What is our primary use case?
I am the regional infrastructure manager, heading the entire IT infrastructure for my company. We are headquartered in Belgium and I work with a subsidiary in India, where we have 23 locations. My job includes taking care of all of the infrastructure-related activities. These are operational and project-related activities pertaining to network security and cloud-based solutions.
I use LucidChart as a brainstorming tool. It helps to ideate the organizational structure and anything to do with workflows and architecture. For example, when something new comes up, I turn to the platform to help with brainstorming and ideation, and it has helped to a great extent.
We use it as a mind map tool, for decision-making workflows, and technical workflows. There are multiple reasons that we utilize it, depending on the use case.
How has it helped my organization?
I also use LucidSpark, which is another tool that helps with brainstorming. Particularly in my role as an infrastructure manager for the region, I need to work on strategies. There are always a number of challenges, particularly during the transformation stage. I'm required to bring in the right products and the right skills. When I am stuck and face a blank, LucidSpark helps me to move forward.
The functionality for documenting things like processes is excellent. The templates are already available and all you need to do is bring one in and use it. This saves a lot of time and effort in terms of documentation, and you can export it to any format you need. It allows us to give our reports a professional touch.
I have used LucidChart to create a database schema for one of my colleagues. It supports the notations that we use, such as one-to-many, many-to-many, and others. There is support for components such as private keys, foreign keys, and other such definitions. It is something that is easy to do.
In terms of integrations, we use Microsoft teams as our platform for communication and I was able to successfully integrate it with LucidChart. The one limitation with teams is that people have to be comfortable with viewing things on a web browser.
Using this product brings up the wow factor when I present my ideas. I don't have to rely on PowerPoint presentations, which is another skill. The graphical representation also makes it more open to peer contribution and focusing on a problem.
This product has improved our collaboration and we now do it in a much better way. However, we do not yet have several people collaborating on the same version of a document at the same time. For example, earlier today I was working on a project with infrastructure managers from several regions. We were all on a call and I presented my thought process and ideas. I was the only contributor and I shared my screen. Although I was getting opinions from people, I was doing all of the work on the board. Ideally, people would treat it like a working session and do things like putting sticky notes on the board. In the future, having this type of collaboration would be great.
The plan is to let people know that the option for this type of collaboration is available, and have people come forward to contribute. This way, we start thinking and doing transformation on a different scale.
I can see that using LucidChart is going to save us time in project development, collaboration, and brainstorming. I can't estimate exactly how much it will save us without first having a baseline, although I can say that without the tool, ideation would take me approximately five times longer. The time it takes to complete a project has been drastically reduced.
What is most valuable?
The interface is easy for a layperson to use and adapt to.
There are a lot of pre-existing templates available to assist with a variety of methodologies.
Several different charts are available that include A3, fishbone, and others. There are also a lot of good techniques embedded, such as cyborg, lean, and agile. This helps us to set up the platform and choose which template to use, based on the problem statement.
This product is very adaptive and bringing it in has saved us a lot of time. Once we started using it, the thought process improved.
One of the best features is being able to share work product and opinion with my peers or take it to my CIO. There are good options and it shows how good our tools are at helping with brainstorming and ideating the thought process.
What needs improvement?
There is a basic function that I struggle with, in the interface, which is having to switch between the editing and navigation modes. A lot of clicks are required when switching between edit and navigation modes and I think that many could potentially be avoided by handling the tasks at the same time.
For example, when I want to edit something or place an object then I have to click on the arrow. If instead, I need to zoom in, zoom out, or navigate to another area, I have to click the hand button, which will be replaced with a mouse cursor. If there was a feature to cut down on the number of clicks then it would be helpful.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using LucidChart for approximately one month. I have been delegated the responsibility of evaluating the effectiveness of the tool in my region.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
This is absolutely a stable solution. I haven't seen any glitches and in my experience, it is good.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have a global moderator, who is a system architect. This person distributes responsibilities to the regional level, such as North America and Latin America. EMEA and India are also regions, and I am responsible for India.
At this moment, it is a little early to talk about scalability because, for the part of our organization in India, I'm the first person using it. We will expand in the next two years and we will be doing a lot of activities. This includes transformational activities and we need to bring some brilliant brains together. When we do that, this tool will be a great help in terms of facilitating collaboration.
When we get to this point, we will definitely seek the help of Lucid experts.
How are customer service and technical support?
A gentleman from customer support has reached out to me but unfortunately, my calendar has been booked and I haven't had the time to speak with them. As such, I have not yet spoken with anybody from Lucid support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
If I want to reorganize my unit, there are multiple platforms that I can work with. I can use draw.io, Visio, or Miro, but adopting LucidChart was better from a strategic perspective.
At this time, it is my responsibility to evaluate the effectiveness of the tool in my region. I'll be in a position to evangelize the product across the whole organization, based on the key outcomes and whether the success criteria have been met. After I demonstrate its worth, the whole organization will adopt these tools.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is pretty straightforward.
For a layperson, it is quite interactive and quite helpful. From my experience, it was smooth.
What was our ROI?
We have seen ROI in terms of time savings, which naturally helps in terms of costs.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
At €167 per user per year, the pricing is slightly higher than Visio, but it's worth it.
First, it is just a little bit higher than Microsoft Visio. Second, there are a lot of additional features.
Lucid is a single platform but they have two products, LucidChart and LucidSpark. These go hand-in-hand and it would benefit many users if these two products were combined into a single, cost-effective license. I think that by combining these two products, Lucid can be very competitive and it would be a great value add.
One of the things that I do not yet know is whether anonymous users need a license in order to contribute. For example, if I have a license and I bring in some anonymous participants to interact with the board, I don't know whether the license covers them to do so, or if it is more limited than that. In other words, I am unclear as to whether a single license extends to multiple users.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Prior to selecting LucidChart, we were assessing multiple tools. Miro was one of the contenders, as was Lucid. I worked with Miro in between periods where I was using Lucid.
When exploring the various options, I found that Lucid offered a lot of existing templates. These helped me a lot with brainstorming.
A more complete evaluation was done by our global team. That said, I don't foresee any disadvantages in using it.
What other advice do I have?
We are trying to bring in Jira for project management, and if that happens then I plan to integrate it with LucidChart.
There are no Mac users in my organization so it is not very important to us that LucidChart accommodates both Mac and PC users.
My intention is to be an ambassador within the organization and promote Lucid to multiple people who are in need. We need to have this solution used regularly by the team, although the first thing to do is identify the people who need it. I've been liaising with multiple people to understand how it would assist, and how we can make the best use of the tool.
Once we have a large enough audience, we will contact Lucid for help on improving the effectiveness of the tool. They may suggest certain things that can be done. In the meantime, however, I am passionate about using the platform and will continue to explore it on my own.
Overall, this is a good solution and for a layperson, it will be very easy to get started with and adapt to using.
I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
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