Planview PPM Pro Previous Solutions

JA
IT Project Manager at Orange España

We used Microsoft Project, but it is an offline solution that's packaged with Microsoft Office. We also used Jira, but it is limited to 10 users on the free license, so it doesn't fit our purposes. 

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DM
IT Project Manager at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

I have used Microsoft Solutions like MS Project or MS Planner and Teams. With those tools, you have the ability to add it to your calendar. I think that's the one thing that's missing from PPM Pro.

From the portfolio standpoint, Microsoft isn't as good. It's easy from a Planview perspective. You go in and you can either do it from the project level or you could do it from the portfolio level. It goes both ways. It's pretty easy and you can do bulk edits and bulk deletes. It's pretty flexible.

Projectplace was used by our marketing team. I know some folks were using MS Project, some people were using SharePoint, some people were using Planner, and some people were using Excel. They're being phased out now.

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SB
Global IT PMO Manager at a wholesaler/distributor with 5,001-10,000 employees

We use Teams across the entire company, SharePoint, Project, Word, Excel, and a lot of us use Visio. They are pretty integrated. We run on Office 365, so once you get that license, you have access to all.

Microsoft is definitely not a project solution. Planview is much more consolidated and everything talks to each other. I was listening to them talk about single sign-on, everything for Planview products, and I know we've got access to Projectplace and LeanKit, but we never really set those up. I'm still not really clear on how those all work together, but at some point, I will spend the time to do that.

I came to the realization that I needed a tool like this the first week that I came to work at my company and realized I was going to have to manage a portfolio on a spreadsheet. That's when I knew.

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Buyer's Guide
Planview PPM Pro
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Planview PPM Pro. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
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SS
Developer at Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.

We also use Micro Focus PPM for project management in our organization and we are trying to migrate all the users from that to PPM Pro. We see the value to it and we have a huge team working on that migration. 

I think some divisions also use Microsoft Project. 

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SB
PMO Manager at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees

We use Microsoft Project and Teams as well as part of this process. It's been a while since I've used the Microsoft Project tool suite. Microsoft Project has a lot of different types of applications to store different types of data within the project. For example, for risks and issues, we'd have to create a team site in SharePoint, for example, whereas in Planview, it's an all in one application. I'm very quick to be able to jump around to individual areas within the system. We're at the very early adoption stage of Teams at the moment. 

There are pros and cons to each. In terms of speed, because it's on-premise, the local application is very quick. The downside with Projects is that it is very difficult to aggregate that data together. With Planview, bearing in mind that software is a service, it has so many opportunities to configure the system and also lock it down as much as you want, as long as you can get that standard configuration. With Microsoft Projects, it's very difficult to get that standard. You'll have people managing projects in the way that they're used to, which then becomes a big issue for us to translate that into the standardized reporting. Whereas with Planview, we can lock that down. We know exactly what our project managers need to enter when they're not entering information that we need and it's just a click of a button to get a report out when we need it.

Before PPM Pro we were using Microsoft Project desktop with Excel PowerPoint. It was a case of 90% of our time was spent collating information and presenting it in PowerPoint rather than actually doing the value-add work, which was to do the analysis on what data is actually telling me.

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RM
Director Enterprise Applications at Nassau Health Care Corporation

Prior to using this solution, we came from Project Web Access, which is a Microsoft SharePoint-based project management tool. That tool allowed us to centralize to a degree but it's still, from a team member's perspective, a decentralized experience where a team member had multiple different project workspaces or SharePoint sites to go to for each project they were assigned to. Their issues, risks, and tasks were all in different locations.

Planview allows us to have a one-stop-shop specifically for our team members. That experience alone has been hugely impactful. It allows people to see a dashboard of work that they're responsible for, and feel like they're not jumping from one website to another and trying to figure out what's the biggest priority is that they have to work on.

We knew with Project Web Access that we were coming to a lifecycle end. That product suite was starting to be decommissioned from Microsoft and we were forced to look for different opportunities. That, coupled with the IT organization wanting to take the next step in their maturity process and we wanted to marry our PM process with a tool that could support it. So, we did a full product review process and Planview really met all of our needs.

