Asta Powerproject: WHY PEOPLE PREFER ASTA POWERPROJECT

Asta Powerproject: The power behind successful projects
WHY PEOPLE PREFER ASTA POWERPROJECT
Asta Powerproject has been developed with input from our users over more than 20 years and is the preferred
software of thousands of project professionals throughout the world across a wide range of industries who like
its combination of ease of use with feature rich functionality. Asta Powerproject is a comprehensive product
suite with the flexibility to meet the varying needs of everyone involved in
running projects and who rely on project performance.
These are some of the key reasons our
customers have mentioned as reasons for
choosing Asta Powerproject instead of
other software.
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SUPERIOR PRESENTATION
“Asta Powerproject means we can produce
better quality information than we could
with MS Project. We can enhance it by
using histograms to give clients the
cashflow forecasts that they want – it’s
simple to do using the software and clients
like it, it gives them more information and
more confidence in us.”
“In terms of presentation, Asta
Powerproject is far superior. When you
start up a project in MS Project, you have
to set up date scales and grid lines for
example. In Asta Powerproject that just
works straight away. The grid lines are
perfect, the holidays are already there, and
the date scales are correct. It’s so easy to
set up and begin quickly and provides
professional-looking output.”
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SIMPLER PRINTING
“A unique thing with Asta Powerproject is
having multiple activities on the same line,
so it is easy to see what is going on and
easy to produce summary print outs. On
large complex projects like I work on to do
the same in Primavera without this would
be complex and take lots of pages to print”
“In terms of printing, Asta Powerproject
lets you just click and print, you don’t have
to adjust anything; it sizes it automatically
www.astadev.com
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“What Asta Powerproject is particularly
good at is presentation, which is exactly
what you need for good reports. With a
very small amount of effort, the user can
easily produce a very presentable and
professional-looking report. I have worked
with other programmes, but none have
been as presentable as Powerproject.”
for you. MS Project is not as
straightforward as this, it
prints over several
pages, which is
annoying, and often
you find some of your
data has been
chopped off for size.
You can’t rely on your
information being
complete and correct.”
EASIER TO CREATE
TASKS
“We can see where
contingency is being eaten
away and the effects on on-time
delivery. MS Project told us very little, and
we had to rely on one project manager telling
another about resource overlap, this made
project management very difficult. Asta
Powerproject enables us to give advance
warning to a project sponsor that there may
be a slippage in schedule, this makes
them far more accepting of
a possible delay.”
“Asta Powerproject, has become
the standard because traditionally
a lot of the higher-end project
management software on the market
needs a very careful coding process and a
very long-winded period of preparation
before you can actually start planning.
With Asta Powerproject you can start
pretty much within an hour of getting an
understanding of how the software works
because the interface is so intuitive and
crucially, it offers the same, if not more
power, than many of the competing
higher-end products.”
Robert Douglass,
Denbighshire County Council
“Creating tasks is easier in Asta
Powerproject because you can draw them
on yourself. You can put your mouse on a
line, click and draw a bar. Then specify
how long you want it, and click on
duration; on MSP it’s impossible to draw
your own task easily or even move it.
With Asta Powerproject you have so much
more control”.
WHY PEOPLE PREFER ASTA POWERPROJECT
“The engineers
simply love Asta
Powerproject, and
could immediately see how the
software worked when they
switched over from MS Project.
We discovered that it was more
user-friendly than P6 and it
could perform with higher
functionality if
we needed it.”
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MORE POWERFUL NAVIGATION
FEATURES
“It’s like an early warning system. Asta
Powerproject is used to level resource and
where possible no-one’s allocation is above
100%. Basic software systems don’t let you
have full visibility across multiple projects.”
“If we get a lot of change requests at one
time, we cannot fulfil them all
straightaway; not everyone has the
right skill set. But with everything we
need to know in one view what we can
do is see when the right skills will be
freed up, so Asta Powerproject helps
with forward planning -- we couldn’t do
this without it.”
“Asta Powerproject suite gives us a single
repository of information providing an
overview of current and future workload,
giving us clear visibility of utilisation”
www.astadev.com
INTEGRATED TIME SHEET
MANAGEMENT
“The beauty of Asta Powerproject suite’s
Time Sheet is that it feeds directly into Asta
Powerproject, eliminating inputting time for
project managers,”
“The software links costs, people and
projects together, everyone knows exactly
what they are being charged for. Asta’s
software has changed the way we record
our time, and this is what project work
heavily relies on.”
