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DEFINING THE PSA MARKET 301

• Opportunity Management (including sales automation and proposal manage-
ment features)—The ability to manage and track contacts and competitors,
perform win/loss analysis, and draft winning proposals, based on specific
price margins. Opportunity management helps manage clients, ensuring
greater customer intimacy. It also ensures that the most profitable opportu-
nities become engagements. Account4 has greatly improved its CRM func-
tionality recently, which puts it at the top with Evolve and Portera.

• Human Resources (HR)—The ability to maintain information on your re-
sources, support for training management, including online training courses,
as well as the procurement of external resources from other departments, la-
bor exchanges, partners, or even independent contractors. PeopleSoft has a
clear edge here, though Portera has excellent training management func-
tions as well.

• Resource Management—The ability to search for resources across multiple
pools with weighted (dynamic or static) criteria (e.g., skills, location, avail-
ability) and the ability to staff these resources in the most efficient manner
possible, ensuring that no resource remains on the bench. We believe
Evolve and Novient offer exceptional resource management functionality,
though other vendors are beginning to gain ground in this area (e.g., Peo-
pleSoft, Account4, QuickArrow, Changepoint).

• Program/Project Management—The ability to track and manage programs
and projects, with alerts to make sure projects will be completed on time and
that the project end does not impede on profit margins. PlanView clearly of-
fers the deepest PM functionality, though Novient has made tremendous
strides, after having integrated WebProject into its PSA solution.

• Time and Expenses (T&E)—The ability to enter T&Es with support online
and offline, as well as support for multicurrency, multiple projects, and ex-
penses to be applied across projects. PeopleSoft offers deep T&E function-
ality, as do Evolve and Portera.

• Workflow Functionality—The ability to set thresholds and floors, where
alerts (visual, audio, and e-mail alerts) are sent to indicate user-defined
events. Workflow helps manage and automate process flow within the orga-
nization. There is no clear leader in workflow functionality as each package
offers certain strengths and limitations.

• Knowledge Management (including document management and best prac-
tices)—The ability to store, in a central repository, all documents related to
employees, opportunities, and projects, with security and then to draw on
this information to improve the effectiveness of interactions with clients,
and fulfillment of engagements. Novient and Portera offer exceptional ca-
pabilities in this area.