Planview Portfolios OverviewUNIXBusinessApplication

Planview Portfolios is the #3 ranked solution in top Enterprise Architecture Management tools and #4 ranked solution in top Project Portfolio Management tools. PeerSpot users give Planview Portfolios an average rating of 7.8 out of 10. Planview Portfolios is most commonly compared to Planview PPM Pro: Planview Portfolios vs Planview PPM Pro. Planview Portfolios is popular among the large enterprise segment, accounting for 70% of users researching this solution on PeerSpot. The top industry researching this solution are professionals from a computer software company, accounting for 19% of all views.
Planview Portfolios Buyer's Guide

Download the Planview Portfolios Buyer's Guide including reviews and more. Updated: May 2023

What is Planview Portfolios?

Planview Portfolios enables enterprises to accelerate strategic execution by integrating business and technology planning, optimizing all resources, and delivering breakthrough products, services, and customer experiences to achieve maximum business performance.

Planview Portfolios was previously known as Planview Enterprise One, Troux.

Planview Portfolios Customers

Zurich Insurance Group, Zumbotel Group, Carphone Warehouse

Planview Portfolios Video

Archived Planview Portfolios Reviews (more than two years old)

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IT Business Office Group Manager at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Only solution that offers capacity planning but is insufficient out-of-the-box
Pros and Cons
  • "It gives us flexibility in configuring assignments. We can do both Agile Teams and non-Agile Teams. This flexibility affects our ability to meet our company's particular needs by allowing us to work in a hybrid model, some Agile Teams, and some non-Agile Teams."
  • "The solution out-of-the-box that we established was insufficient. We had to purchase and set up OData. I don't believe that it's a great solution out-of-the-box but eventually you can get there."

What is our primary use case?

My primary use cases for this solution are: 

  • Time reporting
  • Portfolio management 
  • Capacity planning

How has it helped my organization?

Enterprise One has improved my organization by enabling us to stop committing to work that we can't do.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is capacity planning because only Planview does that. 

The resource capacity and availability have helped us to manage work by preventing us from starting work that we cannot consume.

It gives us flexibility in configuring assignments. We can do both Agile Teams and non-Agile Teams. This flexibility affects our ability to meet our company's particular needs by allowing us to work in a hybrid model, some Agile Teams, and some non-Agile Teams.

What needs improvement?

The solution out-of-the-box that we established was insufficient. We had to purchase and set up OData. I don't believe that it's a great solution out-of-the-box but eventually you can get there.

It does not provide end-to-end work management for the full spectrum of types of work in one tool. It also does not help with the prioritization of projects through alignment with strategic objectives.

The portfolio creation user interface needs improvement. It's not intuitive, from a user experience perspective. If you've never used it, it doesn't click here and then the next thing opens, click here, then the next thing opens. You get all the features upon opening to create a portfolio.

The request screens, the request process, and the workflows have a poor user experience also. The workflows are definitely not intuitive. You're clicking links and going back and forth. It's way too many clicks and it doesn't make sense. It's not intuitive. On the request side, it hasn't been updated in a long time and it's the entry point for all of our work. It could provide more data value than it does today.

Buyer's Guide
Planview Portfolios
May 2023
Learn what your peers think about Planview Portfolios. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2023.
706,951 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Planview Enterprise One for 15+ years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is fairly high. The only problem we've had so far is that for whatever reason, Friday morning, the page load is ridiculously slow. I don't know if that's when the staff is doing updates or what, but Friday mornings are very slow.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I'm not worried about scalability. 

We have about 450 project managers, resource managers, team members, leadership viewers, and power admin users.

There are two staff members for maintenance. They both administer maintenance, consult on new capabilities, and develop reports and new functionality.

We're only one of 20 lines of business in the organization and we're the only ones currently using the solution. Within that number, there is around 20% adoption. Time reporters have to report time, but I don't know that I would consider that. They do it, but that's not a tipping point. We do have plans to increase usage. We have a proof of concept with one department outside of ours.

How are customer service and support?

I'm unimpressed with technical support. When my folks call or email they say if it doesn't do whatever it's supposed to do out-of-the-box they can't answer a question and we end up back with some solution consultant.

How was the initial setup?

I did not enjoy the setup process. It comes with a set way of thinking that is sometimes limiting.

We started the last deployment in June of last year and we deployed early November. Employees started using it a hundred percent in December of last year.

What about the implementation team?

We used a consultant from Planview for the deployment. They went above and beyond, but their approach needs upgrading.

What was our ROI?

We are seeing the start of ROI. We have additional capability. It didn't save us money at all, but it gave us new capabilities.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I like where they're headed with the whole FLEX model. Your license gives you access to whichever tool is the one that makes sense on the Planview platform. That was a pleasant surprise. That has not been their approach over the 10 years I've had exposure to them.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We also evaluated PPM Pro and prior to that, in another organization, I evaluated CA and PPM Pro before it was owned by Planview. We have applications of Workfront, WeTeam, Trello, Azure DevOps, and various things.

Enterprise One's sweet spot is people, work, and money. They're pretty much the only one that can do that hat trick. If you want that, you have to get them, but we don't use it for any team capability. It's too cumbersome and the user interface is still lacking.

What other advice do I have?

My advice would be to discuss your data upfront before you agree to an implementation. See what it looks like to have the data you need and what sort of costs would be required to do that from the very beginning. Then, see not only how will you visualize and record that data but how will you migrate data. That cost us a lot of time and delay in the user adoption because the migration of data was manual.

I would rate Enterprise One a six out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
IT Portfolio Management Senior Consultant at CNA Insurance
Real User
Real time information provided the ability to share the big-picture with the management
Pros and Cons
  • "Enterprise One has enabled us to eliminate Excel. We don't track financials anymore in an Excel format, which the company was doing before. Even now, being a new portfolio manager four months in, I'm able to just pick up my project. I'm able to see where I am right now. That improvised it to be more automated. The only missing part is the integration between tools. I'm not able to see my full schedule, but I know what are my important milestones are like watching the financials and all that stuff."
  • "Even though Enterprise One is easy and user-friendly, it could provide better training like a demo. Providing more tutorials or sessions would really help."

What is our primary use case?

We use Enterprise One for our Project/Portfolio Management. I'm new so I'm still learning about the tool but from what I know so far, right now, we mostly use it for tracking, status reporting, budget/financials/contracts, level of effort time tracking, and project governance.

How has it helped my organization?

Enterprise One has enabled us to minimize the usage of other tools like tracking in Excel and have one place of the source at a consolidated level. This tool has reduced the amount of time and improved visibility across the organization on Portfolio Management. Everything is in Planview. Planview is the source of truth. So that really helps us to efficiently look at the budget, scope, schedule and to identify if there is any variance. There's a lot of learning still to do as we are also new to this tool, but right now it works for us. 

There are also a few tool limitations, but this has also brought us together as a team and community to be creative, to revise and simplify the governance, focus on what is important to be tracked and reported. 

What is most valuable?

Real-time information. Enterprise One is good for enabling me to see what stage of work and the current financials. I'm able to see where it is during the project adaptation, project summary, and also comparison to the performance baseline. Since I'm still a little new to this, I am still learning how the organization is adapting to the tool. The Planview conference gave me a lot more ideas, in terms of what more I can do with Planview. 

We do have an in-house reporting and analytics team that are working on creating custom build reportings to generate tiles and utilizing the Power BI functionality. It has been really a very cool report that has graphics with color-coded information making it easy and user-friendly. Again, as we are still new to this tool, it has been continuous learning on how to use it better and as we continue to invest time, cost and efforts we are excited to explore what would be its full capabilities. 

We think that Enterprise One will help with the prioritization of projects through alignment with strategic objectives. We haven't gotten there yet because we're moving towards the product Portfolio Model.

What needs improvement?

When I just joined, it was very easy for me to pick up. I was able to get myself familiarized within a month or two. I think it's a very easy tool to use. Although Enterprise One is easy and user-friendly, currently the learnings have been more via trial and error, I think if Planview could provide better consistent training like a tool demo, structured training, how-tos that would help tremendously.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Enterprise One since I joined my company around four to five months ago but I believe it was rolled out in the organization about 1 year ago.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We're still learning about the tool being about 1 year in, so far it has been fulfilling the purpose and the need of the organization. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We are currently transitioning to a more Product based model and Planview has been a great tool to help us and I believe as we succeed that might give us the opportunity to explore other Planview products that might scale the use of this solution.

How are customer service and technical support?

Initially, it was challenging but most recently its been great. I've been in one of the few sessions that we had with the point of contact. We do have a list of the backlog of the things that weren't functioning as intended or something that needs to be added. Our recent rep has been very helpful.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Previously, my company used Oracle Primavera. I think they switched because of the stability. Planview gives the organization what they want. We're able to do all project/product management in a very simplified and yet robust manner without any added complexity.

How was the initial setup?

I wasn't involved in the setup of the tool here, but I heard was it was quite challenging specifically for configurations and to receive good technical support. It took a few executive escalations, but we were eventually assigned an excellent support representative. 

What other advice do I have?

I wasn't intimidated by Enterprise One because even though I'm totally new to Planview, it is very easy to use. It fits the purpose of what the organization wants. We just want to make sure we know how are we tracking our resources, budget, etc. Enhancing the integration part would help. So once we explore the integration aspect, like with JIRA, where we can pull the milestones in and automatically log time, etc, I think that will enhance what the company is trying to achieve.

Planview is pretty cool. It does what you need to do. My advice would be not to overcomplicate it.

I would rate Enterprise One an eight out of ten. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Planview Portfolios
May 2023
Learn what your peers think about Planview Portfolios. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2023.
706,951 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Project Manager at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Has good data warehousing but the UI is very hard for non-project managers to digest
Pros and Cons
  • "Its ability to create summary reports across multiple projects is one of the best features. They have very good data warehousing. You can put that out. You can tell that data warehousing from Planview Enterprise One is excellent."
  • "The number one thing that needs improvement is the UI. It should be easy for a casual project manager. It should provide customizable screens that can be a choice for project managers to choose as a professional level, medium level, and a very easy level."

What is our primary use case?

We use E1 to track scope, schedule and financials for R&D projects. Some R&D teams even use E1 for RCCP. 

E1 used to be used to track Transformation projects.

E1 have a very useful tool to bring accountability back into projects, make it very easy for us to assign teams and resources to activities in project and track the progress effectively.

How has it helped my organization?

It has helped with the prioritization of projects through alignment with strategic objectives, the leadership has been using E1 for Strategic alignment of Projects.

It helps us keep track of the salary/ hours spent on R&D projects using the time tracking feature, which enables project managers keep track of salary charges as we have hourly labor rates associated with BU's.

But  an issue that we are facing currently is most of the engineers have to submit their time sheets on multiple tools and since planview E1 is being used for only R&D project, the engineers opinionate that it is counter productive to enter timesheets, we are also not well versed with Lean costing to implement in the Org. 

We also track various project metrics which makes it simpler for Leadership to view the details.

Lifecycle management for projects is also commendable, where we have multiple types of projects. 

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features are the W&A screen. It provides a very useful view as well as the option to capture baselines. I can always review the progress of my projects with my team. It also allows me to capture the notes with respect to the progress. It also allows me to assign members to the task and ensure that they fill that timesheet. I know how much time they spent on certain tasks.

In terms of regular traditional project management and new product development, I would give its ability to see what stage work is at a six out of 10. Non-Project managers find the Ui and UX hard to digest. 

For Agile project management, having the feature of adding backlogs is every useful, but there are a lot of issues with Projectplace connectors as well as LeanKit connectors to Enterprise One, which hampers the Agile experience which is why it feels like a half-baked product. But I hear it has been fixed in newer updates and our Org is under process for update.

