Runn vs. Productive: Which Resource Management Software is Best for Your Business?

Runn vs Productive – TL;DR

In a hurry? Here’s the difference:

If you want laser-focused resource management and capacity planning software – and don’t want to pay for more tools than you need – choose Runn. You’ll have the tools and insights you need to turn people’s time and talent into productive and profitable projects.

If you have the appetite and budget for a broader suite of agency management tools – and need ‘good enough’ resource planning tools – choose Productive. They’ll support you from the sales process to billing, with lighter-touch resource management as part of their offer.

Keep reading to dig into the details ⬇️

Who are Runn and Productive for?

Runn and Productive are both platforms designed to help professional services firms run more profitable businesses.

Runn is more specifically focused on efficient resource and capacity management, and is particularly popular in the IT and software sectors, as well as agencies, financial auditing firms, and consultancies.

Productive identifies as a Professional Services Automation platform, incorporating CRM and billing alongside people and project management tools. It pitches itself specifically at the agency management market, as well as the broader professional services sector.

These different functionalities are reflected in the pricing and the rationale behind clients' decisions to select one platform over another.

Similarities between Runn and Productive

In terms of resource management functionality, the main similarities between Runn and Productive are that they both:

Serve professional service firms and project-based businesses.
Offer capacity, resource, and project management tools.
Reveal how resource decisions impact project and business outcomes.
Provide insights to improve project and resource management overall.

However, despite looking similar on the surface, they’re actually quite different in terms of who they serve and how.

Runn is focused exclusively on resource management, especially its impact on in-flight project progress and capacity for forthcoming work. It offers depth over breadth, solving the specific challenges of managing resources profitably in a professional service business, such as:

Reducing resource-related delays and cost spirals on projects.
Improving utilization rates for higher productivity and profitability.
Making recruitment and development decisions based on data, not intuition.
Creating well-balanced workloads that keep staff healthy and engaged.
Forecasting capacity and demand to seize every opportunity with confidence.

In short, Runn takes the whole complex matter of managing workload demand and resource capacity in a project-based environment – and gives you a way to make sense of it. As one of our brilliant customers put it:

The capacity planning we had done in Excel – which had taken weeks...when we did that same work in Runn, it was completed in two days." – Cindy Tan, General Manager of IT Planning, TPG Telecom

Further reading: How TPG Telecom Streamlined Their Capacity Planning with Runn ➡️

Productive solves a wider range of challenges in professional service firm management, not just resource management. It provides built-in end-to-end functionality that Runn doesn’t, such as CRM and sales tools before you win work, and invoicing after you’ve delivered. It supports seamless project administration from start to finish, but with less powerful tools for resource management overall.

Let’s look at those differences in more depth.

Differences between Runn and Productive

Both Runn and Productive offer resource and project management, but the depth and breadth of the platforms vary significantly.

Runn vs. Productive — Feature comparison
Feature	Runn	Productive
Centralized resource inventory	✅	✅
Resource availability, capacity, and utilization insights	✅	✅
Easy drag-and-drop resource scheduling	✅	✅
Availability/time-off management (leave, etc)	✅	✅
Capacity and utilization tracking	✅	✅
Time-tracking	✅	✅
Scenario planning	✅	✅
Project resource forecasting	✅	❌
Strategic capacity planning tools	✅	❌

Resource management

Runn is the stronger and more specialized software for resource management, including tools for long-range forecasting, strategic capacity planning, and scenario modelling. With Runn, you’ll be able to create productive and profitable project schedules now, as well as match capacity and demand to pipeline projects and your strategic ambitions.
Productive includes intermediate resource management tools but is less forecasting-focused than Runn. This ‘good enough’ resource planning functionality may be sufficient for smaller firms looking to improve on spreadsheets (though the price tag may exclude them, making Runn a wiser choice if better resource planning is your core objective).

Project management

Runn maintains a bird’s eye view of progress and profits – with project schedules, phases, and milestones to help you match people to project timelines. It also integrates with popular task and ticket management platforms like Jira, so you can work seamlessly between Runn and your familiar tools.
Productive provides the big picture and lets you dive further into the detail in one system, adding staff workload management tools – like task lists, calendars, and Kanban boards – into the mix too. It also has more extensive time-tracking functionality than Runn.

Project accounting and financial management

Runn is focused on resource and project finances, including billable vs. non-billable utilization rates, project budgets, burn rates, and forecast vs. actual project financials. If you want to know how resourcing decisions impact project profit margins and support growth, this is the tool for you.
Productive looks at the bigger financial picture, including agency-wide profitability, revenue forecasting, and invoicing workflows. Productive lets you manage your organizational financial health in one place, which is ideal if you don’t have existing tools in place to do that.

User experience

Runn is more user-friendly with a better UI – this is what we hear from customers who have compared the two platforms and selected Runn over Productive. ‍
Productive is more complex to set up by virtue of its broader functionality. That pay-off may be worth it if PSA is what you need – but if you’re just looking to improve resource management, it could be unnecessary overhead.

Pricing‍

Runn offers significant value for businesses looking specifically for resource and project management, representing better value than an all-in-one PSA platform, which charges for a broader range of functionality you may not need.
Productive is more expensive than Runn because more functionality attracts a higher price tag. If you need a full-suite PSA, that cost may be perfectly justifiable. But if you are just looking to manage your resources, projects, and capacity better, a more focused solution may be more cost-effective.

Integrations

Runn has a curated collection of highly relevant integrations that create a seamless professional services ecosystem, spanning popular platforms for task management, sales and CRM, HR, time-tracking, workflow automation, and more. There’s also the Runn API to build custom integrations, and several custom integration partners who can help integrate Runn into your existing stack.
Productive offers a similar range of integrations and an API, though their out-of-the-box integrations also include more financially focused tools too, such as QuickBooks, Sage, and Xero.

Further reading: Check out our App Marketplace to see how Runn integrates into your existing tech stack ➡️

Runn vs. Productive — Capability Comparison
Category	Runn	Productive
Resource management	Advanced	Intermediate
Capacity forecasting	Advanced	Intermediate
Project management	Bird’s eye – Projects	Granular – Projects and tasks
Finances/project accounting	Resource and project-specific	Broader business finances
Time tracking	Via integrations	Built-in
CRM/pipeline/invoicing	Via integrations	Built-in
Complexity / set-up / UI	Light lift	Heavy lift
Pricing	£	££

Is Runn or Productive a better fit for your business?

The choice between Runn and Productive boils down to this question: do you want specialist resource management software to solve specific challenges in your firm, or do you want a broader suite of functionality for running your professional service business overall?

Here are some questions to help your business answer the question ‘Which is best: Runn or Productive?’

What is your primary need with this implementation?
Real-time resource management and capacity planning, to address fundamental issues in resourcing.	A broader Professional Services Automation platform that helps automate projects from end to end.

Do you need sales/CRM/invoicing functionality?
No – I don’t need CRM or invoicing, that’s covered elsewhere.	Yes – I want to manage everything in the same system.

What level of financial oversight do you need from the system?
Specific to resources and projects only, such as profit and loss, burn rate, and projected vs actual project spend.	Covering the broader financial ecosystem of the organization.

What level of project management do you need from the system?
Bird’s eye – I want to see schedules, phases, and milestones, so I can allocate resources accurately. We have Asana/Jira/etc for task management.	Granular – I want to see everything from project schedules down to the task-list level, with a system that allows staff to manage their workload too.

What about set-up and onboarding?
I want something powerful for my specific needs, but quick to set up and intuitive to use.	I understand that broader functionality may involve more time configuring and learning to use the system.

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Mostly PURPLE – then Runn is probably best for your business.