Blog

How does Copper compare to MS Project?

I received this question today via email, and thought I’d post up my response:

Q. How does copper compare to MS project software? Why use copper, what are the costs and how does it work better than MS project?

A. The biggest issue with MS Project is that it is simple a single user repository and having come from a PM background I often found that it dictated how I work. I also found when I did use it within a team environment that MS Project did nothing to assist in the management of the politics of a project, and tended to make me focus more on the technical side of the timeline than actually getting things done (and the more I focussed on that, the less work that got done, and the more I’d have to update my schedule!)

With Copper, we turned that on its head. We still provide great project setup tools like the flash gantt timeline view and drag and drop subtasks in the project creation screen, but the real power of Copper comes with its multi-user platform, which assists in the collaboration component of all your projects.

Once you’ve allocated your users to tasks (or even gone the extra step of committing their available time, if you want finite resourcing), they then go ahead and provide a running commentary of the work they do along with how long it takes them and their subjective impression of how complete a task is. This is an easy process for them, and provides a natural update mechanism, removing the pain associated with timesheet tracking, and ensuring if one member is away for whatever reason your team can pick up where they left off. This is to say nothing of the other areas of Copper like the document management module, contacts module, reports, and group calendar functions within Copper. Being available anywhere anytime, I don’t hear of may customers going back to MS Project once they’re on board with Copper

The net result is that over time you can review how your projects have tracked and we’ve found teams become more cohesive the more they use Copper. In a recent survey we found that over 80% of our customers save between 10-20 hours per week, and 20% save more than 20 hours a week just by using Copper.

I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any specific questions on functionality, or anything else for that matter!

– Ben Prendergast