With respect to the forecast, I would say it does very basic forecasting of picking whatever we predict and just dividing it by months, quarters, and years. I would prefer to have AI technology in Planview Enterprise One to forecast and predict much better based on historical data. Since Enterprise One has been existing in Flowserve for the past 10 years, there's a lot of historic data that can be used to predict rather than forecast. There are a lot of solutions out there that would do the same.

Its ability to create project related summary reports across multiple projects is one of the best features. They have very good data warehousing.

It is easy to create dashboards using E1 data connectors or the Odata that Planview team has created for us. One of the few reasons why many in leadership likes planview E1.

Our organization is shifting towards Hybrid project management and currently, we are facing issues to re-use the E1 in a way to track projects. We might need to rethink our setup but there is room to improve the standard offering of E1 for Hybrid Pm, as well as update the UI.

What needs improvement?

Its view into RCCP and availability does not at all help us to manage resources. It is one of the worst features of Enterprise One where everybody in our company hates the tool and are sort of forced to use it for RCCP, some teams have moved to use other tools for the same and use E1 as recording tool only. 

Enterprise One does  not provide any insight to respective resources on the available work and the left out work when he or she goes to the timesheet. It is like filling an Excel sheet from 15 years ago. New solutions out there actually do a better job.

The solutions I am referring to are JIRA as well as Confluence. With that connectivity I see many of my IT teams doing Agile timesheet planning with sort of a background timer capturing the time being spent on a activity. 

Enterprise One has got a very rap in the organization due to its bad UI and complicated UX. The steep learning curve and inability of other non project resources finding it hard to use the tool makes it hard for people to recommend the tool.

The number one thing that needs improvement is the UI. It should be easy for even casual project managers. It should provide customizable screens that look modern and can be a choice for project managers to choose at a professional level, medium level, and a very easy level. I am thinking 3 separate standard Ui that you can choose as per level of users. 

Many PM;s track projects using different tools and sometimes they end up using PV as a record system.  

Enterprise One does not provide a good risk assessment functionality and does not provide a good what-if analysis functionality, it would be preferable to have this in a good UX. 

It does not provide end-to-end work management for the full spectrum of types of work in one tool. It's 50/50. It is very difficult to use Enterprise One as a tool that one would WANT to use to better the project. It is at this point, a record system that we are bring told to use as it gives nice metrics for leadership to make decisions. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Enterprise One for the last two and a half years and my company has been using it for 10+ years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I would give their stability an eight out of ten. It's quite stable. Here and there, there have been issues, but other than that, it is quite stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It can be scaled very nicely.

We have 2,000 to 3,000 users. The major chunk of these people are in engineering, if not, it's R&D project management.

Before it was ten people managing this solution but now that's down to two. 

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I also use Microsoft Project, basecamp and Project for the web.

We were using Excel sheets before and some people are just content with it but can't bring accountability there. Projectplace has been the right filling point between excels and Pm tools. 

But with PowerPlatform from MS, it is becoming easier to create our own tools for project management and we create simple UX for our teams. We are able to bring accountability as well. I think some of us are using Power Apps because we feel the UX in E1 is bad.

We can aggregate E1, Projectplace and Power Apps data to PowerBI dashboard and it is pretty great.

How was the initial setup?

I was involved with the setup for my R&D projects. The setup was extremely straightforward. It was a single sign-on, so it was pretty good.


What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

All the admin guys take care of pricing and licensing and I'm pretty sure it's expensive.

What other advice do I have?

I would suggest avoiding Enterprise One for small scale or medium scale businesses and go for Projectplace or even LeanKit because they are the best parts of the Planview suite. Enterprise One is old, it's aging and they need to revamp it. Large scale companies that can afford E1 for leadership, can look into it but still its difficult to recommend. 

I realize that most R&D project managers don't know how to use the system because of its user interface. But for those who do understand how to use the system, it can be an extremely powerful tool. But a project is done with a large group of people and that group don't like it.  

On a personal level, I actually like Planview Enterprise One, because I know how to use the tool pretty well. So somebody who knows the tool quite nicely can get tremendous value out of it.I do not use other PM tools like many other PM's, I use E1 and Projectplace quite rigorously and have created PowerBI dashboards for teams, sponsors and customers. For some projects I do use PowerApps to create a front end and use that data to manually input data to E1.

It's been extremely useful for me in managing projects as well as in my career. And if people weren't so hell-bent on not liking it, I would still continue to use Planview Enterprise One for everything. It's like a love-hate relationship for me. 

I would rate Enterprise One a six out of ten. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Other
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Planview Administrator at AXA XL
Real User
Our project managers use visualizations to see interconnectivity between work, resources, and strategy
Pros and Cons
  • "Its view into resource capacity and availability helps us to manage work. In reporting, we use this facility to help with resource capacity and availability. It also helps to see how much we are using. We derive that information from the work and resource management screen. That is very helpful."
  • "When it comes to reporting there are some challenges with integration."

What is our primary use case?

We are using it for timesheet and resource management and project management activities. We also use the analytical reporting, including SSRS and Power BI.

The solution is on the cloud as a PaaS.

How has it helped my organization?

The latest version of the solution is using Power BI for reporting functionality, which has provided a tremendous number of visualizations where users can view all the details monthly. And all the visualizations are interacting with each other. We can see the interconnectivity between the work, resources, and the strategy. This helps our project managers to view everything in one screen, with a dashboard.

When it comes to using the solution for end-to-end work management, Planview announced at the Horizons Customer Conference that they are going to integrate it with an RPA tool and that will be very helpful. Currently we are updating tools and user accounts manually. Once they have this type of integration we can update them automatically using UiPath.

Previously, some of our customers were not happy with the way reports were generated. They had to run macros which could fail, but with this tool they are able to generate reports within Planview. That is one of the main advantages and improvements.

The solution also provides a variety of types of resource assignments for assigning work to people. We have included our teams in Planview which is very helpful. We are able to authorize resources at the department level, at the sub-department level, and at even more granular levels.

It also helps us measure timesheet compliance. We have been able to create custom reports with the help of Planview and send reminders to users every week that they need to submit a timesheet. In the last six months we have achieved greater than 95 percent compliance with timesheet submission.

What is most valuable?

Resource management and project management are the most valuable features. Recently they included the Resource Management and Assignments stream which is very helpful for seeing results related to the resources. It is connected with reporting and helps us create reports easily.

Regarding project plans, we are using the workflow life cycle and create templates, using them to create a process. Some of them are Agile while others are Waterfall, depending on the workflow template that is selected. They are automatically triggered and the task is then created.

Its view into resource capacity and availability helps us to manage work. It also helps to see how much we are using. We derive that information from the work and resource management screen. That is very helpful.

In terms of its ability to create summary reports across multiple projects, we have done summaries of projects in PowerPoint presentations for our leadership team. This helps to highlight things regarding our program. We are able to show them summaries with the help of SSRS. This saves time and is helpful to management so that they can track everything.

It also helps managers see the performance of particular resources. They can see the resource utilization. For example, if we create requirements for a role, such as a developer, tester, or a technical architect, they can see how those resources are doing.

In addition, we can drill down into the details underlying the consolidated information. If a project manager finds he needs one more developer for a particular requirement, he can drill down to find a developer for that requirement. The drill-down approach means managers can completely utilize resources, each one to 100 percent of capacity.

What needs improvement?

When it comes to reporting there are some challenges with integration.

Also, some of the functionality with Microsoft is restricted.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using Planview Enterprise One for around five years. We started with version 13 of Planview.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Overall it is very stable. Sometimes we run into issues, but not very often. 

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support helps us a lot whenever we face an issue or raise a request. They resolve them within two days.

How was the initial setup?

Our initial setup took seven to 10 days. 

We started with a sandbox environment, went through all the test cases, and then moved to production.

We have about 2,500 people using Planview Enterprise One. They span the roles of team member, project manager, through to portfolio manager. We also have about eight staff who are admins for the solution.

What other advice do I have?

I would suggest you go with this product, instead of using other tools. Every tool will have its own advantages and disadvantages, but with Planview there are more advantages. There are more things we can do with it. It is user-friendly and is integrated with many other tools. It is also constantly developing, providing connections with Power BI, which we have started to learn, and recently, with RPA using UiPath. That is also something we are supposed to learn. It isforcing us to learn and to keep up with the world. Planview is not becoming outdated, keeping up with recent technologies.

Some of my colleagues are currently using the CA PPM tool and they are saying that they are facing issues. I explained to them how I work with Planview, and the functionality it has, including Planview LeanKit. I noted that we can merge with Tableau and ClickView. They are thinking about using Planview.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Senior Director at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Offers a full view of projects, allocations, and effort to deliver our portfolio projects but the setup is very commplex
Pros and Cons
  • "Its view into resource capacity and availability absolutely help us manage work. We can't plan out projects for delivery until we know if we have resources available to deliver them. That's been really critical. We look at our projects and see what availability of resources we have. That helps us to determine when we can start new work."
  • "The scheduling's kind of clunky in terms of its ability for us to see what stage work is at. They could have done better with that. It can be difficult to use."

What is our primary use case?

We use Enterprise One to capture everything in IT that we're working on from projects that require capital funding, to running the business. We are doing everything from soup to nuts, including timesheets. We've established the full implementation.

How has it helped my organization?

It provides end-to-end work management for the full spectrum of types of work in one tool. We're able to see the full scope of what people are working on. We can see all the different types of activities that they are charging time to and we can do an analysis of whether we think that's the right distribution of the workload.

Enterprise One has improved my organization in terms of everything that we're working on. We're able to see where our resources are allocated and when we have availability, which helps us to schedule the portfolio. That's really the main intent of Enterprise One.

What is most valuable?

The ability to capture timesheets is the most valuable feature. Also, the ability to see what the full organization's working on is probably the biggest bang for the buck.

Prior to implementing Enterprise One, we didn't have a tool to do any of that. We were hard-pressed to understand what our people were working on. Now, we have a full view of projects, allocations, and effort to deliver our portfolio projects.

Enterprise One's ability to forecast remaining efforts is pretty good. It's a regular schedule, so you can see your burndown rate and see what's left on the project to spend from a labor and non-labor perspective.

Its view into resource capacity and availability absolutely help us manage work. We can't plan out projects for delivery until we know if we have resources available to deliver them. That's been really critical. We look at our projects and see what availability of resources we have. That helps us to determine when we can start new work.

Project managers can group work together and see the resource demands and costs at a consolidated level. They can create portfolios. 

We are able to drill down to the underlying details via consolidated information. We can see exactly what people are working on and we can see where they're charging their time. We can see their allocations and redistribute the load if we need to based on how much is being demanded for individuals.

We hope that it will increase our on-time completion rates. That will hopefully happen when the projects are delivering. Some of them have end dates coming up in the next quarter and some not for another 6+ months. We'll probably be able to start viewing that within two to three months.

I don't initially expect the on-time completion rate to be increased, but I'm hoping over time, we get better at project intake and estimation. That will help us to deliver things more efficiently and meet our timelines.

What needs improvement?

The scheduling's kind of clunky in terms of its ability for us to see what stage work is at. They could have done better with that. It can be difficult to use.

We don't use its ability to create summary reports across multiple projects. I think it's poor.

For how long have I used the solution?

We implemented Enterprise One three months ago. We're about to upgrade to the September release so, we'll be current as of next week.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's mostly been stable. There have been a few times where things were delayed but it came out pretty quickly.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We will be rolling it out more broadly across the organization. I don't envision any issues with scalability. We plan on expanding it to many other areas. I'm already talking with seven other departments within my company. It's going to be rolled out enterprise-wide. The supply chain is probably the biggest organization next to ours, then there's legal, and a couple of other departments who it will make the biggest impact for. 

There are 750 users across our organization. 

