We have a UK client that is considering investing in some new planning software, and has asked for some advice on which to go for.
They currently have 80 or so live projects of between 1k and 5k activities each, all fully resourced. Soon they will be expanding to hundreds or even thousands of projects.
At the moment they are using MSP 2010 Standard, installed on standalone machines. They are having lots of issues getting reliable data extraction into excel for running virtual reports (anyone had similar issues? I'm not a heavy MSP user, but would expect data transfer to excel to be one of it's strong points?), and are considering switching software as a result.
They have already ruled out Primavera on the basis of cost.
So I'm looking for suggestions for software that is:
a) Not too expensive (certainly cheaper than Primavera)
b) Supports effective resource management
c) Exports data to excel reliably and easily
d) Has a support structure for UK users (training / maintenance)
e) Able to import MSP projects with minimal "translation errors"
At the moment, I'm thinking of Asta or maybe Spider, but I have very little experience with either of them. -CS Project might be another option?
Thanks in advance,
Gary