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KG
Solutions Development Manager at Wake County

I have used other Microsoft solutions. I don't think they're on the same playing level. I see Microsoft Project as a heavy tool when it comes to project management. I think Planner has similar features to Projectplace and it's the same thing with Teams. Teams has the functionality for the cross-collaboration and they integrate seamlessly because they're all Microsoft tools. With Microsoft, you have one license and you're integrated with all of those things. You don't have to pay a fee to integrate one tool to the next. It would be nice if Planview did the same thing.

I don't think we could do what we do with Planview with Microsoft. We've tried. Planview has more functionality within one application than multiple applications in the Microsoft world. You can do everything in one place, which is a benefit for us, speaking from our experience, not having to go from Excel to SharePoint, to Planner, to Project. Having to do all these functions in different applications rather than having it all in one place is the key benefit.

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TS
Management consultant at Sloan Consulting

I've used every leading PPM solution, and I was contracted by a client of Planview.

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SV
Program Manager at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

The decision to move to PPM Pro was done a long time back (before my time in the company). I am sure that stakeholders would have evaluated many options before they took a call to use PPM Pro.

I have used Microsoft Project for project management in the past. Though MS Project helps to capture tasks, it does not have an extensive capability to hold timesheets and to capture project/product information. PPM Pro is way beyond on that aspect from what we have in Microsoft Project.

During the horizon event, Planview introduced the collaborative environment and Coffee Break area for the brainstorming aspect. This is something we use in different platforms currently (like MS Teams). I believe that such features will enhance the adaptability and improve the acceptance of PPM Pro for more stakeholders/users.

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JA
Client Support and Portfolio Management at British Columbia Lottery Corp

Before Daptiv, we used its sister product Changepoint. We switched because of the usability side. Changepoint, although a really good product, was too complex for our needs, and at the time, we were having issues. The Changepoint company had been bought out by the Daptiv company, and we switched over software at that point, which helped us with the adoption on our side.

I have, personally, used several different pieces of software from different companies: PowerSteering, Open Plan Professional, COBRA, Microsoft Solutions, et cetera.

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SD
Business Analyst II at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees

Previously, the project managers would use MS Project, which they're now really doing in the PPM Tool. We would also have the Charter and Word Docs and stuff like that we'd be trying to incorporate that into the product as well. We're not having multiple things off-site or outside of the system anymore.

We switched off MS Project for consistency - so that all of the information is in the tool and we can provide the status of the project schedule on the dashboards that are sent out to the project team members weekly. The added bonus to switching is all of the roll-up capabilities, having it all in different spreadsheets, and having to pull all that together without all the manual processes. Just having the ability to run real-time reports and have those delivered automatically is a huge benefit and offers great time savings.

There's not any direct syncing between the two tools. This product does have the ability to export into an XML file that you can upload into a project. You can do that on both solutions if you need to. I don't know how many of our project managers do that. I would imagine most of them just keep it within PPM Pro.

Overall, PPM Pro is easier to use. It's all in one place, so I'm not having to go locate several different documents to pull the information I need. It's all within the tool. I like the task list so much more than I do MS Project.MS Project has way too much other stuff that we probably don't need for our size organization.

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AW
Senior Project Manager at Husch Blackwell

We were using a blend of products. We're using a Microsoft Project, Microsoft Planner, and Microsoft Teams. There was nothing that tied them altogether. We looked at trying to implement some integration tools. They worked, but you're on your own with trying to keep that all running.

So, instead of managing our project portfolio, we are managing the process. This is a much better tool for that.

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JS
Director, Project Management at TradeStation

We use JIRA, but we have had some challenges with using that. That's why we had to implement Planview PPM Pro.

I have a background in implementing PPM solutions and building PMOs. The company knew that we needed a visualization tool to streamline our processes. 