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support is fair. Some people are very talented and very knowledgeable but others are not. They're generally responsive. There have been some times when they've not been, but they are 75% of the time.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was very complex. If you've ever done the implementation it's not an easy implementation. It's very complex. We had a group of 20 people working on this project for 6+ months to implement the tool. The configuration alone was six weeks just to set up resources, initial lifecycles, and things like that. 

In terms of the implementation strategy, we had the project all laid out. We knew what and when we needed to deliver it. We knew what the scope of our work was. We had a massive communication exercise. The change management aspect of this going from no tool to a very sophisticated tool like this one required extensive communication and change management. I was the project lead, I lep up the whole implementation and worked with project managers. 

Maintenance requires three people. I oversee them. I have two full-time people.

What about the implementation team?

We worked with Planview's implementation team for the deployment. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

As long as we can get enough participants, it will make the pricing more reasonable. We signed up for an enterprise license. That makes the per person cost much lower.

Aside for standard licensing, we had a cost for the implementation but nothing besides that. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated nine other solutions including Planisware, Clarity, Microsoft, and ServiceNow. Enterprise One is very similar out of the other two industry leaders. Clarity, Planisware, and Planview are the three industry leaders. They're all pretty comparable. We ended up getting a reasonable price, which is why we went with them.

What other advice do I have?

For the organization, people really have an appetite for the data. Being able to pull it all together really was the biggest benefit for us.

My advice would be not to underestimate the amount of effort it takes to implement. It's much more than the vendor would tell you.

I would rate Enterprise One a seven out of ten. I would give it this rating because of the amount of effort it took to implement and bring an organization this big along. It was a monumental effort. It took a lot of work to do that.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Other
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PPMS Manager at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Offers a lot of flexibility for assigning resources and budget monitoring and planning
Pros and Cons
  • "Enterprise One provides end-to-end work management for the full spectrum of types of work in one tool. It affects our project management because our project management uses Planview to monitor their daily work. Every night it loads our SAP system and then they monitor the daily work. They use Planview as a full planning and monitoring tool."
  • "The outcome management and work resource management in terms of teams needs improvement. Team handling, how team requirements are generated, and how the resource managers can work with teams needs to be improved."

What is our primary use case?

At the moment, we use it for work and resource management modulesmainly in the area of R&D. In addition we started using the modules Planning and Outcomes in several areas for solution and program management.

How has it helped my organization?

With Planview we got  more transparency in the resource utilization and the budget ussage. Planview gives us the insights where we spend out budget and how we can improve the utilization of our internal resources. 

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features are: 

  • The resource management
  • Outcome management
  • Work management

It helps us to see resource utilization and resource needs. We get more transparency out of the system to plan the resources and resource skills to train our resources or support the long term onbording process.

We can see the budget spend for a product or release with the outcome area. We can also monitor what we have planned against what was spend, to monitor how good the programs or project is running.

The view into resource capacity and availability helps us to manage our work. It helps us with resource management and when we see have available resources we can easily start new projects. If we see with the tool that there not enough capacity available we can prioritize projects and programs according to our resources and the business needs.

In terms of reporting, we're mainly using Power BI connected to Planview data and we generate our own dashboards. 

Enterprise One provides end-to-end work management for the full spectrum of types of work in one tool.

The system has helped with the prioritization of projects through alignment with strategic objectives. Enterprise One is the only offical place for our projekt data and in this way it gives the portfolio management back the data of the projects for prioritization and monitoring. 

Enterprise One provides a variety of types of resource assignments for assigning work to people. There are a lot of possibilities for the resource management. There are some improvments in the area of agile team managment and team assignment which could be improved in the future development of Enterprise One.

What needs improvement?

There is improvement space in the handeling of agile teams and team assignments in the work planning and the resource reservation. 

For how long have I used the solution?

My company has been using Enterprise One since 2016.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Up until the last few days, it's been very stable. It's been stable but slow for the last few days and last week we had some connectivity issues. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability of the system is really good. You can choose which module you want to use and it is possible to make a seperate role out of the different modules.  

Enterprise One is able to be adapted to the already established processes and could be confugured in different ways. 

The main useres users are data stewards, scrum masters, some project leads, finance and resource management. 

How are customer service and technical support?

The quality of the support depends on the technician you get. Overall the expirence is really good and if there are second level support needed it is available same as the correct contact in the product management. Planview customer service is really good and is cutomer centric.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Before Enterprise One, we had some solutions which we can't use further. 

How was the initial setup?

With the consulting team from planview it was a good process but sometime due to our business complex to get our work processes into the system. At the end of the configuration process all worked well

What about the implementation team?

We implemented direct with the planview teams.

What was our ROI?

As Enterprise One gives us more transparency we can use our budget and resources better and trough this the ROI is given

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Yes we have one in 2015 an assesment with several tools and than decided for the best tool for us.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Other
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Offers the ability to track a project with relevant milestones but the upgrade process is complex
Pros and Cons
  • "We use expenditures quite a bit. We put in forecast expenditures and then we actualize them below the line in the little box in the bottom tray. Being able to track the project with relevant milestones is also valuable. Milestones are valuable because it helps us to keep the project on track. The expenditures are valuable because we need to be able to understand expenses that are beyond the regular resources in the projects."
  • "Being the IT development manager who implements the upgrades for Planview, I would love to see more thorough testing of expenditures and more thorough testing in general. When we do an upgrade, we have to do quite a bit of testing because we can affect the bottom line."

What is our primary use case?

Enterprise One is a centralized area to allow project portfolio and planning managers to track, schedule, organize, and begin the billing process for projects. That's it in a nutshell.

Our company as a whole is using both cloud and on-prem right now. For project management, we have business sponsors, we have businesses, and we have IT. IT has chargeable projects and we account for all of the application work that's happening and that's done on-prem. The business side has recently started moving over to Planview on the cloud. So currently we're on-prem. Potentially we could end up being on the cloud as well.

How has it helped my organization?

We have all the projects in Planview on-premise from an IT perspective. We know if we wanted to find out about a project, scheduling, or who was working on what, we'd be able to find that out with Planview. Planview highlights the human resource hierarchy within it in our on-prem solution so we know who's working on what projects.

Enterprise One provides a variety of types of resource assignments for assigning work to people.

It also allows program managers to group work together and see the resource demands and cost at a consolidated level. I have five different projects and I can do that.

What is most valuable?

We use expenditures quite a bit. We put in forecast expenditures and then we actualize them below the line in the little box in the bottom tray. Being able to track the project with relevant milestones is also valuable. Milestones are valuable because it helps us to keep the project on track. The expenditures are valuable because we need to be able to understand expenses that are beyond the regular resources in the projects.

I don't believe we're using the resource capacity to the highest extent. The project managers and resource managers are managing that outside of the tool. There are a few select Planview experts areas that are utilizing resource management to its full extent, not in my company though. 

Its ability to create summary reports across multiple projects is good. Our solution on-premise is a bit hamstrung though because we don't have Power BI. It's on the Oracle platform right now. It's not at that level for some of the reporting, but the reporting that we do have is good. Even our Planview administrators can make new reports if required.

It feels like Planview is moving away from Oracle and guiding people towards SQL server. For us to do a migration like that, it's going to be very costly. I don't know if they'd be able to support their analytics solution through Oracle or not. We'd love if there was a way to do that.

We don't use the summary reports on-premise to go to upper management. At least in my case, there are some areas within the bank that are using it. I know that we've got the data flowing out of Planview on-premise into our own recording database and we're using Tableau to report up there. We've created the functionality that we didn't see in Planview on our own.

There's integration with Planview Enterprise. We've created an integration with all the data out of Planview and we pull all of our other project management tools into this database, as well as other relevant interfaces, such as HR. We're looking at getting JIRA in there as well.

To a certain extent, it does facilitate end-to-end management but we have to use multiple tools. We're using our MIS in-house tool along with Planview. That may not be a limitation of Planview. It's likely one of our company's needs.

What needs improvement?

I find it a little difficult to forecast the remaining effort but even though I've been using it for years I don't think that as a company we have been using it to its full extent. There is probably a little bit of process change that's required on our side, as well as understanding as to how Planview works with forecasting.

It's more internal for us to look at from a process point of view, to understand how the forecasting works. We're a bit unique because we're also using another tool called MIS along with this application and it's integrated with Planview Enterprise One. It gets a ton of the information from there and that's where we're actually relying on financial forecasts.

The integration was okay until Planview changed its integration software from Appian. They have Integration as a Service now and we're not using it. We're continuing to use Appian with our own licensing of the software for on-premise.

Being the IT development manager who implements the upgrades for Planview, I would love to see more thorough testing of expenditures and more thorough testing in general. When we do an upgrade, we have to do quite a bit of testing because we can affect the bottom line. We have to understand that Planview is upstream from our financial tool that derives the capitalization of applications. We have to do extensive testing and when we implement a release, we find numerous bugs and we have to have hot-fixes and patches put in on top of whatever we're testing at the time. Because it's such a huge amount of effort to upgrade the application we can't go to the next release, even if it has the next fixes on it because we're going to have to redo all the testing. We'll set the project back months, and then we find another bug. It's very difficult. If we can have better and higher quality testing coming from Planview software, then we'll have higher confidence in putting the software in and not testing the out-of-the-box functionality.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Enterprise Pro since 2012. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The application has been around for a long time and there's some legacy framework that's still hanging around in the background that hinders them from moving forward. I think it actually hinders their stability at the same time. I know that Planview addresses it, but I think not addressing that legacy code framework is limiting and it is reflected in Planview's stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have over 10,000 resources within Planview on-prem, so it seems pretty scalable. They used to enter times, so you could consider them users at one point. I think there were 10,000 to 12,000 users. There are around 1,200 project managers.

I have eight to ten people working for about four to five months to do an upgrade. After the upgrade, there are probably only a couple of people for maintenance but we have a full production support team that has a large budget on a yearly basis to support Planview. Not just Planview, but our whole project and portfolio-management system, from Planview all the way to our other integrated systems. It's mostly testers. We've got a lot of QA analysts, a QA lead, plus infrastructure technical leads, and then technical systems analysts.

How are customer service and technical support?

From my experience, I think their overall tech support is good. They've got a Planview ticketing system. I don't know if it's us or what but it just seems like we do have to escalate sometimes unless they've heard of this issue before with other companies, whenever there's an issue. I think they're pretty good. From a development point of view, they're pretty good.

I've been dealing with them for so many years. Recently, their turnaround time and knowledge are good. If something new happens, then they have to get their legs right. I think part of their development was moved offshore at one point and we were right there at the beginning of it. It wasn't the best. Everybody individually was trying, but as a whole, they just had to figure out the process. Once they did, then they were able to work things very well. We had to have a little bit of patience.

How was the initial setup?

I was around for the upgrade and it wasn't overly complex, but it's not an upgrade. It's an installation and a migration of the database, which is into itself complex. If you could just do a simple upgrade and not have to worry about that, that would be so much easier, which is my experience with other applications.

A typical upgrade takes four to six months and costs half a million dollars. 

In terms of strategy, we have to use swing equipment and we set up a parallel environment all the way from pre-production into production. Once we are confident in each environment level, then we can move on from dev to QA. Then once we're happy with QA, we've done our full functional system testing, integration testing, and all-inclusive regression testing, then we can promote it to production. There's so much configuration that's done after and because there's so much configuration done after you install, that's what makes it complex. Planview does a configuration upgrade because all of their configuration is captured in the database. They'll take an extract of that and then they'll work on it and provide it back to us so that we can apply it into our environment. It's not the easiest thing to do.

What about the implementation team?

Every time we do an upgrade, we have to have Planview heavily involved. We end up spending quite a bit of money on just the Planview consultants to do the upgrade which is on top of the half a million.

