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Strategic planning and project execution, effectively orchestrated through Planisware Enterprise, can achieve value delivered. In other words, “make vision reality.” Expansive business transformation is a corporate use case when at least one company executive sponsors company-wide commitment and vigorous participation.

Planisware Enterprise offers very practical dashboards and bubble charts that visualize integrated advanced analytics. KPIs include resource load and risk levels; net present value; return on investment. Project data cleanly consolidates to portfolio views. Recently, One-pager (swimlane reporting) can integrate directly with Planisware Enterprise. Generating monthly reports for projects takes far less tedium and time.

Data exchange and integration with Office 365 and Google Suite applications continues to mature. Project managers can work productively from within Planisware Enterprise. Native access to MS Office Online applications from within E7 include interactive editing and data integration from corporate email, documents, and worksheets. Planisware project data, graphs, and consolidations can flow into PowerPoint slide presentations.

Software as a Service (SaaS) speeds up deployment and simplifies maintenance. Planisware earned ISO 27001 certification in late 2019Q1 for superior data security. Hosting E7 on local Linux servers remains an alternative 

Standardized colors and clearer icons have made the overall interface more modern, inviting, and usable than earlier releases. Documentation and tutoring videos, accessible to users online from within Planisware, has become abundant and professionally edited to a high standard. 

Creating and using formulas in Planisware Enterprise is now streamlined, with integrated formula validation. In my judgment, having more extensive "offline" documentation would benefit new users.

Historically with Planisware, the load array, a feature that has been available since the 1990s with improvements, enables very flexible time slicing that surpasses such reporting capability via Excel. In concert with native and composite cost curves, the load array charts provides thoughtful, adaptable consolidation and drill-down for time-phased data such as capacity (resource availability) and demand (planned or archived hours on tasks).

 Planisware Explorer (PEX) offers enhanced capabilities for reporting and charting that goes beyond the functions in the Report Builder module, such as dynamic queries. PEX requires extra training for operational proficiency, typically from multiple fee-based Planisware courses.

Administration module enables super-user to control visibility of modules for regular Planisware users. The Data page shows available Object types.

E7 improves documents management to centralize communications among project users and stakeholders. Because the documents are included in each Planisware environment/configuration, messaging and documents associated with projects are easier to access than being spread through normal corporate email. Planisware stores project related documents and messages in a single database. Snapshots (backups) at a given point in time are easy to make and restore to alternate environments, even on an automated nightly basis.

Program and project roadmaps integrate well with PowerPoint. Slide elements are editable and dynamically linked (if so specified) to detail projects. Capability to drill down into project specifics is mature, native functionality.

Strategic Portfolio module offers an OKR page (objectives and key results) to connect specific company strategy with defined measurable actions.

Planisware helpfully distributes incremental updates about three times annually. Extent of the client base and collective user expectations push priority improvements into new versions and resolve rare technical glitches rapidly. What any single user or small client may earnestly request for increasing productivity may take years for development to start—unless one pays rather dearly for underwriting special services from Planisware’s offshore support group.

Neglect of formerly active users
Planisware has been a profitable business and attends well to paying clients. Individual users, particularly those who suddenly lack affiliation with a paying client between jobs have been bottom priority in my experience. Service tickets don’t apply for this category of formerly active users.

Recognizing expansive growth in the worldwide Planisware user community, Planisware should address this continuing education defect.

I recommend that Planisware provides formerly active users privilege of connectivity with Planisware “playground” environments that are periodically refreshed with a current release version. This new option would cultivate “hands on” proficiency in the overall Planisware user community.

My Planisware journey began in 1996. Longest employment was at Merck (2002–2011) and continues with contingent worker assignments. I have nearly twenty years overall experience with Planisware, primarily for pharma organizations.

Planisware Enterprise, including OPX2, has three decades of commercial availability, with over 600 organizational clients and 800,000 global users.

Clients include PepsiCo, Johnson and Johnson, Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Navistar, Beam Suntory, Air Tahiti, Michigan Department of Transportation, Airbus, AstraZeneca, Zebra Technologies, Ariane Group, Alcon, BMS, Volkswagen Financial Services, Bosch Global Software Technologies, Total Energies.

Stability, particularly with Linux hosting of Intranet Server, is consistently good. Most cases of stability problems traced back to incorrect data, such as schedule dates that are impossible in the real world. Identifying and fixing bad data resolved stability issues about 80% of the time. In one or two cases since 2002, a Planisware update (patch), in one incident received within twenty-four hours after reporting, remedied incorrect data handling.

Planisware scales effortlessly when hosted on decent Linux Server(s) with ample RAM and sufficient CPUs. 

In a SaaS environment, what Planiware determines is adequate performance by sevice level agreement may not align with your company's users over time. Planisware can upgrade servers your organization uses after appropriate negotiation. 

Customer Service:

Very good overall. Planisware tries to be customer-centric. Their approach has been primarily reactive to customer questions and concerns, not proactive and comprehensively enabling. Customers typically receive better answers and solutions when they are politely aggressive with Planisware.

