Asta Development
Headquarters: Telford, UK
Established: 1996
Flagship customers: Balfour Beatty, Berkeley Homes, Severn Trent Water
Asta bills itself as a provider of “project programme and resource management software”, and is used primarily by construction and engineering companies. It focuses on providing a ‘middle layer’ of project and resource management applications to companies that have already deployed front- and back-office software products.
Augeo Software
Headquarters: Nijkerk, Netherlands
Established: 1998
Flagship customers: Daimler-Chrysler, Rabobank, Carrefour
Arguably the most high-profile European PSA company, privately held Augeo claims that sales grew 35% in 2001. However, the company also closed down its direct operations in the UK during the year. Augeo’s product is a broad PSA suite that aims to provide “an enterprise backbone” for professional services organisations.
Changepoint
Headquarters: Ontario, Canada
Established: 1992
Flagship customers: Dell, NCR, Sprint Canada
Changepoint is highly praised by analysts for its optimisation of both processes and individual employee performance, and for its strong reporting tools. The product also offers a range of mobile functions. With the release of Changepoint 7.0 in November 2001, the company introduced survey management and new financial control features.
Evolve
Headquarters: Emeryville, California
Established: 1995
Flagship customers: Ericsson, Sun Microsystems, EDS
Struggled with dwindling revenues in 2001, but the release of Evolve 5 in March 2002, with its strength in resource management, along with some recent Fortune 20 wins, will “alleviate concerns about Evolve’s viability”, say analysts at Forrester Research. Evolve embeds portfolio management function from Prosight for strategic planning and execution.
Lawson Software
Headquarters: St Paul, Minnesota
Established: 1975
Flagship customers: Schlumberger, Lucent Technologies, Fluent
Lawson is better known as a supplier of enterprise resource planning software, but its PSA software builds on technology acquired in its July 2001 takeover of PSA specialist Account4. The product is particularly strong in resource management and offers enhanced work request features, say analysts.
Niku
Headquarters: Redwood City,California
Established: 1997
Flagship customers: Bear Stearns, British Telecommunications, Eastman Chemical
Niku’s eponymous ‘service relationship management’ software focuses on “the middle office”, bridging front-end (customer facing) and back-end (financial settlement) operations, and incorporates project management tools acquired in its August 2000 acquisition of ABT.
PeopleSoft
Headquarters: Pleasanton, California
Established: 1975
Flagship customers: Ford Motor Company, BEA Systems
PeopleSoft’s Enterprise Services Automation (ESA) offers strong time and expense and human resource (HR) functions, reflecting the ERP company’s roots in HR software, while its acquisition of Skills Village in May 2001 has added services e-procurement capabilities to the portfolio.
PlanView
Headquarters: Austin, Texas
Established: 1989
Flagship customers: Allied Irish Bank, Bausch &Lomb, Adidas-salomon
A project management specialist, PlanView claims 170,000 licensed users since its first multi-thousand implementation in 1993. While Forrester Research analysts praise PlanView’s product for is flexibility and scalability (its largest clients approach some 10,000 users), it nonetheless still has “a project management look and feel”.
QuickArrow
Headquarters: Austin, Texas
Established: 1998
Flagship customers: Vignette, WebMethods, Cardiff Software
Aimed at mid-size IT services organisations, QuickArrow’s product, Enterprise Consulting Suite (ECS), has proved popular with software companies. QuickArrow is strongly focused on Microsoft environments, offering bi-directional integration with Microsoft Project 98 and 2000.
SharpOwl
Headquarters: Radlett, UK
Established: 2001
Flagship customers: Midas Kapiti, IBM Global Services UK, UK MOD Defence Estates
SharpOwl focuses primarily on the financial aspects of running services organisations, and Aberdeen Group analysts praise the company’s strong project costing and billing functions. Following a EU9.8 million investment from UK venture capital group 3i, SharpOwl was spun off from its parent company, Foundation Systems, in June 2001.
Systemcorp
Headquarters: Montreal, Canada
Established: 1992
Flagship customers: Zenith Industrial, Whirlpool, John Deere Harvester
Systemcorp still touts itself as a project management tool – “and it shows in a very work breakdown-oriented interface”, say Forrester analysts. Nevertheless, the company’s rich workflow, advanced resource management and graphical portfolio views appeal to manufacturing and engineering services companies.
Tenrox
Headquarters: Quebec, Canada
Established: 1995
Flagship customers: Johnson &Johnson, US Steel, Astra Zeneca
Unlike large-scale, ‘end-to-end’ PSA products, Tenrox’s product is designed for modular and incremental deployment. Lacking in its own project management and scheduling functions, Tenrox focuses on close integration with Microsoft’s Project product. It also offers wireless options for time and expense, and customisable workflows for capturing and tracking change requests.
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