We do have to be on top of them. If we're not on top of them, then they're not there, but it takes two to tango so if we end up getting caught up busy working on our environment, and we don't go and talk to Planview, then all of a sudden they're not available anymore. But when we do need them, sometimes we do have to escalate to get their availability.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Enterprise One a seven out of ten. I give it this rating because of the quality when I do the upgrades. There are just so many things and I feel like it's a commercial off-the-shelf piece of software. I feel like I shouldn't have to have my team testing out-of-the-box functionality.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Director of IT at a educational organization with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Shows us where our skill sets of people are, what they're working on, and allows us to make informed business decisions
Pros and Cons
  • "Enterprise One provides a variety of types of resource assignments for assigning work to people. It's very easy and straightforward to configure these assignments. Planview allows us to see the entire workforce. We can see where our skill sets of people are, what they're working on, and allows us to make informed business decisions based on priority."
  • "The resource area needs improvement. The improvements that have been made recently in the later versions have been good improvements, but I think there are some more improvements needed there."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use cases are for using the requests, the work and resource planning, and the financials.

We are hoping to add a planning module strategy so that we can better track our program, work, resource capacity planning, and have a better handle on our financial forecasting.

How has it helped my organization?

Enterprise One allows us to provide a single-source view of our IT portfolio, how it aligns with the strategy of IT, and shows us the big picture of our workforce and where we're investing. 

It has also helped us with prioritization of projects, through alignment with strategic objectives. Our business areas are not using Planview, and it's difficult for us to align with the prioritization, but it shows a picture of how we believe we're aligning with their strategy.

This allows us to work with the business to help us find the priority of work, the work that we should be doing to move the business forward, as opposed to, "Here's the list of the things we want done." We can focus on the things that are needed now, as opposed to just a big list of work.

Having Enterprise One has increased our on-time completion rate by 40%. 

What is most valuable?

The work and resource planning are the most valuable features. We are able to track our IT portfolio of approved work and assign named resources to the work level, have a better handle of our resource capacity, and the ability to take on additional work. The financial planning helps us with making sure our investments in IT are aligned with the strategy of the company.

Enterprise One provides a variety of types of resource assignments for assigning work to people. It's very easy and straightforward to configure these assignments. Planview allows us to see the entire workforce. We can see where our skill sets of people are, what they're working on, and allows us to make informed business decisions based on priority. 

We don't use the full project management piece at this time, but we're working towards that and becoming a more agile workforce. We are working towards tracking our work better. We're just getting started on that piece of really understanding the phases of our work and conjunction with our spend.

Its view into resource capacity and availability helps us to manage work by entering our resources into the work and assignments to understand where our resources are working and looking at the skill sets, aligning them to our priority work. Some of our higher paid resources are working on our new development and understanding how to align our resources better through the financials and the skills that we have attached to those resources.

Enterprise One does a very good job of allowing us to create views across different projects of our resources who are working on multiple projects to understand the capacity of our resources. This feature affects our ability to share the big picture with management. We are able to show our management our extended views, our forecasted views of our approved work, and help make suggestions on where we could better align our investments and our resources.

It also provides end-to-end work management but we are using it with a combination of another tool, JIRA, to get that full picture. It gives them a better insight into the projects that are going on when they're scheduled and the available resources they have for the work and their budgets. 

What needs improvement?

The resource area needs improvement. The improvements that have been made recently in the later versions have been good improvements, but I think there are some more improvements needed there.

I would like to see where we could add a few of our own fields and be able to track some additional information such as release information attached to the pieces of work so we can tie our accounting codes into the work and the release at the resource level.

I don't think there's been a lot of investment in the request area. That's our intake and it seems to have remained the same over many years. I feel there's a disconnect from when we enter a new request, and if we approve it and dispatch work, the request and the work are then disconnected.

For how long have I used the solution?

We've been using Enterprise One since 2012. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's very stable. We've had very few incidents.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability is very good. It's very scalable for our organizations. We're a small implementation, we have 140 users. There are resource managers and application managers. We have senior staff who are mostly reporting, admins, and some architects.

For maintenance, we have two admins and two owners. One is a business owner and one is a technology owner who oversees what's going on. The admins are technical people from the development staff and the business owner would be like myself, who is more process-oriented around how we use the tool and what type of reports are needed.

Within the IT division, we have a 100% adoption rate. We have plans to increase usage. We're working with two other areas now to see if they will adapt it.

How are customer service and technical support?

Their support is good but not as good as it was a couple of years ago. Since it's moved out internally from Planview to being outsourced, it has not been as responsive. It's still very good. We get where we need to be but it takes longer for us to get to support at times.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Before Enterprise One we were using Excel. We switched to have a more robust centralized system that we could do more for reporting. We wanted to have a centralized area for everything in a dependable system that we could do better reporting.

We've used PeopleSoft which is an Oracle product and Microsoft Projects.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was complex. I think it was because of the consultants that were sent out to help us. They didn't understand our model and I think they were a little junior. They sent us a brand new person. We were his first assignment and he wasn't sure of how to set it up properly so we went through several consultants and rework those over about a six month period. Our deployment took six months. 

In 2012 our implementation was the basic Planview which we used the request to intake the work projects, to capture our approved book of work for portfolios work and resources to understand the capacity of our workforce.

What was our ROI?

We have seen ROI in the sense that we have fewer people involved in tracking work and resources than we did in the past.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It would be nice if all of the licenses were FLEX. They've been fairly stable with their pricing over the years.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated five other solutions. They were PPM solutions from Computer Associates, HP, and a couple of other smaller ones, mostly the ones in the upper right corner of the Gartner quadrant.

Some of the others were much bigger and more costly solutions. Planview seemed to meet our needs where we would need just one solution. We might have needed others to compensate for some of the areas that they didn't do as well as we plan. Microsoft had a product but their financials were nowhere near what we needed. We would have to have a secondary tool for that. Planview offers the best all-around package. Enterprise One is equal to them when it comes to intuitiveness and ease of creating reports. Oracle also requires more training.

What other advice do I have?

Planview is a very well designed application that with a little bit of training can be easily adapted by the entire organization. The different modules really round out the product, which gives it an advantage over some of its competitors.

Enterprise One is a very reliable product and offers robust reporting. The company is very in touch with their customers.

I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Portfolio Manager at State Of Delaware
Real User
Gives us a better view of what's out there, what needs to be done, and what the requirements are
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable features are scheduling, resource management, and, from a project perspective, the functions like issues that change orders. They are valuable because, from a project management perspective, we use the workflows that we build for project management and do active risk management and issue management for the projects that we want for our agencies."
  • "The biggest room for improvement are the scripted dialogues. The scripted dialogues are a logic that you set up to force a certain workflow or process to happen. It's very old in respect that there are no clauses that you can apply to that logic. That definitely can use a lot of room for improvement."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use case is for all of our agency's IT work that will be recorded as projects and/or contracts that we have with our agencies from an IT department perspective.

How has it helped my organization?

We are using Enterprise One to record all the new business-case intakes. Any new project that comes in from my agencies is being recorded in Enterprise One. That gives us a better view of what's out there, what needs to be done, and what the requirements are for my agencies. It also shows us how we can focus on the demand for those agencies.

We are not using strategic objectives yet, but we have a custom prioritization calculation that has been done for each project that comes in. Work is prioritized based on a specific scoring with some markers on each project. It's affected us to a point that we can react to demands.

Enterprise One provides a variety of types of resource assignments for assigning work to people but it's only as good as you've set it up yourself. You can set up Planview in any way you want to use it. The type of resource that you assign is based on your own company's requirements for that. It can be anything that you want. It's flexible in configuring these assignments. This flexibility enables us to look at demand from agencies and with our own productization system, allow us to assign the resources that are needed. 

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features are scheduling, resource management, and, from a project perspective, the functions like issues that change orders. They are valuable because, from a project management perspective, we use the workflows that we build for project management and do active risk management and issue management for the projects that we want for our agencies.

We use a phased approach for our projects: plan, initiation, planning, execution, implementation, and closure, and all those processes have their own lifecycles. Then we have some customized cycles in support of that to ensure that if a contract is needed, that the contracts are being signed off by a security organization as well. Any network and infrastructure changes will be reviewed as part of that process. We use this end-to-end process for our project managers.

The forecast for remaining effort is something that we are starting to use. The challenge with that is it is only as good as the resource managers are editing and entering the allocations for the resources. An effort was started to refocus the whole resource management. With that automatically comes the forecasting. We also have some custom reports that allow us to look at our workload.

From the perspective of what's in the pipeline, what is currently being worked on, and what's needing help, we are able to know instantly where we are.

We use custom reports and we use portfolio management to look at it from a forecast perspective like who's been assigned to a process and what the workload is. Then we use it for resource portfolios for each team. They use it to assess the ability to reassign or assign resources to upcoming work. But most of the reporting is done through custom reports and some Power BI reports that I've created.

Its view into resource capacity and availability definitely helps us to manage work. It allows us to react to a new demand. It also helps to provide end-to-end work management for the full spectrum of types of work in one tool. We use it for resources like hardware licenses, software, and such.

Program managers are enabled to group work together and see the resource demands and costs at a consolidated level. Because we use portfolio management or resource portfolio management, with that setup, we can look at it from a program perspective. If you identify portfolios within a program or projects within a portfolio program and the same with resources, you can classify them by type, by departments, and desk to see where your availabilities are.

We can drill down into the details underlying the consolidated information through the individual resources and we also do that through a custom Power BI report. Then based on time entered on projects, we can see where resources have spent time in the past, up until the current day. We have a statistical overview of where our resources have gone.

Our on-time completion rate has been reduced but it all has to do with the size of the project. When we do our planning for projects we tend to deliver it within a timeline, but there's also external influence that you can't control. From a project management perspective, we always deliver what we tend to deliver.

What needs improvement?

The biggest room for improvement are the scripted dialogues. The scripted dialogues are a logic that you set up to force a certain workflow or process to happen. It's very old in respect that there are no clauses that you can apply to that logic. That definitely can use a lot of room for improvement. The amount of text that you can manage within a scripted dialogue is limited as well. That can use some room for improvement as well.

For how long have I used the solution?

We've been using Planview Enterprise since 2013 and we moved to Enterprise One in 2018 with the latest version.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I'm very impressed with the stability. We are a client that uses the monthly updates. So far, we have not had any issues when it comes to the new versions that have been released. I'm very pleased with the stability of the cloud platform that we use.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability is not an issue because we can always add more licenses when we need to. We have almost 400 licenses that do not impede the workflow or the process. It's able to cope with the amount of users that we have.

There are about 400 users. The majority of those are people that enter the time or are the actual resources working on projects. They may have a section of project managers, then have a section of managers and resource managers. We also have a section for a specific business case.

The deployment and maintenance are all done by me. We heavily use the sandbox environment to prototype changes, then test those changes and then implement those to production. We continuously make enhancements to the system and we use a sandbox and production approach.

For the specific tasks that we do with respect to business case intake and project management, it has a 100% adoption rate. We have plans to expand the number of users in respect to time entry. That'll happen over the next year or so.

How are customer service and technical support?

Their support is great. When I open a case I can always cut the responses within a couple of minutes, depending on the severity of the case.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

My company used a different solution before my time. I think they used a custom solution that was built in-house that was replaced with Planview.

How was the initial setup?

I have been involved in the restructuring of the solution. The initial solution was not implemented by me but I have redone that whole implementation and we were able to downsize the support team from seven individuals to one individual.

The service that was implemented was very archaic. It was complex. The way that we've now implemented it is streamlined, easy to understand and identify how it's been implemented. The process took us six months. 

We went through a process improvement process where we identified the process as we would like it to be not as how it was in the system and using that, we identified a workflow in the official diagram for the various processes that we support and use.

