Broadcom Clarity vs Smartsheet comparison

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Broadcom Clarity

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

Broadcom Clarity and Smartsheet compete in the project management category. Broadcom Clarity excels in offering extensive project management tools and detailed reporting, whereas Smartsheet stands out for its adaptability and ease of use, making it suitable for a range of use cases.

Features: Broadcom Clarity provides robust tools for project, portfolio, and resource management, including time entry, resource allocation, and in-depth reporting through Jaspersoft reports. It is valued for its comprehensive visibility of large-scale projects and finances. Smartsheet offers flexible project management with features like Gantt charts and dashboards. It supports robust integration capabilities, allowing users to automate workflows and is particularly noted for its ease of use.

Room for Improvement: Broadcom Clarity could benefit from improved usability, specifically in memory management, responsiveness, and integration with tools like JIRA and Microsoft Office. Users desire more intuitive interfaces and simplified reporting functions. Smartsheet could enhance dashboard intuitiveness and real-time data sharing and expand its API integrations to provide greater flexibility in managing functionalities. Both platforms could strengthen integration capabilities and improve user interfaces.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Broadcom Clarity offers flexible deployment options, including on-premises and private cloud. It is praised for its customer service, although response time can vary depending on the issue, especially in technical support. Smartsheet, primarily deployed in the public cloud, is known for its simplicity, quick setup, and reliable customer service, which is consistent and dependable. Smartsheet's public cloud focus allows for broader accessibility and ease of deployment.

Pricing and ROI: Broadcom Clarity's licensing is on the higher end, reflecting its extensive features for large-scale project management. While initial setup and annual renewal costs are significant, they align with the depth of functionality provided, with favorable ROI when used at scale. Smartsheet offers a more cost-effective pricing model with user-based licensing and many free features. It is noted for its affordability compared to competitors, with ROI driven by its affordable entry cost and scalability in user licensing.

To learn more, read our detailed Broadcom Clarity vs. Smartsheet Report (Updated: October 2024).

Broadcom Clarity vs. Smartsheet

October 2024

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Categories and Ranking

Broadcom Clarity

Ranking in Project Portfolio Management

3rd

Ranking in Project Management Software

8th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

142

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Smartsheet

Ranking in Project Portfolio Management

4th

Ranking in Project Management Software

5th

Average Rating

8.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Project Portfolio Management category, the mindshare of Broadcom Clarity is 11.1%, up from 10.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Smartsheet is 7.8%, up from 7.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Project Portfolio Management

Featured Reviews

Lowell Wetzel

Systems Administrator at Cambia Health Solutions

Aug 24, 2022

A dynamic solution with a lot of great out-of-the-box calculations, but integration with reporting utilities is a bit painful

One of the things that have always been a bit painful is the integration with reporting utilities. The current integration is with Jaspersoft, and there are a number of difficulties with that. If you're using out-of-the-box fields and everything, it is a bit slow and clunky. It has a drag-and-drop interface for the users. On the backend side, there is a report designer. They haven't given or allowed me any training on it yet. So, it has been a bit limited in its features. On one of the earlier report utilities, they had one called Actuate, which had VBA as its base programming language, and you could do quite dynamic things behind the scenes, whereas the Jaspersoft interface seems rather locked. So, you're limited in your options. Being a programmer, you like to have room to be able to invent and create rather than just being limited to a few selection boxes.

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Asma Ali

Project Manager at a government with 10,001+ employees

Jun 19, 2022

Easy to use, simple to set up, and great for non co-located environments

At one point we were trying to use it to organize a curriculum for students to just have the weekly stuff. We kind of ran into trouble doing this. It's not really designed for that. What we were trying to do is give them a real-time syllabus with pre-readings and activities and stuff embedded. It ended up getting really complicated. They also had access, and while there’s probably a way to not give them access, I didn’t know how to set that. I just wanted to let them download. It got complex. It wasn’t just people updating what they were working on. It was something else and it didn’t work. If there was some way to store more complex files in the system, or if there was a back-end structure where you could store files, that would be ideal. We use Box to store recordings, for example, of sessions and stuff. We’d like to store it in this solution. We already integrate Smartsheet into Teams for updates and stuff. That works well.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The most useful feature for me as an implementer of Broadcom Clarity PPM is its extensibility. The tool is pretty extensible, and I haven't had any issues with it in terms of it getting used for multiple scenarios and for multiple clients where there's a need for high customization. Broadcom Clarity PPM is a very, very customizable tool, so you can pretty much implement any business process on it with no issues."

