Practical Project Management

Current PM Product Leaving You Flat on Your Back?

Get Vertical with Vertabase Pro

Website: http://www.vertabase.com/

{mosadsense4joomla ad_layout="A"ad_align=""}Do you often wish you had a place where your geographically challenged project teams could get together and share information?
Are you now writing your Christmas wish list to include a solution for tracking your projects, assigning resources, and taking care of crucial man hours and budgets?

If your current project management software situation is turning out to be the bane of your existence and leaving you flat on your back, there is a tool that might just bring you back into vertical alignment.

Vertabase Pro is a web-based project management application designed by the Detroit, Michigan, USA-based Standpipe Studios LLC.
Launched in June 2001, this unique and powerful product is a second generation relative to the company's popular Vertabase Express. It was developed following Standpipe client feedback for a product that would be easy to use and hassle-free.
Standpipe co-CEO Mark Phillips explained, "Vertabase was built from a wish list of customers. Companies were looking for something that works well as a Web-based project management system that also provides easy timesheet and document storage capabilities."

Created to specifically help companies move their project management processes to an online environment, the flexible and scalable Vertabase Pro comes packed with a variety of new features for organising, tracking, streamlining, and centralising your projects. With a simple, easy to use interface, the application is able to keep every team member from executives on down informed of every aspect of a project.

Vertabase Pro makes managing every aspect of project planning easier than ever before. You can perform time and schedule based project tracking, and the application's schedule is bilaterally compatible with Microsoft Project 98 and 2000.

In addition to the fact that Vertabase Pro utilises a browser, it is also easy to use. Once you've logged on, it opens to a default Manage Projects window. This can also be accessed via the Projects button in the main navigational toolbar. You can search for projects based on their project number or alphabetically by name. Also listed on this screen is the complete list of all your current projects, complete with Client Name, Project Manager, Project Priority, Estimated Cost, and Start and Delivery Dates. By clicking on the "Eye" icon to the left of each project, you can then view all of that project's specifics, right down to the individual resources working on the project.

In the tabbed area, you can also view, track, manage, analyse your project documents, schedules, and budgets. You can also create new projects, edit ongoing ones, delete projects no longer in progress, or archive them in the Vertabase Warehouse Projects section.

Project budgets can be easily managed with Vertabase Pro. You can view budgets at a glance, and they can be managed top-down or bottom up. Estimated costs, actual costs, percent budget used, and all expenses can be viewed by the simple click of your mouse button.

Should you need to locate resources for ongoing or future projects, the Users button on the main toolbar will take you to find just the person you need.
You can perform your search based on resource location, job function, department, project, team, and specific skills.
The Resource Availability - unique to Standpipe and Vertabase Pro - is exceptionally useful. You can search for a team member's availability quickly and easily. Clicking on the calendar icon will bring up a pop-up window that allows you to select your availability dates for the next 10, 30, and 90 calendar days.
The results of your search will provide you with a list of appropriate team members and their available work periods indicated in percentages. The colour-coded legend indicates various periods of availability ranging from 0-19% right up to 80-100%. Should you want to contact your team straight away, all of their contact details like telephone numbers and email addresses are given right there and then, so you no longer need to worry about further delays.

Once your team is up and working, the Timesheets menu of Vertabase Pro enables them to enter in all of the details of the work they've completed. Via the tabbed Timesheet page, users can access current timesheets as well as previous posted timesheets and an overall view of the company timesheets. Timesheets are fast and easy to fill out due to the inclusion of useful pull-down menus.

The Management Reports section is another feature of Vertabase Pro. You can generate reports on Global Projects, Global Budgets, Resource Allocation, and Time Usage. By providing these executive tracking reports, companies can now greatly improve their project efficiency.

The Admin section of Vertabase is geared toward the administrators of the program. Administrators and project managers can configure a variety of access levels, including those for clients, job functions, work types, skills, offices, and email notifications.

Vertabase Pro is available as an onsite application or as a hosted service. If you choose to take Vertabase on board with installation on your company's internal servers, the price is $45,000 based on 200 users. If you decide that the hosted version is more for you, an annual subscription for ten users will run you $5,400. Should you require the product for 100 users, the yearly price will set you back $30,000. In any case, training is included in these prices.

The range of companies now using Vertabase Pro as their total project management application is a testament to the strength of features and ease of use. It has become the PM product of choice for a number of Fortune 2000 corporations as well as Fortune 100 companies. It has also become especially popular within the automotive and financial industries, showing that it is well suited for any size company.

We were impressed with the selection of features and functions of Vertabase Pro. It's a solid, well organised, and thought out program. The price could be potentially high for some smaller companies, but if your current project management has been selling you short and leaving you going flat out, then Vertabase Pro could very well be the answer. If you find yourself flat on your back because your projects have been less than well managed, give yourself a vertical lift with this exceptional Standpipe solution.

Vertabase Pro
receives PROJECTmagazine ratings of

5 bananas

2001 © Lee and James Appleyard

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