Steve Allan,
Banora Point Upgrade Alliance
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CLEAR RESOURCE VISIBILITY TO
OPTIMISE ALLOCATION
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“I love the way you can move around quickly.
Whereas in MS Project you must create
summary bars to group activities, in Asta
Powerproject it lifts them all into a single
window so you can see exactly what you
need. It makes it really easy to break the job
into different areas, and you never have to
scroll through page after page of activities to
find something. If you have two areas you
want to compare and see how they interface,
you just click ‘Control’ at the same time and
they both appear side by side. The visual
navigation capability of Asta Powerproject is
one of its very best features.”
“We can look at work in progress, and by
way of a simple bar chart we can see exactly
which individual resources are over- or
under-used and it helps us realign resource
where it is most needed.”
BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE FOR
EASY STAKEHOLDER
ENGAGEMENT
“Often, stakeholders are only interested in
the grand totals such as how much of our
time was spent on projects versus how
much of our time was spent on support. This
was a task that was particularly timeconsuming before we used Asta
Powerproject suite and specifically
Business Intelligence - now we can
run a report quickly and easily whenever we
want.”
“Before dashboard reporting we would have
given senior management a printed list of all
projects and their stages, they had no
visibility of anything else other than what the
project manager told them. Now they have a
dashboard that gives them not only the
high level view of everything that they
need to know, but the option to drill
down and see the information at a
more granular level.”
“We dismissed two
companies straightaway as
they did not match up to our
scoring system. We had further
demonstrations from the remaining
With Business Intelligence we
companies and chose Asta’s software.
can show senior management
Not only did it fulfill our needs but we
that we need extra resource to
complete on time. It also shows
liked the people and their approach, we
them the knock-on effect that this
felt that they were more on our
will have on other projects if we don’t.
wavelength and understood
Most importantly the dashboard tool
our needs.”
helps senior management understand
Ali McGuckin,
Client Services Director, Stalis Ltd
what we are up against; therefore, they are
more engaged with what we are doing and
our requirements.”
WHY PEOPLE PREFER ASTA POWERPROJECT
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CLEAR VISIBILITY ACROSS
MULTIPLE PROJECTS
“We had not come across Asta
Powerproject before and were assessing a couple
of other tools including Primavera and MS Project.
We chose Asta Powerproject ultimately because it
was more user-friendly compared to the other tools
we were looking at, and because of how we could
use it as a management tool.”
“Asta Powerproject suite gives us visibility
across all projects – and forecasts. We can
see what the current set of projects look
like and get a heads up on how busy
people are likely to be,”
“What Asta Powerproject gives us is full
visibility of resources and tasks across
multiple projects. More basic, less
sophisticated software is really no more
than a spreadsheet. With Asta
Powerproject we can see what each
resource has coming up, what they are
working on now and next and highlight
conflicts, so we can give an accurate time
of when that testing can be carried out”
Matt O’Grady, Hansen Yuncken
“To have all this capability, enabling
everyone to work concurrently, the
investment was well worth it.”
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MULTI-USER UP-TO-DATE
ACCESS
“I have been using Asta Powerproject for
many years; I have witnessed the various
versions and I have seen a lot of changes.
It is way ahead of the other contenders –
for example, when multiple undo’s came
out as a new feature in Asta Powerproject,
it proved very valuable. It allows you to test
out different scenarios and ‘What if?’
situations, which is really important in
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“When we were using P6 there was a big
time-lag. We never really had an up-to-date
programme because the information was
always based on engineer updates from a
week or even up to a month before. Any
issues arising could add a few days more
delay. The information was never accurate
– but now, the master programme
effectively updates itself”
MULTI-UNDO LETS YOU TEST
DIFFERENT SCENARIOS WITH
CONFIDENCE
planning. In fact, it proved so useful that
the next version of MSP to come out also
contained that feature, although it doesn’t
work quite as well as in Asta Powerproject
because it doesn’t let you undo after a save
or with autosave on.”
RE-SCHEDULING IS SIMPLER
“Rescheduling is made much simpler with
Asta Powerproject. In MSP if I put a
completion percentage on a task, for
example a two-week bar, it automatically
reschedules the rest of the bar, which I
don’t want it to do, this is so unhelpful. In
Asta Powerproject I can put in my own
completion percentage and then
reschedule it, as I like to be able to analyse
before I reschedule -- I like to have that
control. MSP is simply not as user friendly.”
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PROGRESS MONITORING PUTS
YOU IN CONTROL
“The software compares what was planned
with actual progress. It plots a line that
shows whether the programme is behind or
ahead of schedule, from that we can see
which items have fallen behind and take
the appropriate action, in time.”
