*Sourced from independent G2 reviews.
1. Introduction
A five year plus app on the AppExchange, Inspire Planner is a growing choice for many organizations looking to add project management to their Salesforce CRM. Similar solutions built on Salesforce, that you might want to consider are TaskRay and Precursive OBX.
Read on to see our side by side comparison between the Cloud Coach Team tier and Inspire Planner.
Starter
Inspire Planner
Enterprise
Ultimate
2. Plays Nice With Salesforce
Cloud Coach
Cloud Coach is built 100% natively on the Salesforce platform and offers seamless connection to Salesforce Sales and Service Clouds, meaning you can:
- Links to accounts, opportunities & cases
- Ability to add custom fields
- Configure your page layouts & displays
- Create your own custom reports and dashboards
- Implement point and click custom Workflows & Approvals
Importantly with Cloud Coach your data is stored and managed 100% on Salesforce, so you don’t need to worry about data security issues.
Inspire Planner
Inspire Planner is also built natively on the Salesforce platform, so you get access to all the same capabilities as described to the left with Cloud Coach, including:
- Links to accounts, opportunities & cases
- Ability to add custom fields
- Configure your page layouts & displays
- Create your own custom reports and dashboards
- Implement point and click custom Workflows & Approvals
Cloud Coach
1 v 1
Inspire Planner
Plays Nice With Salesforce - Opinion
Result: Tie
If you want a solution that works seamlessly on Salesforce, there’s not a lot to separate between these two solutions. One difference is that Cloud Coach requires your Salesforce Org to be Enterprise edition or above, while Inspire Planner will run on Salesforce Professional edition favoured by many smaller businesses.
3. Project Management
Cloud Coach
Cloud Coach has a strong set of feature support for project management including:
- Waterfall Projects
- Agile (Kanban) Projects
- Water-Scrum-Fall
- Project Templates
- Project Health Views
Inspire Planner
Inspire Planner has a broad set of project management feature support that will satisfy most the needs of most SMBs including:
- Gantt or Agile Board views
- Project Templates
- Baselines
Cloud Coach
2 v 1
Inspire Planner
Project Management - Opinion
Result: Cloud Coach
If you’re currently looking for, or might need in the future more flexible project management functionality, there’s more project management capability available to your team with Cloud Coach than with Inspire Planner, however if your team is small or has more basic needs Inspire planner could be a great option for you also.
4. Resource Management
Cloud Coach
Managing people, resources and skills is key to the success of any organization, and a key piece of functionality in any professional services automation (PSA) solution, here Cloud Coach has extensive capabilities including:
- Capacity Planning
- Project Assignments by Work Type / Skill
- Soft & Hard bookings
- PTO & Out of Office Handling
Inspire Planner
Inspire Planner has colorful resource management built into its solution including support for:
- Project Assignments by Work Type / Skill
- Soft & Hard bookings
- PTO & Out of Office Handling
Cloud Coach
3 v 1
Inspire Planner
Resource Management - Opinion
Result: Cloud Coach
This was a close one to call, however the edge goes to Cloud Coach as it has multiple resourcing options users can choose on for each project, giving more flexibility for organizations with different user cases
5. Time Tracking
Cloud Coach
Tracking time is probably one of your team’s least favorite parts of their workday, but it’s important for your business to track performance against KPIs, here Cloud Coach has support for:
- Multiple ways for users to enter time
- Estimated vs Actuals
- Track time on any Salesforce record
- Time entry and timesheet approval
Inspire Planner
Inspire Planner comes with inbuilt time tracking including many of the same capabilities of Cloud Coach including:
- Track time on any project task
- Estimated vs Actuals
- Track time on any Salesforce record
- Time entry and timesheet approval
Cloud Coach
4 v 2
Inspire Planner
Time Tracking - Opinion
Result: Tie
Both solutions will let you track time against all your project tasks, in a relatively quick and easy manner. It is worth noting however that time tracking is available in Cloud Coach Starter, which is free for the first 10 users so you can get started at no cost to your business.
6. Meetings & Documents
Cloud Coach
Managing documents and meetings are integral to any successful onboarding project, Cloud Coach excels in this space with.
- Meeting agenda templates
- Coaching notes
- Meeting automation
- File storage against on projects
Inspire Planner
Managing documents and meetings are integral to any successful onboarding project, Inspire Planner provides:
- File storage against on projects
Cloud Coach
5 v 2
Inspire Planner
Meeting & Documents - Opinion
Result: Cloud Coach
For any project, you are likely to have any number of meetings, from kick-off meetings, to client updates, and testing reviews. Cloud Coach’s meeting module gives it the clear edge here.
7. Reporting & Dashboards
Cloud Coach
As a Salesforce partner Cloud Coach get to leverage all the great reporting and dashboarding capabilities of Salesforce including:
- Out of the box reports & dashboards
- Reports available in real time
- Reports available on any device
- Customize reports to your needs
- Tableau CRM Analytics
Inspire Planner
As a Salesforce ISV partner Inspire Planner also get to leverage all the great reporting and dashboarding capabilities of Salesforce including:
- Out of the box reports & dashboards
- Reports available in real time
- Reports available on any device
- Customize reports to your needs
Cloud Coach
6 v 3
Inspire Planner
Reporting & Dashboards - Opinion
Result: Tie
When it comes to the core underlying reporting technology, there’s not a lot to separate between these two solutions, however due to its more extensive overall functionality / capabilities you will have more data to report on and act on, with Cloud Coach.
8. Implementation & Tailoring
Cloud Coach
Implementing a PSA solution in your business is something that you’re going to want to do by engaging a professional consulting team. Cloud Coach or one of its certified partners can help with this.
Inspire Planner
In contrast, organizations can implement Inspire Planner themselves, or can leverage one of Inspire Planner’s partners for implementation assistance.
Cloud Coach
6 v 4
Inspire Planner
Implementation & Tailoring - Opinion
Result: Inspire Planner
If you’re looking for a self implementation solution, then Inspire Planner is your winner here, however professional implementations often deliver far more in long term value than they cost up front, so make sure you carefully consider what is right for your business.
9. Overall Opinion
Despite Cloud Coach Team Tier getting the overall win, Inspire Planner provides a competitive solution for SMB’s looking to manage projects and onboard customers using the Salesforce platform.
For smaller teams with simpler needs and smaller budgets, Inspire Planner may often be the better option, however for larger teams and organizations Cloud Coach has the clear benefit of both more capabilities along with additional product tiers that you can move up to seamlessly as your needs evolve.
10. Other AppEx Apps to Consider
Learn about similar solutions to Inspire Planner and discover more about the capabilities and benefits of the Salesforce platform for PSA, Onboarding & Project Management for your business.
Information contained herein is based on the companies’ posted Salesforce AppExchange listings and other publicly available websites as of the date of this publication.