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Mike  - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Project Manager at a healthcare company with 5,001-10,000 employees

I've used MS Project at previous employers. Compared to Microsoft Project, PPM Pro is quite a bit different. We used Project previously just as a standalone to build a project, put in our tasks, do our work breakdown structure, and that was it. We didn't use it for a server or enterprise base where we did any capacity, demand planning, or intake like we did in PPM Pro. We do enjoy that functionality, that there's a lot more going on in PPM Pro and a lot more use cases that we can use it for. It's served us well, and we're looking forward to seeing what else we can do with it.

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VC
Sr R&D Manager at Thermo Fisher Scientific

We were using something called PDWare. People hated it. Then, we had a team that went out and looked at the other things out there. I'm not sure of all the things that they considered but when they showed us what PPM Pro could do, it was such a big difference from what PDWare was doing, we said, "Let's give that a try."

Before we started using a tool like this to track what people are assigned to, we would have people who the managers thought should be on certain projects but they apparently had never heard of them. They didn't know they were on those projects and they would be working on some other projects that they thought they were supposed to do. The managers were like, "No, you're supposed to be on this one." So, there was a lot of miscommunication going on. 

Now, everything is clear. They can go through the tool, look at it, and go, "I'm on this one." Or, if they see something that they don't agree with, they say, "Hey, I thought you told me..." and then at least those conversations are happening and clears things up.

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MS
Project Manager at New Orleans Convention Center

This is the third company that I have used the solution in. I was the one who was instrumental in managing the tool at the previous two companies.

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EG
AVP at LPL Financial Holdings Inc.

My company previously used Innotas. One of the reasons they switched is because Planview purchased Innotas and then they saw Planview as being a more robust solution than Innotas.

In the past, I've used Oracle PPM, which is the Oracle demand management tool. In creating reports, I think OPPM is very easy. It's Oracle-based so they have a very straightforward database and their reporting capabilities are pretty much a plug and play. That's very straightforward in terms of user interface and the user experience but OPPM is not as great as Planview. They were lagging on that side of the fence.

I've gone through multiple versions of Planview, multiple instances of Planview, and multiple instances of how reporting was done in Planview and there's a lot of human interaction with it as well. You need to build a universe and how you build that universe and what reporting tool you're going to use to be your reporting input, endpoint tool or reporting solution plays a lot into it. Planview gives you a variety of different options to go with. Some are great, some are not, and it just depends on the user experience and the knowledge of the person. Even though pretty much all of them are intuitive and all of them do the same. All of them have to give you the same solution. It's also usability. I'm going to compare that between an iOS device versus an Android device. They do the same thing but the user interface is completely different.

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GW
Director of IT Application Development at a construction company with 1,001-5,000 employees

We were previously using paper, pencil, and Excel spreadsheets.

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DG
Director of Project Management at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

No one knew what was going on and projects weren't getting completed.

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NS
Director IT Strategic Initiatives and PMO at a insurance company with 501-1,000 employees

When we purchased it, it was still called Innotas. The organization hired a PMO manager who had worked in a different organization and he had experience working with Innotas.

We use MS Project and MS Teams. We never looked at any integration with PPM Pro, since we worked the process to a different aspect of work. Microsoft and PPM Pro are two different things. From the project management perspective, you can't do any time tracking in Project, and you can't do any capacity management across your portfolio. PPM Pro is focused on complex projects.

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it_user568227 - PeerSpot reviewer
Enterprise Project Office Analyst at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

This is the first PPM solution used by my organization.

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it_user572589 - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Manager at a pharma/biotech company with 1,001-5,000 employees

We previously used various tools that didn’t map to our processes very well.

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it_user475320 - PeerSpot reviewer
PMO Supervisor / Senior IT Project Manager at a government with 51-200 employees

Previously, we were using Basecamp and Microsoft Project. We needed a global solution that would meet with the leadership project reporting expectations.

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Buyer's Guide
Planview PPM Pro
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Planview PPM Pro. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
767,847 professionals have used our research since 2012.