What about the implementation team?

We didn't use a consultant, we just did the deployment ourselves. There is an in-house team who worked on it. 

What was our ROI?

I can't quantify the ROI because we've been using it for so long that we really can't go back to an older system and compare it.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Pricing all depends on how many users you have planned to use. It's kind of expensive but at the same token, it's worth the investment for the functionality that it delivers.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated ServiceNow but based on the Gartner review of the marketplace of Planview, there really aren't any other competitors that can provide the same service that Enterprise One provides us.

What other advice do I have?

My advice would be to have one or more individuals become experts in the use of Planview, in terms of how to set it up, how to maintain it, and how to create a lifecycle. There are scripted dialogues because the more knowledge you have within your own organization, the easier it is to accommodate change requests from within your organization.

If you have to call a consultant for services it's rather expensive and they might not be able to react to the changes that you want to implement sooner rather than later. So my advice is to create experts within your organization.

Make sure to test a lot. It can be very complex. Have a second set of eyes that can see the pitfalls that you, otherwise, might run into.

I would rate Enterprise One a ten out of ten. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Enterprise Portfolio Manager at Wellmark
Real User
A lot of of the value is around the project metrics, strategic planning, and programs and then tying that into outcomes
Pros and Cons
  • "A lot of of the value is around the project metrics so far but as I get more plugged into the strategic management, it's strategic planning and programs and then tying that into outcomes. I work with executive leadership and that's really what they're looking for, to say, "Okay, what outcomes do we want to achieve and how are we going to get there, plan that out, sequence that out, and then get the work to do that? And then track the work back to where we're headed with our outcomes.""
  • "We've been using it for a while, so it's about maturity. It's about being able to build out things in Agile groups and teams and some of that. Then really trying to drive into the direction of Lean Portfolio Management and more Agile program management, I think is where we're heading."

What is our primary use case?

We have historically used it for resource management and project, so, work management. They're maturing different pieces of the resource management and the work management to leverage some of that. Other use cases that we've started with would be planning, strategies and outcomes. We have it initially built out from a beginning use case and continuing to mature that as we roll out some change in the organization of moving to a strategically managed portfolio, not just a tech portfolio.

How has it helped my organization?

The more we have access to data and being able to portray the reality of the situation, as long as people are managing the data right, we have more opportunity to make data-driven decisions as we move forward. As we look at what's happening in a project and its execution throughout the lifecycle, its understanding where they're at, what they're doing, what challenges they are having, and what their forecast looks like. Are they going to be able to meet some of those milestones, or do we think that the data says they may have some challenge? And then we can ask the anecdotal and the non-data-driven questions about what's happening. It helps us drive to ask more pointed questions and dialed-in conversations.

Enterprise One has helped with the prioritization of projects through alignment with strategic objectives. That's what we're getting to implement now. We're working through the hierarchy and the alignment piece right now with our executive leadership. And what I'm excited about is we'll be able to show them the alignment in data and reports. As we move through the planning process, it's not just being tracked outside of that and it's not just conversational, it's about understanding what they're wanting to do, how it aligns, and then not only the strategy but the outcome because that's the important part.

We can determine if something is our strategy, what our desired outcome is, then how it aligns, and how it is going to add value. I'm excited about what it's going to bring into our planning as we move forward from here. This was something I've been looking forward to for quite a while, so I'm glad we're turning the corner to implement that.

What is most valuable?

A lot of of the value is around the project metrics so far but as I get more plugged into the strategic management, it's strategic planning and programs and then tying that into outcomes. I work with executive leadership and that's really what they're looking for, to say, "Okay, what outcomes do we want to achieve and how are we going to get there, plan that out, sequence that out, and then get the work to do that? And then track the work back to where we're headed with our outcomes."

A lot of seeing what stage work is at is based upon how you instruct people to build them out. As far as the tool, the tool has the capabilities, it's just getting the people to make the right choices in how they set up and then manage the data. That's always the challenge.

It does a great job with forecasting remaining effort. The dependency is on the people and the process. With whom the people are managing, what their future plan looks like so that the forecasting can be accurate. It's about the due diligence and the work between the resources, resource management, and project management to say, "Here's what our schedule is. Here's the work remaining." And as long as that's being managed, it's great.

The resource capacity helps us look at not only our future forecasting and what we need to do from a resource standpoint, but we can go back and see what we used. We can even leverage historical to understand what our future might look like and find the balance there. It helps us do both.

Its ability to create summary reports across multiple projects is great as long as you're managing the base data correctly in the roll-up. I love a lot of the out-of-the-box reporting that they have and the ability to manage the configurations within our team. To be able to say, "Okay, we want to show this or we want to slice by this." And being able to be flexible in that.

The reporting options are great because not only can you have so many out-of-the-box, but you've got the abilities to use Power BI, pull down things in Excel, and do portfolios. There are all kinds of different ways to manage data.

As we transition into using the strategies and the outcomes, I'm very excited about some of the strategic dashboards that are out there. One of the things that we've started looking at are TreeMaps. TreeMaps have taken an interest in our leadership to see the distribution of some of the information and just by showing it in different ways. The only thing I'd say is that it would be nice to see some of the TreeMaps, not just on strategy, but on other data elements too.

It provides end-to-end work management for the full spectrum of types of work in one tool. Historically, we've been just doing technology data, tracking, and reporting, but as we shift into the strategic management, I'm excited about the opportunities to be able to manage all work, not just tech work. We'll be able to track and understand where we're at with milestones towards our outcomes. We're looking forward to the system transition there.

It's quite flexible, depending upon how the organization chooses to use it, which I think is great. There are some different ways that we've chosen to use it that maybe down the road, we may flex and change that as we go forward. I like that there's an opportunity to use it and partner with Planview to understand what your use cases are and what's the best way to manage through that.

It can go through and group together in a strategic program on the strategy side. We've chosen to implement it so that it ties up there and then manage the initiatives. And you can see then the attachment and the roll-up, so it's an association. It sounds like there's maybe some more coming as we look at some more flexibility. We're able to drill down to details underlying the consolidated information.

It's helped us drive awareness into what's going on and then being able to manage our completion rates better.

What needs improvement?

We've been using it for a while, so it's about maturity. It's about being able to build out things in Agile groups and teams and some of that. Then really trying to drive into the direction of Lean Portfolio Management and more Agile program management, I think is where we're heading.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Enterprise One for three and a half years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability has been great. I haven't noticed any issues as far as that goes. I think anything that we've had any challenges with has been handled very quickly and it's usually in an off-hour. I haven't noticed any issues personally.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability has been fine from a user standpoint. We haven't had any issues. Our biggest thing is as we switched our contracting, we looked at FLEX licensing and I think that's going to be a huge asset for us to be able to have much more flexibility in bringing people on and having roles go up and down, versus a contracted set number of roles. That'll help.

In terms of increasing our usage, we're pretty early in our expanse of the capabilities. A couple of years ago, I walked through the capabilities with our leadership team and road mapped out from a portfolio standpoint what I'd like to see us leverage across the organization for me to be successful in strategic portfolio management for the organization.

We're working down some of those implementations and those capabilities. We started by ensuring that we were reset and set up well on the handful of core capabilities. We'll continue to build that out as we go and mature. I love the roadmap of where they're headed with capabilities and what they're offering organizationally. It aligns with where we're headed in our organization too.

How are customer service and technical support?

I don't personally use technical support but our administrator does. I know that we've been plugged into conversations that she's facilitated with them. Some of the times we have to just ask them to contact us because it's much easier to have a conversation about it versus what we think is wrong and what we're seeing in our scenario. 

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I'm not sure what my current company previously used but where I had worked previously, at my other employer, we used Clarity. That was the only other tool that I had used. They're similar to a certain extent, but what I see with Planview is where they're headed and how they bring things together, more than just what I understood Clarity to be doing when I last used them. Keeping up with where things are headed.

How was the initial setup?

Since they've gone to the regular releases, the initial setup is pretty straightforward. I don't know that we were doing a good job of managing regular releases when it was major releases. It became a little bit more of a struggle there as we got caught up in our releases. Now that we are managing on a regular, monthly cadence, it's so much easier to take an increment than it was, skipping major upgrades and then trying to figure it out.

Upgrades are done overnight. We get it for a week or so to play in the sandbox and validate it, then they process it overnight, and then we're able to leverage it the next day. It's a very quick turnaround.

Because it's so component-based, there has not been a huge strategy that we've had to do from an implementation standpoint, but as we look at being able to deploy or mature some of the capabilities, then that would tie into the strategies at those points.

What about the implementation team?

We've only used Planview's global consulting services. We haven't used an external company to do that.

For maintenance, we have one main owner of the application with her back up, so we've got two people that support Planview overall for our organization day to day. They're application owners. 

In terms of users, we roughly have 1,000 to 1,200 technology partners using it and then a handful of business partners.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We're looking at the FLEX licensing or the partner licensing for our renewal. Where we are looking at having access to all of the products in our contracts so that as we decide to continue to build out the capabilities and make changes, we have access to their other products as well.

We've got PPM, but we're not holistically using that a ton yet. As we build out our business architecture and enterprise architecture, we've got that and we've got the ability to use it. One that interests me from a portfolio standpoint is the connectivity to Azure DevOps, potentially LeanKit, and Lean Portfolio management capabilities that way. It's on the roadmap.

What other advice do I have?

A big lesson for the organization was not to so prescriptively narrow their opportunities. The way they had it configured prior to me coming on, they had shut themselves off from being able to implement feature capabilities because they had driven out so many restrictive requirements that some of the things couldn't be leveraged.

We've been understanding what the capabilities are and where we would like to be, and having a different conversation with Planview when we partnered with them and their global consulting services, to understand what that roadmap looks like, so that we could be guided a little bit better about what to implement and when, and how it might work together as we move forward.

My advice would be to be open to the possibilities and not tying yourself too closely that it has to be a certain way. Be open to understanding where you'd like to head and then how that all needs to come together, and leveraging the opportunities that way.

I would rate Enterprise One a nine out of ten. We really like the tool and a lot of the possibilities that are there. We've really connected with our support, consulting, and even our sales staff. As we've worked with other partners and conversations throughout the processes, we've really had an enjoyable experience with them as we've gone through our transition. Not only that, we like using what we see every day.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Mir Nayeem Ul Haq - PeerSpot reviewer
Mir Nayeem Ul HaqFounder & CEO at Vaadi Outsourcing
Top 5Real User

Overall, I think Planview is fairly strong and has a lot to offer organizations looking to improve their project management and resource management. I like that it ties in strategic planning and programs with outcomes, as this is something that executive leadership is typically very interested in. I think the product could continue to mature in the area of Lean Portfolio Management and more Agile program management, as this is an area that is becoming increasingly popular.

Planview Administrator and Robotic Process Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Provides end-to-end work management for the full spectrum of types of work in one tool
Pros and Cons
  • "Another good thing is that we can create custom reports, which is great. If I created a custom report, a tile that tells me how many people have logged in today. We currently have a little under 2000 users, and that's only users, we actually have integrations, that we created a custom form that sends hours directly to Planview. They're not using Planview directly, but they're sending their hours to Planview through an API."
  • "The content management definitely needs to improve. We don't really use content management for projects inside Enterprise One. We have actually switched to a SharePoint site. We have a feed from Enterprise One every night of all the projects that are created."

What is our primary use case?

We use it for contractor and associate contracting which reflects directly to project resource, "our spend". We do a calculation based on the vendor that the contractor is through, as well as each associate has a per hour rate that is applied to the project to attract the spend applied to that project from the resources. 

We also track the number of hours spent per application. Every application in our bank has the application code that we tied back to Planview so that we can track and see how much time is spent within the application, either with upgrades, maintenance or break-fix type of situation and also to report. It's primarily for tracking reporting.

