What is our primary use case?
Currently, we're using it as a Project and Portfolio management tool. We temporarily attempted some financial tracking, but one of the problems with companies is they never want to fully adopt a tool. It actually winds up being more complicated to try to just do partial adoption. So, right now, we're mainly using it for project and portfolio management.
We're one version or two versions behind the latest one. We are on 16.0.1. We have chosen on-prem deployment, but there are cloud solutions.
How has it helped my organization?
As a Project and Portfolio management tool, it allows the company to allocate costs based on projects, goals, or strategies. You can break down costs a lot easier because of the amount of detail you can put into the project. Being able to provide metrics and being able to break down costs is very important. It allows people to easily categorize costs.
What is most valuable?
The dynamism of the application where you can modify it to fit your needs is valuable. For example, you can create fields, metrics, and measures on the fly. You don't have to be limited to what the out-of-the-box format would be. It allows you to generate fields, metrics, and reports off of that with relative ease.
The volume of information you can get out of a system is valuable. There is always a caveat when companies partially adopt something. So, resource capacity planning is an incredible value, but because we only partially use it, it is only partially valuable here. We don't fully put all the resource information in.
What needs improvement?
One of the things that have always been a bit painful is the integration with reporting utilities. The current integration is with Jaspersoft, and there are a number of difficulties with that. If you're using out-of-the-box fields and everything, it is a bit slow and clunky. It has a drag-and-drop interface for the users. On the backend side, there is a report designer. They haven't given or allowed me any training on it yet. So, it has been a bit limited in its features. On one of the earlier report utilities, they had one called Actuate, which had VBA as its base programming language, and you could do quite dynamic things behind the scenes, whereas the Jaspersoft interface seems rather locked. So, you're limited in your options. Being a programmer, you like to have room to be able to invent and create rather than just being limited to a few selection boxes.
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Broadcom Clarity
October 2026
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For how long have I used the solution?
I started on the software in July of 2007. It has been 15 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It has been very reliable. It has improved over time. In some of the earlier versions, they didn't have pre-checked utilities to validate your setup to see if you're going to run into a problem, and in the later versions, they started introducing that. It really improved the upgrade capabilities. That would be one place where I would give them credit for improving.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is incredibly scalable. It is deployed on-prem. I ran into a little bit of a complication trying to move to the cloud, and then I saw someone offer a solution to that problem. Basically, the application needs to be able to communicate with itself, and we set up multiple instances. In a cloud environment, you can basically set up a super large instance of a cloud environment and have all the instances on that same cloud server. We had the opportunity to move to a cloud, and I just didn't do that because I didn't have a solution to that simulcast issue where the application needed that to work, but the cloud didn't offer it. In a cloud environment, because it doesn't allow multicast, you'd have to expand just one cloud server, but you can re-instantiate a cloud server with a larger environment, but with the on-prem solution, you can just add another server and add instances and some items. You can just keep expanding. It is very expandable.
In terms of usage, in my organization, they're using it for project and portfolio management, but not as much for time or resource tracking as they used to. Its usage changes with the business environment. So, it is rather unpredictable.
I believe there are 2,000 users at the moment. We were at a high of 10,000 for a while, but then they scaled back a bit. We have all of our contractors entering time via the Clarity system, and then I have an interface with an external company called Beeline, where we export timesheets there, and that is for a contractor payment processing center. The system is very dynamic where you can generate exports and transfers like that. They create projects within Clarity, and this is where portfolio management comes into play. I transfer the assignments and the project information to Workday. The resources enter their time in Workday, but the project design and tracking are kept track of in Clarity because Workday, I guess, doesn't allow the same level of detail that Clarity does. I know it sounds a little complicated, but that's the way companies work.
How are customer service and support?
I regularly have tickets, mostly for complications in trying to generate reports or something like that, or if a user has some trouble with a financial report or something else where they get an unexpected result. Usually, we find that it is just a data issue. A lot of the problems you run into are just because the data gets put in incorrectly, and it takes a bit to find that, especially when there are millions of records.
I would rate their support at least a nine out of ten. They're pretty responsive, and you can escalate tickets. With some of the earlier versions, I had a call that lasted 36 hours. I went around the globe and a half. You start with the US support, and then you move to the next time zone, and then to Australia, and then to India, and then to England, and then back to the US. It was a little difficult, but we finally were able to come to a solution, which was really good.
How was the initial setup?
I came, and it was already in use. I was put into designing solutions for importing data and exporting data. They have a custom scripting language called GEL scripting language, and because I had a history in that as well as databases, I was able to take on multiple roles without too much difficulty.
In terms of maintenance, the system requires you to monitor it and keep track of errors and such, but so far, what I've noticed is that a majority of the errors are user data-driven. It is medium-light as far as maintenance goes. They've improved the application over time to where some of the maintenance-level jobs have become more stable.
They have a job called time slicing, which breaks time data into its different components, and occasionally, in the previous versions, it would run a long time on year turnovers and month turnovers. The year was the biggest one, where it would run for a couple of days. Now, it runs almost instantly all the time. That was a giant improvement.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The licensing costs are a little bit high, and unfortunately, it has been a while since I've had that paperwork in front of me. I don't remember how much it was, but it seemed like it was fairly high.
It is probably comparable to some of the other solutions because I do know that, for example, on a lot of the AWS stuff, they found that the costs wound up being higher than having some on-prem solution. Comparatively, Clarity is within the price range of other solutions.
What other advice do I have?
The one tip that seems to be fairly universal is to get management approval or get executive sponsors for it, and it would be best to implement it universally across an entire company so that it is not like you're just feeding this set of resources over here and not setting up other resources. Universality is probably the easiest way for the best implementation because I have sincerely complex scripts to auto setup resources. Originally, we had it based on sets of team codes. So, I created a dynamic team code list to only activate this set of resources and not others. It becomes complicated when you only partially implement the solution, or technically, it is more complicated on the programming side.
I would rate it a seven because it is very dynamic. You can generate any of the metrics and fields you want, and it has a lot of great out-of-the-box calculations. Some of the complications come when your company decides to change directions. It does take a bit to find all the changes you made. There is a little bit of a complication there. For example, if you customize a lot of screens and such, it is a little tough to keep track of what changes. That can become a complication. Out of the box, it has got a lot of great project and resource calculations and financial calculations that you could readily implement anywhere.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Georgy, can you pinpoint the benefits you have found in being a part of the community of users? How is it impacted the usability and effectiveness of the solution?