“Progress periods are clearly defined in
Asta Powerproject. You can build an asbuilt programme as you go along. The bar
is colour-coded and this is added along the
way. Asta Powerproject makes no
assumptions, it gives you automation, but
let’s you stay in control.”
www.astadev.com
WHY PEOPLE PREFER ASTA POWERPROJECT
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COPYING CODES FROM ONE
PROGRAMME TO ANOTHER
SAVES TIME
“Asta Powerproject allows you to create
and add various codes to the programme
which can then be filtered out as needed.
For example, a programme can have high,
medium and low risk codes added to all the
activities, then a filter applied to show all
the activities that have risk applied to them
in the next 2 weeks. It also allows you to
copy codes from one programme to
another, whilst in MS Project, the codes
have to be created every time a
programme is created.”
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EASY INTEGRATION WITH OTHER
SOFTWARE FOR SIMPLE
COMMUNICATION
“It is an extremely flexible tool in planning
and sharing the information coming from
other project management software tools,
such as Microsoft Project and Oracle
Primavera”
“Asta Powerproject acts as a good
interface with our customers’ software – it’s
compatible with MS Project and Excel so
you can easily cut and paste only the data
you need into other software and
present the information in a pdf format
that everyone can read.”
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SCALABLE FOR LARGER
PROJECTS
“Asta Powerproject is good at managing
sheer size, and some of our projects are
enormous, I couldn’t possibly manage
them in MSP. In MSP I’d have to put in all
the sub-contractors’ links and information
myself, and I can’t afford to make a
mistake. With Asta Powerproject I can
import the sub-contractors’ projects
straight into the Master Programme, thus
lowering risk, we can have peace of mind
that the information is absolutely correct,
and of course – it saves lots of time.”
www.astadev.com
“Sometimes clients
specify a particular software.
If I’m asked to produce a programme,
for example, in MS Project, I usually
produce it in Asta Powerproject first,
because of its superior functionality
and ease of use, then save it as an
MS Project file for the client.”
Robin Percy, J Breheny Contractors
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“Asta Powerproject’s ability to import and
export files to and from Primavera has
greatly simplified executive reporting”
MULTIPLE TASKS AND
LINKS ON ONE LINE
“We like a lot of the features in
Asta Powerproject, specifically
multiple bars in one line being
able to link from anywhere in that
bar to anywhere in another bar –
this is better than anything I have
used before.”
WHY PEOPLE PREFER ASTA POWERPROJECT
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SUPPORT YOU CAN RELY ON
“Asta’s support service is excellent, they get
back to you very quickly.”
“We compared Asta Powerproject with
other programmes like Primavera, and decided
that this would better fit our needs…mostly because it is so
much more user-friendly and cost-efficient; it offers us the
amount of functionality we need, without paying for additional
capabilities not required for the framework, in essence
right-sizing the product for customer usage.”
“My experience with the team at Asta,
whether Helpdesk or Sales is always a
pleasure - polite, considerate
knowledgeable and efficient all of which
are lacking in Oracle’s offering of
Primavera P6.”
“What is a really good about Asta’s support
is that it is based in the UK – they work the
same hours as we do. You don’t have to
think about what the time is in the US for
example, it’s easy just to pick up the phone,
and they are very helpful and extremely
responsive.”
Gavin Clegg, NMC Nomenca
PLUS ASTA GIVES YOU:
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FLEXIBLE LICENSING
With a flexible licensing model Asta
Powerproject provides a cost effective
price per user to suit your needs – ask us
for a personalised quote.
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FREE VIEWER
You can provide everyone involved in your
projects with the ability to view, navigate
and print out project plans for free so those
who only need to view output do not need
to buy a licence. Use Asta Project Viewer to
view projects created in Asta Powerproject,
Asta Easyplan, Microsoft Project and
Oracle Primavera.
Windows®, MS Project® and Microsoft Excel® are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corp.
Oracle Primavera® is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation.
©2012 Asta Development plc
Asta Powerproject is a registered trademark of Asta Development plc.
All trademarks recognised. E & OE.
Asta Development plc
Kingston House
Goodsons Mews
Wellington Street
Thame
Oxfordshire
OX9 3BX
United Kingdom
E: enquiries@astadev.com
T: +44 (0)1844 261700
F: +44 (0)1844 261314
www.astadev.com
Asta's shared
licensing model makes
it much more economical
than other software such
as MS Project for which
you need to buy
a full licence for
every user.”
Clive Bassett,
Financial Director, Beard