment.

There were competing philosophies and their prospects resided in two different systems. What I would do is developed a knack for taking these two data sets, exporting them out of the two systems, smashing them together, removing the overlapping or duplicate records, then being able to present to management, "You have anywhere between an $8 to $9 billion pipeline for the next nine months. Assuming that you close 20% to 25% of your deals, this is what this might be. You're in striking distance of achieving these types kinds of services, signings, or equipment signings." Management got really, really excited about this. Then, what I did after that was that became the basis, the underlying data, that smashed together data, became the data that we ultimately fed into Salesforce.

The reason why I'm giving this background is one of the things that Salesforce did that was very, very clever, is allowed just four people to take data and create a shell. What they did is they said, when they were doing the introduction to our team, they said, "There are literally hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of data fields that are used by our clients all over the globe, but what we're going to do, based upon the data set that you have in the present, we're only going to create this shell or this instance of Salesforce, and we're only going to use 75 data fields." That, to me, was very, very powerful. Even if they were data fields that were using different nomenclature, it was considered a standard naming convention that Salesforce was familiar with. As time went by, we began expanding, making use of a greater and greater quantity of data fields, and being able to slice and dice, if you will, data in greater levels of detail and complexity. It was easier for rank and file, whether you were finance, or information technology people, or salespeople, sales reps, management, whatever, everybody was able to get their heads around a tool that was becoming more and more sophisticated as the months went by as opposed to starting off with saying, "There are 300 possible data fields, and metrics, and calculations, or whatever, but we're only going to use 35 of them, or 50 of them, or whatever." The fact that everybody can see them is very, very intimidating. That was one of the reasons for the pushback in our organization when Clarity was rolled out. People could see all these data fields. Either the implementation wasn't good or the consultants that we were dealing with weren't very thoughtful. However, when people saw all the possible data fields that they had, it was overwhelming.

That was consistent feedback that I heard through a variety of channels and there was resistance due to that. If there's any feedback that I would give is that it's one thing to say, "Here are all the possibilities." However, then, when the salespeople marry up with the folks who are going to do the implementation, they need to be able to say, "So what are your immediate needs? Maybe we'll throw some additional data fields in there to kind of spice things up." Then, as time goes by, reveal additional data entry options, either for people who are making the actual entries or what have you. That's something that I observed firsthand.

I have seen interfaces that are much hipper, and much more intuitive. The layouts might have a more modern or current touch and feel. With the instance that we had, it seemed like it was just a little outdated. When you were clicking on hypertext links, as opposed to a button. Now, these are nuanced differences, however, having a menu where you'd see a header, underneath the header, you would see a blue font that was a hypertext link. Then, depending on whether you wanted to look at application data, whether you wanted to enter your time, or you wanted to look up specific projects and dig into those projects, into the sub-elements that make up all the different views within a given project, or you wanted to get to a data export function, or whatever, it was all a function of finding your overall category and then find underneath that the appropriate link.

I don't know how old that interface was. Maybe it's still like that now, or a bit more modern, however, from my experience, a more modern interface would be a bonus. 

I was using Clarity, I would say, from August 2018 or 2019. I was using it right up until January 2022. I would say I used it solidly for three years.

At my organization, in my last couple of assignments, I worked inside IT. It's the global IT organization. Inside of that organization, there, of course, are subgroups. One of which was our program management office. There were also areas within the IT organization that tracked things other than projects. They tracked applications. For example, on a worldwide basis, we had about 1,500 applications worldwide approximately.

At its peak, I don't believe it exceeded 500 users. I don't know what the actual licensure arrangement or agreement or contract was with Broadcom CA, but what I do know is that as time went by, the number of users declined. There were trade-offs, and decisions were made. Some of the biggest complainers about doing the data entry were the most senior managers.

In time, the more like mid-level managers would say, "Well, if our bosses don't have to make their time entries, why should we? All we really care about are the worker bees." Eventually, things became more diluted.

Getting back to our ability to track applications within the corporation, to this day, it is still the official source of record for tracking the number of applications. There's a constant need to simplify our business and start making greater and greater use of better technology, et cetera. I know from that standpoint, the tool is still being used for that. They're still using it for program management, to understand and track project management costs, et cetera. That said, right now, I just don't know how many people are actually logging into the tool.

There were rumors that they were going to stop requiring people to enter their time into the tool. Unless of course, you are actually working on a project. If you're a resource that's assigned to project management, then you're obligated to track your time. For people who have nothing to do with project management, and you're just pure overhead, that's where things began kind of winding down, especially towards year-end last year. I know it's come down substantially since its peak of 500.

I personally don't recall dealing with technical support. Very, very early on, I did, as there were questions that weren't answered internally, so I actually had to call support. I was able to get things resolved. There was some kind of a quirk, I can't recall what it was, however, it was beyond our understanding of the application. I did have to call a support number. My recollection was, that whatever it was, I was able to get it resolved.

It's incumbent upon the information technology group to be aware of those systems, to help maintain them, to keep track of them. Then, in addition to that, to the extent that they can be eliminated, in other words, consolidated, so that we have ultimately fewer applications where more people can make use of them, it just helps simplify the business, et cetera, cut costs. We used Clarity as a tool to keep track of all the applications worldwide. There used to be a tool that was used, some other tool. I don't know if it was homegrown. It could have been a Microsoft access database for all I know. I just don't recall what it was, however, I know that it was problematic. Trying to scale up and it was problematic. They actually created a sub-element within Clarity to help the corporation keep track of all of its applications. I was actually a very heavy user of that particular element within Clarity. One of the problems was that a lot of folks didn't know just how many applications there were within the corporation. By using a variety of technology, sending out surveys, et cetera, we were able to find out that we didn't have 1,000 applications. We didn't have 1,200 applications. We actually had 1,500 applications. The reason is obvious why we would need to know whether they are maintaining internal standards or generally accepted standards relative to the IT community.

I did not directly deal with technical support.

I know that our company, worldwide, does business with about 300 vendors for its information technology needs, whether it's manpower, equipment, or services. Inside that list of 300 vendors, I know for a fact that Broadcom is one of the top vendors relative to our company worldwide. We're not just a customer. If you look at it from a dollar standpoint, there are some vendors that maybe we spend $20,000 a year or $100,000 a year, and not $1 million a year.

For companies where we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, or multiple millions of dollars a year, Broadcom, in general, has a more elevated status on the list of vendors. It's probably in the top 30, or top 50, vendors, which, for me qualifies it as a partner.

It meets the definition of being enterprise-wide. I don't know if it was on a company server or if it was some kind of a cloud-based service that we were ascribing to. What I do know is there was an initial instance where I know for a fact it was installed on a company server somewhere and that there was a transition, maybe to a newer version, or a newer instance, which may have changed the deployment. I never really had a need to know that. All I know is can I access it and get the data that I need.

I'd recommend the solution. I didn't find any reasons why I would not want to use it. If somebody were to say, "Are you familiar with this tool in technology?" I would say, "Yes." I don't know what version or instance of it was of what I made use of, however, I would say, based on my use of the tool, my ability to look at data in the interface itself, or to get data out of it, export data to do additional manipulations and digging, or what have you, I would say, "To me, it was not difficult to use. It was straightforward. It was logical." I wouldn't have anything negative to say about it.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.