How has it helped my organization?

Enterprise One has improved my organization with the ability to look at the hours that people track. Prior to Enterprise One we didn't have any estimation model. As we grow within Enterprise One, we're able to pull reporting to see how much time it takes for each individual person or a team to perform a task to complete a project. So with that, we're able to start building that model to estimate the approximate number of hours for each task so that when we provide that to project managers, it reduces the amount of time building the project plan because they've already had that base model to use for each of those tasks. It's created our ability to forecast how much time it would take to perform specific tasks that are very similar to each other. 

It also improved our communication. Prior to Enterprise One, there was not that much communication between project managers and resource managers. So that when a project manager went out to Microsoft Office or to Microsoft Project to schedule a resource for a task, which they actually didn't, they have to have a separate spreadsheet. They would put down a number of hours and it was just a guess. A resource manager would then come back and say, "They can't do that." It was very back and forth. It wasn't like a synergist, a single point of information where everyone looking at the same thing, it was back and forth. So with a project manager entering just random hours and just guessing to get a specific dollar amount or to fit a specific dollar amount it was a lot of work on the project managers to try to adjust it to fit in with that dollar amount.

Now, with Planview, with them being able to see as soon as the project manager submits a request for some hours, the resource manager can communicate with that project manager instantly and say, "It won't do that. It's not going to take that much time". And then when it comes back where the resource is actually entering the hours on the task, there's an exact number. So it's hard to put a number on how many hours were saved or how accurate it's going to be because we're still growing. But prior to this, the accuracy was really, really off. It was terrible, but now we're getting more and more accurate where we're in the, I would say, closer to 70% accurate on the estimations. So it's getting really close to being very accurate.

Enterprise One helped with the prioritization of projects through alignment with strategic objectives. We use what we call Roadmap, Roadmap items under the planning and capacity section. We're the best at the capacity section. With the Roadmaps, our department heads are able to categorize the project by rank. By ranking those we're able to, especially during this COVID period, we've seen so many projects get pushed down to the bottom or completely removed due to the inability to complete those or the return on investment not being there. It really helped a lot with that planning, investment, and capacity planning.

In terms of the flexibility of configuring assignment, my other administrator and I actually came up with that solution. We decided that was the best way to go primarily because at the state that we are in our company, the project managers weren't mature enough to utilize allocations and the resource managers weren't mature enough to reject or approve those allocations. And that was causing people to be over-allocated because they weren't charging time. Because it the estimation on the number of hours needed was completely off. They were just putting however numbers in there. The resource would show over-utilized 1,300%, 1,300% and it would just throw off all of our reporting.

We cracked down on it. We had people to start utilizing the utilization percentage. Making sure that they had that communication line with the resource manager since we have our estimate as growing. But with the reserve and authorization, being able to authorize an entire team to a specific task and reserve them, allowed us to easily create the schedule that works best for that agile environment. Especially with the specific number of hours used for each person that was really easy to use those types of assignments.

What is most valuable?

We have different groups that use it for different purposes. There are project managers who use it in place of Microsoft Project. So they track their project through its phases, their financials, keeping on schedule, on time, and on budget. Our resource managers use it primarily to track their resources, to see how much capacity their team has to perform different tasks or different projects, and how much time they're spending on each individual application. Technology managers actually represent the overall group who use it to roadmap, outlook,  see what's down in the pipeline, what team has what capacity to actually take on a task, see if that project is worth the money, that return on investment is worth actually doing it. Executives are just in it for the reporting to track the financials, to see how much we're spending within the technology and enterprise operations departments. Enterprise One is useful in many ways. We have a little bit under 2,000 people using it.

Another good thing is that we can create custom reports, which is great. If I created a custom report, a tile that tells me how many people have logged in today. We currently have a little under 2,000 users, and that's only users, we actually have integrations, that we created a custom form that sends hours directly to Planview. They're not using Planview directly, but they're sending their hours to Planview through an API. We have over 1,500 contractors overseas and within the United States, that submit their time to Planview, so we can track their work in their project as well. In total, I would say the amount of user input for Planview would be close to 3,000.

Inside Planview, they have what they call a "lifecycle". It's basically a workflow, it's a set of steps that each project has to go through, and with its customization, being able to match our own project process, we match it one for one. And so we can see at each stage of the project where it is either through the gate, from gate zero through gate four, and even with Agile, being able to iterate through that same gate, by using scripted dialogues, or exit scripts, we've been able to track projects exactly where they are. Each schedule can be tied back to either the hours entered, by either date, or a percentage of the effort completed on it, so it ties together pretty good.

It's being used a lot for the remaining effort. We actually create tons of reporting off of it. We've created multiple Power BI dashboards. Data feed allows us to create our custom Power BI dashboards, so that way we can track what efforts been used, what efforts are remaining in a very graphical, easy to read way. We've created this primarily for the project managers and resource managers. My manager has a breakout session that discusses our Power BI dashboards. It's really nifty for tracking that. We use it a lot. Our executive challenged us to be able to forecast and estimate hours used on each task. That's why we implemented Enterprise One initially, but we since provided what she wanted and now we're providing more. Initially, it was just the requirement and now we're exceeding that requirement to give better visibility to all resource managers and project managers.

We have a really large organization, 22,000 associates total, including the 3,000 people using Planview. Being able to group projects into portfolios based on specific filters, either the project manager or any other approver organizational hierarchy, once you set your portfolio, you can either share that with your team or whomever so that they can all be on the same page. With the Power BI dashboards, we have a very open information model where we want everyone to be able to see the same thing. There's only one section where it's confidential and we as administrators have to provision that separately, but everything else is open for everyone else to see. So if you're just a time reporter or just have a reporting, you can go in and see the same information as a manager. Being able to group projects in the portfolios, filter them, and being able to see all of that data graphically using the Power BI or the standard reporting that came with the FastTrack setup has been very helpful to our entire organization.

For all the work that we perform, Enterprise One provides end-to-end work management for the full spectrum of types of work in one tool. We have our technology projects. We have what we call non-technology projects, which are basically projects that don't necessarily have a technology component in it. It's things like branch opening and closures, even though sometimes they will have the technology, but it just depends. We also have what we call OTW, which is another planned work. This is primarily for resource managers so that they can track their applications like how much time is spent on their applications doing upgrades or break-fix. We also have programs of work, another resource manager tool that tracks Agile programs, and we also have Roadmaps. For all the project types that we, or work types that we have within our organization, it does great.

We just started doing the on time and on a budget since we are in infancy with Enterprise One, we weren't really holding the project managers to that. We were holding them to it through the governance, but not through the Enterprise One. Now that we're a little more mature, we've started tracking that grader as well as being able to use those change requests to track as scheduled, budget, or scope changes. It has allowed us to definitely increase our on-time and on-budget awareness.

What needs improvement?

The content management definitely needs to improve. We don't really use content management for projects inside Enterprise One. We have actually switched to a SharePoint site. We have a feed from Enterprise One every night of all the projects that are created. And once they're created, we run our process that goes out to create SharePoint sites for each project. Because of the inability for drag-and-drop file ingestion, the best thing about it is the versioning, but that's also done in SharePoint. We just don't use it because it's HTML and it's hard to use. It's a little bit more cumbersome than it should and then we like.

For how long have I used the solution?

We implemented Enterprise One initially for our pilot group at the end of 2018 and we went into production last year in April.

We have the cloud solution. It's all hosted. The team that is using it, for the most part, is just the technology area, application development, information security does our technology group. We have some enterprise groups also that are using it.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We haven't had any issues with stability. In the previous versions, there were interface issues with Internet Explorer because it's just an antiquated browser. With Microsoft adopting Microsoft more of the Edge and Chrome, the stability is fine. We haven't had any issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability is great, with the monthly improvement push, they're on a monthly cadence of updates with the new version 18, the improvements come every month. It's awesome. They have a vast library of API calls that we actually have a contractor system. We're actually onboarding that now and we're going to implement API calls to Planview that way. I have created a multiple UiPath robot that used Planview to create reporting, to add users, to do monthly maintenance, as well as the call API to UiPath. I do a lot of robotic process automation and I can do a lot of the automation with Planview. The scalability, being able to integrate with JIRA, Workday, create custom integrations if we need to, being able to use API calls through either JSON or primarily SOAP, is pretty awesome. I don't have any complaints so far on the scalability.

We're looking to integrate JIRA into our Enterprise One with LeanKit. We're still working out the financials on that to try to figure out a way to integrate that either through a flexible license or through individual licensing. Initially, we started off with technology because that was the executive who decides to start tracking the projects since that's where the project management organization lives, under technology. But more and more enterprise business unit groups are starting to want to track time and see what their resources are spending their time on as well. We're growing slowly throughout the rest of the organization. With the amount of data that the Planview provides and that type of reporting, it's kind of giving other departments and other groups visuals into what they could have by using Enterprise One. We're growing through them. 

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support is great. It's just like technical support at any other institution where sometimes you'll get someone who is very adept in the system, and then the others are a little less. But, generally with the way that Planview is set up, if we have any issues, we have a representative we can talk to and bail and get the right people to work on it. We've had no issues.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We were previously using a homegrown SharePoint site that we worked with our SharePoint team to build. It didn't have a nearly as robust workflow, reporting approval ability, and tracking as Planview.

How was the initial setup?

In terms of the setup, I actually got hired on in the middle of implementation, but we had a Planview representative on-site performing the configuration. She basically did training while we were there so I was able to pick it up really quickly and become adjusted to building or configuring the system through configuring screens, scripted dialogues, and the lifecycle. It was really easy. It seems like a low-code solution, so it was really easy to pick up.

I would estimate the setup took from July to December. That is when we did the primary build-out of all of the integrations. We had a previous system that was homegrown through SharePoint that we had a lot of projects and data in. We had to do a lot of data manipulation in order to put it in a format that's ingestible by Planview. That took a little while too. I wrote a robot that would automatically convert all of the data over to the new data format, and we were able to send that to Plan B to have them import it.

The big parts of the strategy were just integrations with our financial system. We have a general ledger financial system that we had to integrate with and that we had to send a file over to Plan B to enter that information. We also have a Workday integration for resource management. That is a pretty nifty one where whenever the Workday feed comes over, it either removes resources, adds resources, and creates users based on if they're in a specific hierarchy of the bank. That was really nice.

From our end, it was primarily just me and my teammates working on the deployment. We were the primaries. We actually had one other resource through application development that was helping us. That was primarily for the deal integration. The Workday was just a file feed, and that was all in Planview. My colleague is also a Planview administrator. He doesn't do the robotic automation, but he does a lot of the architecting of the system.

For management, at this point, it's just me and my teammate. We have one other person who is specialized in the reporting. They do a lot of the SQL queries, SSRS, and Power BI setups, but they don't do really much of the administering of the system. 

What about the implementation team?

We only worked through Planview. We didn't work with any other third parties.

What was our ROI?

The area with the most ROI is our ICCMO, being able to track that on time and on budget, all of the resource managers. Those are going to be the department heads for each of our technology departments. They would be the ones that would see the most return on investment. As well as tracking their contractors and the hours they're spending on the applications.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The pricing and licensing are fine, but with the model we currently have, we don't have the FLEX license just yet. We actually have the tiered based on the access side from just a team member to project, we call it portfolio manager to admin. The pricing is fine. That was one of the solid points for switching to Planview. There are additional costs for integrations.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We actually did an RFP. So we looked at the Gartner quadrants and we had other people provide proposals. But with all the requirements, Planview was the only one that was able to provide all of the items that we needed which is why we went with them.

What other advice do I have?

