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Tenrox Draws Its Line In The Sand By Integrating PSA With Microsoft Project Almost all large-scale service-focused organizations use some form of project management software. Microsoft's Project application has by far the leading share of this space, and although it tends to be strongest in group or division planning, its presence in so many accounts has made life somewhat more difficult for vendors of professional services automation (PSA) software. This is because project management is an essential factor in services automation. Tenrox has had a lower profile in the PSA market than many of its rivals. One reason for this is that the company never saw the point of building its own project management tool when that would mean it would have to sell customers something they already had. Instead, it worked to connect its PSA software Tenrox PSA to Project, and it has been supplying customers with a link between the two applications for some time. Now Tenrox is taking this connection several steps farther: it has created a single repository for both applications that allows them to appear like a single tool to users. The new integrated version of Tenrox PSA is currently in beta testing, and Tenrox engineers are shuttling back and forth to Microsoft's campus to iron out details. Tenrox plans on taking the product live with its first customer in early January. Impact assessment The message Context Tenrox's announcement highlights a deep philosophical split in the services automation market. Many vendors entering this market saw project management as one of the key pillars of automating service delivery and started building various functions to perform these crucial tasks. Others like Tenrox saw the same need for strong project management, but they also recognized that Microsoft dominates this market with its Project application. Instead of building their own functionality, they worked to build connectors to Project, and secondarily to other project management packages, such as the enterprise-heavy Primavera Systems. Most of the companies that have project management functionality also claim to work and play well with Microsoft Project, but the degree to which customers actually end up splurging for essentially two project management tools drags their argument down quite a bit. One of the reasons often given for constructing tools that overlap with Project is that Microsoft's offering was not a server-based, enterprise-class tool. Microsoft itself tried to obliterate the basis of this argument with its enterprise-aspiring Project Professional and Project Server. Microsoft is now using its considerable marketing sway to push such enterprise-class features as resource management and portfolio management in Project. Tenrox believes that its product is the perfect yin to Microsoft's yang. It complements Project with travel and expense management, a billing engine, charge-back/invoicing, organization and work breakdown structures, workflow-based task, issue and incident tracking, project accounting, and non-project time and leave management. In essence, Tenrox is claiming to have found a way to marry a best-of-breed approach with an all-in-one integrated approach. This offering will not, however, go far enough for the users of systems such as Primavera and Artemis International who feel that even Project is not robust enough for large-scale project management. Tenrox has also become an ISV for Microsoft Project, and will be offering it to any customers that currently lack a project management tool. The 110-person company has several enterprise implementations with over 2,000 seats (including a 4,600 seat deal with IBM in Canada), but for the most part it focuses on the midmarket. This is reflected in its pricing, which never approaches the million-dollar mark that some other PSA vendors have no trouble hitting. Products What Tenrox has done is conceptually very simple: it created a single SQL Server database that contains all the information for Microsoft Project and for its own applications. This single database for two applications, designed in conjunction with Microsoft, gives users real-time database-level integration. That means that no import or export is needed. Because of this, reporting capabilities greatly improve and administrators only have a single database to update and backup. In addition, Tenrox has exposed the Web elements of Project within its own application, providing a single Web-based interface to both products. Users need not even know they switch between applications; it all looks like Tenrox. Creating or updating a project in Tenrox PSA automatically updates Project and vice versa. While the idea is quite simple, this level of integration removes many of the headaches users and administrators experience when forced to synchronize between a PSA application and Project. The company already has numerous customers already using Tenrox PSA and Project and utilizing its connector product, including EDS, Pfizer and BCE Emergis. These companies are obvious targets for this new version and should be considered low-hanging fruit. Competition Some people define the PSA field as taking in project management; even without including players such as Primavera, Scitor and Artemis in the mix, the market is overly full. Some vendors, such as Changepoint, don't push so hard on the project management message. But others, like Evolve, PlanView, Niku, Systemcorp and Novient (now part of Solution 6), have forcefully used their project skills as major marketing fodder. Then there are the ERP vendors that have been probing this market for some time. Lawson, SAP and Oracle still seem somewhat tentative about their PSA capabilities. This is certainly not true of PeopleSoft, which appears extremely excited about the prospects of its PSA offering, which the company calls enterprise services automation. This nomenclature actually better reflects the reality of the market: professional services firms make a rapidly decreasing share of the prospects, and corporate services (including IT but also marketing and product development) are becoming the key growth drivers for vendors. Finally, Microsoft itself has entered the PSA market, albeit in a limited manner. Its PSA product revolves around its Solomon financials package and requires that users have both Solomon and the professional edition of Project. While those restrictions remain, the product's appeal will naturally be limited. Strengths Customers that rely on Project will be thrilled at the ability to use it and PSA interchangeably. Tenrox will be targeting the long list of its major customers that are already using Microsoft Project.
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