"We are able to track budgets, and with timesheets, actuals against budgets."

"I love the fact that it is very flexible. I am the lead engineer with enhancements, development, developing new portlets, anything that has to be added on, and integrating data, such as ETL processing."

"The new UI makes it easier for people to go in there and know what to do. To train people, it's faster, more intuitive."

"What has been valuable are the workflows that are there today in order to keep our executive staff informed as well as our program managers and department managers."

"Project Management features that are excellent in managing the Project Management Life-cycle, along with other related details like Financials, Resources and flexibility to customize, as per requirement."

"Having information all together in one single source."

"The dynamism of the application where you can modify it to fit your needs is valuable. For example, you can create fields, metrics, and measures on the fly. You don't have to be limited to what the out-of-the-box format would be. It allows you to generate fields, metrics, and reports off of that with relative ease."

More Broadcom Clarity pros

"Smartsheet is stable."

"The ability to update in real-time before meetings is great."

"For doing project plans what was really valuable is the ability to do a predecessor."

"It operates as an enhanced and versatile version of Excel, offering a wide range of capabilities that allow you to accomplish various tasks and operations."

"It is a stable and scalable solution."

"The solution has subtasks and a rollup."

"What I found most valuable in Smartsheet is its project customization feature. It's a great solution because you can add in your own WBS. You can see it in Jira style, Kanban, and you can even do Agile and Waterfall. Another feature that's valuable in the solution is when you have those connections, you have that API, you have a sandbox, and you can make a solution, it's a tremendous product because you can pull data."

"I prefer Smartsheet for its flexibility."

More Smartsheet pros

Cons

"It would be good for them to work on the user interface to make it more interactive."

"Could be using more updated technologies."

"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."

"One of the things that have always been a bit painful is the integration with reporting utilities. The current integration is with Jaspersoft, and there are a number of difficulties with that. If you're using out-of-the-box fields and everything, it is a bit slow and clunky. It has a drag-and-drop interface for the users. On the backend side, there is a report designer. They haven't given or allowed me any training on it yet. So, it has been a bit limited in its features. On one of the earlier report utilities, they had one called Actuate, which had VBA as its base programming language, and you could do quite dynamic things behind the scenes, whereas the Jaspersoft interface seems rather locked. So, you're limited in your options. Being a programmer, you like to have room to be able to invent and create rather than just being limited to a few selection boxes."

"In the timesheet UX, you can't do things like splitting time, managing overtime versus regular time, very easily. That would be helpful."

"The look and the feel of 14.4 is a bit antiquated."

"We're looking at adding the Agile piece to it. I want to make sure that that integration is very smooth."

"The user interface (UI) needs to be improved. Right now, it's not the best."

More Broadcom Clarity cons

"It already has a really powerful Export to Excel feature, but it can have an Excel add-on. The way to set up single sign-on wasn't too easy in the beginning, and it was hard to get hold of customer service. They should make it easier to set up SSO. Smartsheet's customer service also definitely needs to be improved."

"Every feature for text mining, even process mining, would be a plus. We have about two hundred contract management events daily. First, I share specific documents. I talk about the search function because we assume it has a thorough search when we read the catalog. But when you test it, you realize it doesn't search within attachments. So, it's a great search function, but you need the brand folder. It has many options and can become complex."

"I would like if Smartsheet allowed more formulas in its sheets. I don't think working with formulas is as intuitive as it is in Excel. I use Vlookups and index matches in some of my sheets, and I had to find an outside consultant to help me build out those formulas."

"The downside of Smartsheet is that there are some security concerns. We were able to restrict people from sharing sheets with anyone who was not in our domain, but it could be easier. We also found it hard to restrict certain user groups from adding attachments to sheets."

"Maybe the solution could be a little bit more flexible."

"I think it is all going to be about APIs in the future and I don't think Smartsheet is doing a lot in that regard. They have some integrations with Jira, but you have to pay for them."

"The long-term timelines could be improved, especially the visuals on the projection Gantt chart."

"The product must include more modules for project management."

More Smartsheet cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cost-wise, the tool is very expensive and some tools might be able to cater to 80% of the functionality provided by Broadcom Clarity PPM but are not as expensive."

"The price point of Broadcom Clarity PPM is less than Planisware. If a customer comes to me, and the cost is the main parameter for the selection of a tool, then I'll recommend Broadcom because cost-wise, they are less than other solutions."