The biggest lesson learned would be regarding making sure to have Planview do the training. When we did our training for our organization, we did a train the trainer where Planview came in and trained just a few people in our organization and then they went out and trained their people.

But it's like a game where you tell one thing to a person that you pass it down the line and it gets changed by the time it reaches the very end. If you have the budget for it, have Planview perform the training because I think that would increase adoption a lot easier. We had a lot of people who came from different areas that had different methods of tracking projects from Visio Excel and Microsoft Project. Getting everybody on the same page to Planview we had a lot of contention and a lot of people who didn't like the product initially. And that came down to me to training. With the trainer themselves not being very familiar with the system, being unsure about what they're trying to train the other people on didn't give the other associates much confidence in the system initially.

The adoption was a lot slower than we wanted. I think that if Planview had worked to perform the training, it would have made people a lot more of a point of contact to reach out to. And having a lot more acceptance and what they were being taught. So that would be the lesson learned.

Especially if you're an administrator, go through the advanced training if you're doing FastTrack and if you're doing the configuration so that you'll be more familiar with what the consultant is doing. Our consultant was great. She did a lot for us, but we also saw afterward, once we became more familiar with it, we saw a few errors that needed to be corrected but they were easy and we were able to fix them ourselves. If you don't go through advanced training, you wouldn't recognize it. 

I would rate Planview Enterprise One a nine and a half out of ten because nothing is perfect.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Project Administrator at Texas Mutual Insurance Company
Real User
Shows us what all of our strategies are, what programs we have under those strategies, what work is happening, and what the current status of that work is
Pros and Cons
  • "When it comes to managing project plans, Enterprise One is awesome at enabling us to see what stage work is at. I've always thought it was awesome because it's good whether we're doing a traditional WBS or we're linking in epics into projects that are supporting the programs and the strategies, I've always thought it was an excellent tool."
  • "I think some of the administrative aspects of it could be a little easier, especially when it comes to designing reports. The reporting coming out of it could be a little bit better."

What is our primary use case?

We've been using Enterprise One for a long time and we mainly used it largely for a lot of traditional waterfall, project management, resource management, and things like that. We were just about ready to pull the plug on them but we had a renewed effort in using it.

Over the last months or so we've re-engineered it a little so that we can hopefully get a little bit more of the agile use out of it. Being able to balance the old traditional resource management, costing, and stuff like that, with the new agile way of doing things as they were. We do have integration between Enterprise One and JIRA and we're trying to pull over as much of that information as we can from JIRA so that the people, the frontline folk, are doing their day-to-day work in JIRA and we have more of the product owners, project managers, program managers doing the high-level planning work in Enterprise One.

What is most valuable?

In terms of the most valuable features, the strategy view is something we never really did in the past. It shows us what all of our strategies are, what programs we have under those strategies, what work is happening, and what the current status of that work is. It's all at varying degrees, whether percentage complete, effort complete, hours expended, those types of things. From an overall corporate perspective, so far I've seen a high-level strategy program view into the data.

When it comes to managing project plans, Enterprise One is awesome at enabling us to see what stage work is at. I've always thought it was awesome because it's good whether we're doing a traditional WBS or we're linking in epics into projects that are supporting the programs and the strategies, I've always thought it was an excellent tool. We do want to try to capitalize a little bit more on some automation. Percent complete is the high-level metric that we're really trying to drive to. So if we have a large effort, we can see how far along in the process we are based on a high-level plan that we think is going to run from August to December, we can see where we are in the process. We can't have a plan unless we work it. And so we're struggling with that just a little bit, but from an overall status of things, I think it's great.

The Enterprise One view into resource capacity and availability does not help us to manage work because we don't know how to work it. It absolutely cuold and that is one of the things in our current use case that we're really struggling with because the pure Agile folks say, "You don't plan. You don't estimate. You just do." And management, managers, VPs, and above are saying, "Okay, what is our capacity to make all this work?" So we're struggling with that just a little bit. I think once we settle on something that Planview does give us a view into what our capacity is and how much work can we really take on.

Its ability to create summary reports across multiple projects is pretty good. Planview has invested a lot of years and a lot of money in creating a lot of out-of-the-box reports. It's just us trying to learn them again and really trying to find out what's available. We've been providing reports and information to our upper management, and our CIO said, "That's too much information." We're trying to find that balance between a one-page summary of everything going on versus providing all the details that might be needed. So overall, Planview is very good at providing whatever level of information we want.

In terms of sharing the big picture with management, this feature has really helped because there are certain strategy reports or certain work reports that do provide a one-page overview of everything. It's just that management is trying to decide what information they want to see. Then, in turn, can we from an administration perspective, modify the report enough to be able to provide that information.

It provides end-to-end work management for the full spectrum of types of work in one tool. Admittedly, when we're looking at all the different products that Planview provides, whether it be LeanKit, PPM Pro, or whatever, they do bend toward a certain type of methodology. Obviously, Enterprise One has been very traditional work and resource management focused, but I think over the years that we've been with Planview, and especially with the introduction of the Enterprise One model, they're really trying to make it to where you can have different types of projects. Whether they be traditional waterfall, Agile, Lean, SAFe, etc. Planview Enterprise One does a good job at all of that. It may not give you the capabilities of everything that you want, but that's why they've introduced these integrations with other tools like Azure DevOps, JIRA, Micro Focus, and those types of things. So that you can get that overall big picture of what's going on.

Another example of how it's been able to improve the way your organization functions is that we can now look at the strategy view to say, "Okay, what do we all have?" Because you've got this group doing something, another group doing something, and another group doing something, but overall what is everything we're doing? And as we mature in the use of the tool, not only from how much work we have out there, what can what our capacity is to do everything. But looking at the ICP portion, the investment and capacity planning portion of it to say, "Okay, we think it's going to cost us this much to do this work," but "Oh, by the way, we need to shift something around." What does that mean from mainly from the way we use it, from a capacity perspective? Because we're completely internal. We don't draw revenue directly from the internal work we do. But hopefully, we can get the benefit perspective where something may be big work, small benefits, whereas something else is small work, big benefits, and we can see where we need to re-adjust our priorities there. Overall, I think it'll help.

We're not doing direct assignments but if we were, I think it is a very flexible tool. Probably the only thing that I really struggle with is doing allocations at a certain level. And you have to do it at what they call the lowest leaf level. That's probably the only drawback I see. I'd like to be able to see allocations happen at a higher level and to where we're dealing with Epics. 

In fact, I had a scenario this morning come up where we had an Epic that was created. Some allocations were put on the Epic, and when somebody tried to put a story or a task up underneath that Epic and we couldn't. And so that's the only feedback on the whole resource assignments, how I'd like to stay flexible enough to where I can go at a higher level to where I don't have to do that. A developer is going to be working on this story and we're allocating X number of hours to that particular story. I'd like to know that, I know Jane and Joe are working on a project or this work. And I think over a course of two, three sprints, months, whatever, I think they're going to be working about 75% of the time. So it is flexible, but it's not flexible.

There are pros that we're seeing from being able to draw down and see the resource demands and costs at a consolidated level. I'm a product owner and when I look at an overall endeavor and I know that I've got five Epics and 10 stories across that, from an investment perspective or a cost/benefit perspective, they say, "Okay, Epics are like features. Which feature is going to cost me more to provide?" And then hopefully I've got an idea in my brain if I'm a product owner of "Alright, this Epic is going to give us more value than then another Epic and Epic A is only going to take five story points, whereas Epic B, isn't going to give as much value is going to take us 30 story points or something like that." 

What needs improvement?

I've personally been using Planview for going on 17 years now, and I think they have made some great improvements in it. I've used it both as a Resource Manager and Project Manager, and now I've been using it from an admin perspective for quite a while. I think some of the administrative aspects of it could be a little easier, especially when it comes to designing reports. The reporting coming out of it could be a little bit better.

There are some small things that are troublesome to me as far as assigning resources, setting people up, trying to configure resource structures, and stuff like that. But those are just small nibs. I think overall from a usability perspective, it's really good. It's huge. Planview's the Microsoft of project planning and PPM. There's a lot to it and people just need to take the time to learn it.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Enterprise One for about 25 years. We use the latest version, Enterprise One, PPM release. We're on the continuous cloud.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I think the stability is great. Planview had some issues about, three or four weeks ago. But I think they've gotten over that, as far as the technical stability. It has pretty good functional stability. I think it's really good there. There's just a lot of stuff we don't know. Everybody working from home has had a big stress on internet service providers and big companies like ours are using a VPN solution. And so if I'm on VPN and I get on, try to get into Planview, there are some issues there, but overall, I think it's pretty good.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

From a number of users perspective, it's how many licenses you purchased from the amount of data. I'm not worried about that since we don't have it on-premise we could probably go as big as they want it to it's just until Planview says, "Hey, their cut back" or something like that.

We are looking at expanding the ICP usage specifically. I know that's integral into it and we're trying to go a little bit more enterprise maybe. That's specific to Enterprise One, but a little bit from a cross-tool perspective, we are looking at the capability and technology management offering for our enterprise architecture group. I think we're going to start looking at LeanKit.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support is very good if they know what's going on. The reason I say that is because we have introduced a Tasktop as the integration between JIRA and Planview. And so the support model is we have to go through Planview to get all of our support. I have found it a little difficult to get answers based on some recent questions that I've had with regards to the Tasktop Integration Tool. That's my only complaint, but I think it's fairly new, I know task integration with Tasktop is a little bit more than a year old.

I think the whole integrations team is fairly young and, they've got a lot of different tools that they have to support, but maybe the support model for Tasktop and the integrations could be a little bit better.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is complex but it's huge. There's a lot to configure and there's a lot to consider and when we reengaged with Planview to get us to reset back up, we spent from March to June and beyond getting things configured. I look at trying to set up Microsoft Outlook or Microsoft teams. There's a lot to it. Is it impossible? Absolutely not. But would it change my mind on going with Planview? Absolutely not.

In terms of strategy, we were trying to re-initiate and figure out how we can mix the traditional sense of what we've used Planview for in the old waterfall method, timesheets, and all that. How we can blend it into this new, Agile methodology they were using. And we still have some teams that are very Kanban-oriented work comes in where it goes out, that type of thing. So that was our strategy to how can we mold all this together and be able to get the necessary information out of the tool that we want for upper management. We have a reset goal yet.

If it was up to management, we'd have it yesterday. We're getting back into some traditional project status things like what's the current health of the project, what's the current red, yellow, green status? We're trying to financially cost things out through the financial planning details and stuff like that. Our goal at least for projects data thing is hopefully by the end of this month with hopefully some more customized reporting, hopefully by the end of October.

We brought together a good cross-functional team between our PMO, which we have five people that write five or six people on the PMO. We brought in some scrum masters and product owners. In our core team we have about 10 employees working on it from a day to day maintenance perspective. There's one that would be me from a data maintenance perspective. It's falling mainly currently on the PMO members, which is to get to three contractors. There are seven or eight of us on the PMO.

In terms of how many people use this solution, we have all of our contractors entering timesheets, so we can do timesheet reconciliation, which is about 50 or 60. The number of people that are in it week to week are around 30 or so. That's going to increase as we're trying to move our project status thing back into the program manager, product owner space as well. 

We have time reporters, team member roles, program manager roles, mostly most of the users that we have set up are in the program manager role for being able to see statuses and updates statuses, we have about 10 people that are in what's called the requester role or more the executive I just need to be able to see the information. I don't need to be in the weeds entering data or anything like that. 

What was our ROI?

In the past, we have seen ROI. Again, we're still trying to figure out who, where, what, why and how. And so, I think the ROI calculation may come about a year from now.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It's kind of expensive, but I don't write the check. As long as the bosses will pay, we'll write the check. That's fine. Pricing isn't really part of my concern, per se. And again, not knowing what other solutions are out there and how they compare from a licensing perspective, I couldn't give you opinion either way.