Technical Support:

Between good to excellent, depending upon the proficiency of the individual Planisware consultant who responds. In my experience, some answers via SupportUS have been incorrect. The majority of responses are helpful and valid.

Positive

My first experience in 1998 was spearheading selection and adoption of a commercial, off-the-shelf project management package to replace a "home-grown" project management program that was not Y2K compliant. Flexibility and configurability of Planisware were compelling business advantages compared to the competition.

Scope of implementation, both for initial setup and major updates, calls for multi-talented team effort.

It is customary to have at least three distinct Planisware environments per customer: develop; test; production. I recommend planning for a playground environment (similar to develop) to allow pretesting of new releases without disturbing the integrity of the current develop environment). Having a distinct train environment allows new users to gain operational proficiency without compromising production. One operational question that repeatedly occurs is, "what has changed overnight?" An automated nightly backup environment can be of great help in answering these questions quickly. If your organization uses a monthly or quarterly point of reference for project data, one or more environments for keeping this copy accessible  records can help greatly.

Establish a priority of gaining technical proficiency with Planisware's tools so that your company can handle internally the vast majority of ongoing operational improvements.

I recommend nightly proactive analysis of Planisware Intranet Server log files to pinpoint issues before they become troublesome to the user community. Typical problem resolution investigation tends to fixate reactively on user-reported glitches and may miss emerging trends. Proactive global analysis of log files can reveal quantitative correlation over time of application stability and health. Creating timely Planisware versions is also beneficial.

Planview Portfolios is used for work management, scheduling, and milestone communication, resource management, and financial planning across multiple departments to create an enterprise-wide picture of the health of the organization. I use it to track and communicate key items to stakeholders around the organization and automate reporting of that information.

I have been using Planview Portfolios to manage the five-year rolling capital plan where there is a centralized location for all projects forecasting and strategic alignment.

I also manage our IT initiatives, and I love that Planview Portfolios enhances visibility. Visibility into our work and resources allows for better organization and decision-making processes.

The best features Planview Portfolios offers are visibility enhancement, robust system performance, and comprehensive resource management.

This enhanced visibility in Planview Portfolios ensures that all users can easily track progress, identify bottlenecks, and make informed decisions to optimize workflow efficiency. When discussing robust system performance, the system's robust performance in meeting our various work requirements effectively and efficiently stands out. It is very stable and reliable, contributing to a seamless user experience, which enables users to focus on their tasks without disruptions.

I also love the financial breakdown, planning and prioritization, and attribute collection on projects in Planview Portfolios.

Planview Portfolios has positively impacted my organization since I started using it. It has enabled me to gain insights into the full scope of work consuming resources. I am able to know where the resources are being consumed more, especially which resources are consuming the most. I have been able to leverage resources management and resource time reporting, which enabled the generation of $90 million in annual revenue through labor billing to customers.

User information and resource information in Planview Portfolios are separate. I wish automation worked better because, although some of the automation has been done in the user creation using UiPath, I do not find any necessary documentation for better understanding.

Additionally, there should be plenty of resources online, such as tutorials and videos on how to guide and how to use Planview Portfolios, especially with its robust features, explaining each feature and how it works. That would make the onboarding process smoother and easier.

I have been using Planview Portfolios for at least five years.

Planview Portfolios is very stable; I have not experienced any downtime.

Planview Portfolios is very scalable because it helps my organization handle operations efficiently and effectively.

Customer support for Planview Portfolios is very proactive and responsive 24/7.

I previously used Microsoft Project.

I decided to switch from Microsoft Project to Planview Portfolios because I find it gives me a better platform to work with projects. With the use of Planview Portfolios, project parties can run stand-ups and interact with the cards on the boards more readily, promoting collaboration.

I have seen a return on investment with Planview Portfolios, allowing for better resource allocation, which increases revenue and productivity. Resource organizations have indicated that they are spending a significantly longer period of time doing their monthly nominations. Planview Portfolios has enabled me to have a better financial workflow, and I am able to make data-driven decisions easily. Additionally, I can utilize built-in collaboration features such as virtual whiteboarding, brainstorming, Kanban boards, and notifications to keep the team aligned. It also delivers a set of shared metrics focused on customer value, such as speed and quality, to achieve business results while being able to roll up objectives and key results in the system where work gets done to ensure strategy informs execution and vice versa.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Planview Portfolios has been cost-effective and fairly pocket-friendly.

Before choosing Planview Portfolios, I evaluated other options, including Roadmunk.

Planview Portfolios helped me generate $90 million in annual revenue through better resource allocation and accurate billing. It was really helpful to manage the budget across different segments. Approval flows in Planview Portfolios are really helpful whenever there is a cost involved, and it would be beneficial if the focus was more on the strategic reports. It is very strategic.

I think Planview Portfolios is great for those who are looking to manage high-level projects. It is a reliable tool for project management, financial planning, resource management, time tracking, and cost tracking.

Planview Portfolios is deployed in my organization using Hybrid Cloud.

The cloud provider I use is Amazon Web Services (AWS).

I also think resource and capacity management in Planview Portfolios is great. It makes it seamless to manage projects, resources, and capacity management.

I would rate this review an 8 out of 10.