"There are different licensing models with Broadcom Clarity PPM. With the software as a service model, you pay as you go, and if you are on-premises, you can buy a perpetual license and an annual fee for maintenance."

"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."

"For all the functionalities of the solution, the price is in the market range, since it is a product which offers governance issues and supports the digital transformation, which is where we will go in the next year."

"Broadcom Clarity PPM costs us $500K, and that's only for the installation and kick off within the first year. For each succeeding year, it could cost $200K."

"Better understanding of requirements and how it will be implemented (with number of licenses for a given budget) would help."

"We're also moving to the latest version for less than $20,000 for a major corporate system. It's just amazing."

More Broadcom Clarity pricing and cost advice

"Smartsheet has many licensing models. You need to add the package that best suits your requirements. The license is paid per user and it is monthly. The cost was approximately $7 per PC, $15 for professional, and $33 for the enterprise plan."

"Its licensing is on a yearly basis. I was responsible for negotiating the price with the Smartsheet team, but I don't remember what the price was. Its standard license probably was around 5,000 to 6,000 a year. The enterprise version is significantly more expensive."

"I would assume there is a licensing fee. I don't think that it is free."

"For a normal license, like the one I had: I had my own Smartsheet because I wanted to play with it and I didn't want to mess with what I was doing in Verizon, so I paid $200 monthly, and it gave me all the same functionalities, so I could do whatever I wanted for $200. The problem is if you have anyone else working on it or deploying on it, it's $200 a month for every single person who's deployed on it, that's working on it as an owner or an administrator, so owners and administrators are the only ones who can change, edit, and add data to worksheets and columns. Depending on the size of your organization, Smartsheet can be costly. As for implementing its Control Center, Smartsheet forces you to have three people come in: it's a minimum of three people from Smartsheet for three months who will provide you the solutions for the Control Center side, and that's $150 an hour, so it can become very expensive. For my company, not having the Control Center would save on the setup fees and then the $20,000 a year, because the Control Center of Smartsheet is a yearly subscription of $20,000."

"The solution is expensive."

"Smartsheet only requires licenses for project managers. When we were using Asana, we had to purchase a license for everyone who wanted to access their tasks and use the system. That gets costly fast. It was one of the main reasons we left Asana. As Asana and these other tools scale, they become way more expensive."

"Smartsheet can be low-priced, with personal subscriptions around eight dollars a month, but I imagine it gets pricier for enterprise systems. Microsoft Project can be more expensive."

"There's a license for Smartsheet, and the enterprise plan comes down to about $750. My company also pays an extra $60 monthly apart from the standard licensing fee."

More Smartsheet pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

66%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Government

Educational Organization

41%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Broadcom Clarity PPM?

The product is flexible.

What needs improvement with Broadcom Clarity PPM?

While Clarity is highly customizable, it could be better delivered as an agile solution out of the box. However, Broadcom has a separate agile tool called Rally.

What is your primary use case for Broadcom Clarity PPM?

Clarity is used for financials, resource management, project planning, and portfolio planning. I work with companies in the United States and abroad across various industries, utilizing Clarity as ...

Has anyone moved from Microsoft Project to Smartsheet? How has your experience been with Smartsheet?

Hi @Eire Zimmermann, I helped an organization evaluate both MS-Project and Smartsheet when they were conducting their PM tool RFP. The short of it is this, MS Project is not caught up with the mo...

What do you like most about Smartsheet?

The tool creates shareable dashboards. These dashboards allow us to display project deliverables' status, their position in the queue, expected delivery timelines, and more. The best part is that t...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Smartsheet?

The pricing is great and reasonable enough that I maintained my copy and bought it for my team independently.

Microsoft Project vs Broadcom Clarity

Comparisons

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Compared 12% of the time

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Compared 10% of the time

monday.com vs Broadcom Clarity

Compared 8% of the time

Planview Portfolios vs Broadcom Clarity

Compared 8% of the time

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ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management vs Smartsheet

Compared 16% of the time

Microsoft Project vs Smartsheet

Compared 13% of the time

Planisware vs Smartsheet

Compared 12% of the time

Adobe Workfront vs Smartsheet

Compared 8% of the time

Spreadsheet.com vs Smartsheet

Compared 7% of the time

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Product Reports

Download Broadcom Clarity product report

Broadcom Clarity

November 2024

Download Smartsheet product report

October 2024

Also Known As

Clarity PPM, CA Clarity, CA PPM, CA Clarity PPM

No data available

Learn More

Broadcom

Video not available

Overview

Clarity is the Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) solution created by Broadcom. The platform aims to help medium and large organizations to manage products and services. Clarity features scoreboards, financial analysis tools, and more.

