Compare five leading Productive alternatives to find the best resource management tool for scheduling, forecasting, and project planning.
Productive is undoubtedly invaluable for professional service firms. But is it the right choice for resource management?
Well, that depends on your particular needs and how resourcing is handled in your organization. There are a ton of solutions out there, which all approach the challenges of resource management differently. Productive might be the right fit for you – but, equally, there might be a platform out there that suits your context better.
So, let’s compare five of the leading Productive alternatives in terms of how well they support resource scheduling, project management, capacity planning, and more.
Runn is a highly focused Productive alternative designed to help professional service organizations manage their resources more productively and profitably. It is a dedicated resource management platform suitable for businesses from 2 to 5,000 employees.
Key features cover everything that project-based businesses need to improve resource utilization, facilitate easier and more accurate resource allocations, and track project progress. Runn also includes advanced reporting and insights for long-term resource forecasting and capacity planning. Unlike some RM tools, Runn doesn’t drill down into task management, keeping a laser focus on the project and portfolio level.
Suitable for both operational and strategic resource management, Runn balances a robust functional footprint with a responsive development roadmap. Plus, it is favourably priced compared to competitors, offering excellent value without sacrificing features. Check out Runn's plans and pricing.
* Based on customer reviews from Capterra.
Productive is an all-in-one, end-to-end tool best suited for an agency model, whereas Runn is built specifically to give outstanding visibility into your resource management operations in a project-based work environment.
If you need tools spanning everything from sales to invoicing, Productive fits the bill. But if you want to solve specific challenges around resource allocations, controlling resource costs in projects, capacity planning, skills management, etc., then Runn has stronger project and resource management tools.
Harvest Forecast is a Productive alternative for small to mid-sized businesses that need more visibility into project resourcing (50 to 200 employees).
It was created by the same people who brought us the Harvest time-tracking platform. But where Harvest makes it easy for project-based firms to understand how time was spent, Forecast looks forward at how it should be spent.
Like Runn, Harvest Forecast supports confident capacity planning and resource management, providing visibility into resource availability, allocations, and capacity – for accurate resource scheduling and forecasting.
* Based on customer reviews from Capterra.
As an alternative to Productive, Harvest Forecast offers more focused functionality, with key features designed specifically to solve resource management challenges. Plus, its seamless integration with Harvest time tracking tools also makes it a sensible choice for existing Harvest users, especially those in smaller firms.
Parallax is another Productive alternative for small to mid-sized businesses (2 to 500 employees). Like Productive, it is highly focused on the agency space. But, unlike Productive, it has a narrower focus on resourcing, utilization, revenue, and forecasting.
That said, it does include pipeline tools to support sales efforts and time tracking to facilitate invoicing processes, making it a halfway house between PSA and RM platforms.
*Based on customer reviews from Capterra.
As an alternative to Productive, Parallax offers focused resource management functionality, firmly focused on the needs of digital agencies and developers. If you’re happy with the rest of your agency tech ecosystem, and just looking to solve allocation and capacity challenges, Parallax provides that – minimizing spend on additional features that you don’t need. However, Productive boasts better ease of use.
Float is a user-friendly Productive alternative, with a lightweight but well formed feature set. Like other Productive alternatives detailed here, Float is a dedicated resource management platform rather than a full PSA.
Float is firmly focused on operational day-to-day resource allocations, with visual scheduling a particular strong point. Strategically speaking, Float does offer forecasting and capacity planning too, though reporting is identified as a weak point in reviews.
*Based on customer reviews from Capterra.
As an alternative to Productive, Float offers project-based businesses a light-touch tool for managing their resources. For firms looking for simple scheduling and straightforward workflows, Float offers intuitive functionality without any bloat.
Kantata is a more comprehensive Productive alternative compared to others in this list. Like Productive, it is a full PSA platform. It is designed to help professional service organizations forecast demand, plan projects, manage people, and monitor budgets across the full project lifecycle.
Like Runn, Kantata offers advanced resource management functionality that lets delivery leads monitor project performance, boost productivity, and protect both margins and workloads. Plus, at a strategic level, it has in-depth insights to inform capacity and workforce planning.
While Kantata can be used by any size firm, the extensive functionality – and associated cost – means it is better suited to larger organizations.
*Based on customer reviews from Capterra.
As an alternative to Productive, Kantata offers a similarly broad functional footprint. Looking at product reviews, Kantata wins on configurability. But this comes at the cost of complexity, with Productive considered easier to use (see below).
For resource management alone, both platforms offer relevant tools within a much broader feature suite, which can mean higher cost and complexity.
When evaluating software, you want to strike the balance between getting all the functionality you need without incurring excess costs or complexity. Here are some vital considerations when shortlisting platforms for resource management:
The best way to get an idea of how the different solutions measure up is to dive in and try them out for yourself. Do the demos. Take the trials. Talk to the vendor teams. That way you’ll get a feel for the products, as well as the support you can expect on your implementation.
You can compare products on paper (or screen) all day long. But nothing beats actually using them.