The platform facilitates the delivery of projects and programs and can accelerate an organization’s digital transformation. It allows users to create initiatives, add budgets and projects with a few clicks, and assign and track teams. It shortens the time to make changes to projects to minutes instead of days.

Broadcom Clarity PPM features in-app collaboration and timesheets accessible via mobile devices. Users can access the platform via desktop or mobile. The platform can be deployed on premises or as a cloud-based service with a hosted or SasS delivery.

How does it work?

Clarity’s Strategic Portfolio Management enables planning and prioritizing of work to fit customer demands and business needs, managing the value stream from concept to cash.

Broadcom Clarity PPM Key Features

Strategic roadmaps: Clarity’s multidimensional road maps effectively eliminate organizational fatigue. It includes useful features such as drag-and-drop capabilities. It also allows you to map risks and dependencies and track project progress.
Project financials: Clarity integrates with Power BI and Tableau with business intelligence solutions. The platform uses Microsoft Excel charting and grouping functions to keep a familiar feel to project and financial reports. You can customize your projects according to investment types and fiscal periods.

Collaboration features: Broadcom Clarity PPM provides a central view of each employee’s projects, schedule, and status. You can assign tasks to teams with pinning features without time-consuming filters.

Resource management: Clarity enables you to filter available resources and investments to the department level. Doing this allows for managing labor and non-labor resources with ease.

Other features include:

One-click charts
Staffing and resource management
To-do boards
Investment hierarchies
Business widgets

Broadcom Clarity PPM Benefits

Quick setup: The platform is easy and fast to configure and deploy. It also includes migration services to help customers move to the cloud.
Lower cost: The SaaS version is a user-based subscription service that eliminates the need for infrastructure investment.
Constant updates: Updates are rolled automatically and included in the subscription to ensure the user always has the latest version.
Strong security: The Clarity infrastructure constantly updates identity-centric intrusion detection services. It features data protection capabilities on desktops and mobiles, including protection against distributed denial-of-service (DDoS).
Scalability: Its load-balanced environment enables users to scale up or down to match spikes in project-based activities. It also features pay-as-you-use.
Integrations: Integrates with financial apps, executive dashboards, HR software, ERP systems, etc.
Configurability: You can adapt Clarity PPM to your organization’s requirements.
Reporting and business intelligence: Clarity’s features include a built-in data warehouse and BI platform.
User-friendly: It features an intuitive user interface and interactive communication options.
Project management options: You can manage your project with Agile, classic, or hybrid methods inside Clarity PPM.

Broadcom Clarity PPM Use Cases

Organizations use Clarity PPM for a variety of use cases:

Time management
Product management
Resource management
Financial management
Project portfolio management
Reporting services
Project management
Ticket and change management
IT service desks
Financial services

Reviews from Real Users

"Broadcom Clarity PPM is a high-value product that helps users become productive. It's a very stable, scalable, and fast platform, even from a self management perspective," says Mohammad J., Senior Clarity PPM Technical Consultant at Al Rajhi Bank.

A Director of Operations at a tech services company adds that "It's very good out of the box, without configurations required."

Sergio C., Service Delivery Manager at Syntech, says, "The most valuable feature is the portfolio functionality because we have the ability to work with different scenarios and many kinds of financial management. We can integrate with ERP, and with other solutions from third-party vendors. The financial model in Broadcom Clarity PPM, it's the most valuable aspect."

Smartsheet is the enterprise platform for dynamic work. A leading cloud-based platform for work management, Smartsheet empowers organizations and teams to dynamically plan, execute, and report on work at scale, resulting in more efficient processes, innovative solutions, and better business outcomes.

Today over 90% of Fortune 100 companies and over 75% of Fortune 500 companies rely on the secure, scalable Smartsheet platform to connect the entire enterprise. The single Smartsheet platform gives people a solution flexible enough to adapt to the changing needs of dynamic work across a broad array of departments and use cases.

Sample Customers

Toyota Financial Services, GameStop, Polycom, Sky, Qantas, Cox Enterprises, Banco Mercantil, Borealis

Sony Music, ESPN, Hilton, Unisource, Colliers, Extreme Networks, Groupon, Netflix