There's the SaaS cost and there was a cost for the Tasktop Integration as well, but that's to be expected. We use JIRA and anytime we want to bolt on something new, we need to spend some money to make it happen. I don't think it's unreasonable.

What other advice do I have?

The biggest lesson I've learned is that there's a lot to it. There's a lot of information, and the big thing is trying to interpret what the information is telling us. I can look at one report one day, and the same report another day and get a different picture. It's just really understanding, especially week to week, what the numbers mean.

My advice would be to be ready to work hard, understand your needs, understand your requirements, and understand what information you want to get out of Enterprise One. So that, in working with Planview on a solution, they can tell you what information you will need to put into Planview, or the Enterprise One application to get that information. That's something I think that we didn't do very well. We thought we knew what we wanted, but then we'd get a month down the road, and we'd say, "Okay, I'm not getting this information." Planview was right to say, "You didn't ask for that information." So again, it totally goes against Agile methodologies, but you've got to really set a good base of what you want, so that you don't have to continually shift, on a week to week basis. Thankfully Planview has been very gracious to us and has reacted to our needs and our changes in requirements. 

I'd rate Planview an eight out of ten. It's a really good tool, very powerful, and very robust but very complex.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
System Administrator at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Improves the visibility of the resource capacity and the team's capacity to take on new work
Pros and Cons
  • "The resource capacity planning is the most valuable feature because you can evaluate your team's capacity by team and what projects they're working on and you can forecast easily by team."
  • "The reporting capability and access to the fields for our system administrators to have access to the data without having to pay Enterprise One to get the data that's needed to create custom reports for management to create reports need improvement."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use cases are for portfolio planning, forecasting, budgeting, and obviously reporting. The project managers input for projects, input resources for proper forecasting, and for budgeting. It's the same with our resource managers to monitor their teams' capacity and then also for finance purposes for our annual budget planning.

We don't use the solution a lot for the project planning itself. As far as tasks and milestones, we don't use some of the features to see what stage a project is at. We really just use it to input the project. We actually use outside applications to manage a project in most cases. 

As far as project planning, entering specific tasks and resources assigned to the project to forecast those projects is about all we use it for. And then, of course, start and finish dates. The flexibility to use a certain finish date is nice, but we don't really go into the project details in Enterprise One.

How has it helped my organization?

Enterprise One improves our monthly portfolio and resource capacity planning and forecasting. It improves the visibility of the resource capacity and the team's capacity to take on new work. 

It has helped with the prioritization of projects through alignment with strategic objectives. We have not used the strategy feature much in Enterprise One, but it does help to prioritize projects based on the need and the capacity of the resources to take on the work. It ultimately helps manage the project to have the bank customer in mind. So as we're taking on new projects, we can all work for the same goal with the customer in mind.

The assignments are in a project that's assigned to a resource. The capability is there.

What is most valuable?

The resource capacity planning is the most valuable feature because you can evaluate your team's capacity by team and what projects they're working on and you can forecast easily by team.

The resource capacity and availability help us to manage our work. During portfolio planning each month with new projects that are presented, we're able to use Enterprise One to measure the capacity of each team that's being requested to be on the project. And obviously, the resource managers and project managers are still getting used to using the tool. But I think that as time goes, it's a good tool to measure, to see the capacity and overloaded resources, as far as projects go and taking on new projects.

Enterprise One provides end-to-end work management for the full spectrum of types of work in one tool. It does do end-to-end project management. It's a good thing that we can do end-to-end project management as far as monitoring the project resources, capacity, and timeline, and the schedule of the project. But that's all we use it for. They get what they need from an outside system in order to manage the project end-to-end.

What needs improvement?

I do all of the reporting for Enterprise One and it's not as user-friendly. So there's not a whole lot of flexibility of what we can do with the reports or custom reports like we could in our old system. The ability to customize reports is not there. And we actually have to pay for Planview consultants to capture reporting that we really need because of the inability to configure the current track record for Enterprise One. That's the thing that we are struggling with is the reporting capability in Enterprise One, without having to pay for extra services from Planview to get what we need. The downfall of this is because Enterprise One is a hosted application, our administrators do not have access to the data table to all of the data tables, to all of the data, and all of the data sets that are running in the background.

The feature to create summary reports across multiple projects affects our ability to share the big picture with management. The flexibility to customize the reports in the way that management would like to see them, we cannot do. We have to engage Planview in order to have access to data to provide to management.

The reporting capability and access to the fields for our system administrators to have access to the data without having to pay Enterprise One to get the data that's needed to create custom reports for management to create reports need improvement. 

Another improvement would be on the request side for visibility. For the requesters to see progress for work and reporting for requesters portfolios, and for requesters to be able to monitor the working end to end.

I would also like to have the ability to report at a task level for chargeback purposes.

For how long have I used the solution?

We just configured Enterprise One last September and we went live in December.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

There is very minimal downtime. The only thing that is room for improvement is that their reporting is very slow. It's a very painful process to pull reports, it's just really slow.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It does slow down based on the number of projects and also based on the amount of data that's being pulled in a report. If we are pulling reports, from September, for example, it's pulling nine months of data into a report. Every month goes by it takes that much longer because it's pulling in that much data, especially if we're trying to get time-phased effort.

We have about 500 users and the roles are requesters, project managers, executive users, resource managers, compliance, finance users, and we have our system administrators.

We are using it about 50% of the application's capability and we have plans to increase that by bringing in cost capital. It's basically expenses.

How are customer service and technical support?

I would rate technical support a six out of ten. Most of the time, if a ticket is open for an issue or we are not able to do something, we're just referenced to go read out into the customer success center without actually getting help from the customer support. Or by the time a solution is provided by customer support, our system administrators have figured out a solution. Our customer support representative that monitors our tickets is really good. He monitors our tickets for us. He follows up on the tickets. I think that that is a good thing to have for all clients. I think clients should have a customer support representative to collaborate on what tickets are open.

Secondly, the reason I gave it a six is because a lot of the things that we bring, that's not an actual error, but has to do with the functionality of the application, we're just told the functionality is not there. No, Enterprise One can't do that or yes, it can, but you have to pay a consultant to set that up for you. Which are things that should be able to be done by an administrator. But again, with the application on the cloud, in the cloud, we are very limited on the flexibility of what a system administrator can do within the application.

Then timeliness of resolution and tickets being routed to the correct team's queue to work on the ticket could be improved. The customer support representatives are great. I think they're as helpful as they can be. But their knowledge of the system in itself has them answer us in a way that say "Just go read about it on the Customer Success Center."

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was very complex. It was rushed and there wasn't a lot of follow up after the configuration. Our consultant was very knowledgeable, he was very good. But there's only so much he can do in so little time. The configuration was basically the consultants setting everything up with very minimal help or interaction with our administrators, and because the configuration and go-live are so far apart, there was not any followup. To improve after configuration, there should be a series of follow-ups with the system administrators and the product owners, as well as going live, make that available.

The configuration was about six to eight weeks. We had our plan B consultant about that long. But after the system is configurated, we didn't go live until December, because after configuration we also have to take time for the creation of training material to train our end users because it was a completely new system. After configuration, you need a couple of months to just create the training material and provide training and adoption of the application. We were not able to go live until about December because of the time it takes to do the training and adoption of the application. By that time when you go live, you're not really using the system right after configuration until then. There are going to be things that come up that a consultant should still be available for the solution as the company goes live.

We had implementation strategies based on the user role. To start, if you think of end-to-end projects starting with the requester, all the way down to closing the project. The strategy was starting at the initiation of a project and continuously moving in the training, the order, or at the same workflow that a project goes.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The licensing and pricing are a bit high and the flexibility of the licensing is high. I think that the pricing to engage consultants is high. I don't have anything to compare it to other than other applications that I've supported. So there's just not a whole lot of flexibility in our licensing, which makes it very limited to what our requesters can do and different roles in an app.

What other advice do I have?

My advice would be to be more engaged between the system administrators and the consultants during the configuration stages. Also, for Planview to be more transparent about what the system administrators can and cannot do as far as reporting. And then also make sure that there is time for a training plan and a very well-thought-out training plan based on each phase of a project and user role as they are interacting with that project.

The lessons I've learned is the need to ask more questions about how the application works as far as configuring the system and learning more of the limitations of a system administrator so those questions can be asked upfront during configuration.

I would rate Enterprise One an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Team Leader at Wellmark
Real User
Robust in terms of flexibility but they should make a little more headway into how agile delivery works
Pros and Cons
  • "It maps back to our SDLC process pretty well. I'm able to see the stage of where things are at. We also use Azure DevOps for all of our requirements and our coding."
  • "When you think of planning at a PI level, roadmap planning, or release planning, I think they should make a little more headway into how agile delivery works, tying it back into the financials and the planning to Planview. I think it would be good."

What is our primary use case?

We not only use Planview for resource allocation but also for tracking financials towards the projects that we have set up. We also have financials and resource allocation and we also use the project planning piece of it.

How has it helped my organization?

We use Planview quite a bit to articulate and tell the story around where we're at, whether a project's at risk, whether it is on track, whether or not we need to either extend the timeline or add additional resources.

What is most valuable?

I just took it over about four or five months ago, as part of my responsibilities. But from what I can tell it's pretty robust in terms of flexibility.

It maps back to our SDLC process pretty well. I'm able to see the stage of where things are at. We also use Azure DevOps for all of our requirements and our coding. 

The work is in Azure DevOps but the planning aspect of that work, the financials, and the resource allocation are done through Planview. I'm trying to figure out how to connect the dots. Meaning, if I have a project where I've burned through 50% of my financials, and I've done all my resource allocation inside of Azure DevOps, I'm able to visualize and see the data that says, "Hey, I'm 50% through the development work of the project. I have this work that I currently have in flight, and I have this much planned for the remaining amount of time, which represents the remaining 50%." And then I want to see how that then maps to Planview. Because Planview could say, "Hey, you know what, we burned through 80% of our money." How do I then use the data coming out of Azure DevOps to then either go ask for more money and more funding or to do something to make decisions?

Resource capacity helps me to ensure that I have the individuals needed to complete the work. We basically go in at a high level. We know we have a project and we know we might need around 500 hours of a cloud engineer. And so we'll go out, we'll make the request, and the allocation is done for it. Then you have a person that's allocated for those 500 hours. The only thing I don't have is when they've burned through those 500 hours, I understand that they're burning it against the project, but I don't know how to tick and tie that to the features that they burning it against. 

It provides end-to-end work management for the full spectrum of the types of work. From a project view, I'm able to see where things are at by the financials, the allocation of resources, as well as the lifecycle of the project.

It also provides a variety of types of resources assignments for assigning work to people. It's pretty flexible. We could set up a variety of different rules within Planview across organizations. Each team sometimes has different roles that they need to pull in for the project or for the team. And so having the flexibility of adding roles is good.

Another thing that it has helped us with is our burn rate of dollars, more than anything else. We're able to look at things and say, "If we're coming towards the end of this year, we know our burn rates higher than it should be." And we can look at certain projects and say, "Let's remove certain work streams that we don't want to work on."

What needs improvement?

As more and more organizations are adopting agile as a framework of how to deliver work, they should build in some flexibility within Planview of connecting the work to the teams.

For example, right now the old waterfall methodology of planning was to say "Hey, I need an allocation of a resource." Normally with other tools I've seen, it's if I need an allocation of 18, I know Planview has that. We, unfortunately, made some modifications, we didn't go that route, we're on fast forward. That is an example where I think Planview has done that. 

When you think of planning at a PI level, roadmap planning, or release planning, I think they should make a little more headway into how agile delivery works, tying it back into the financials and the planning to Planview. I think it would be good.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using Enterprise One for four to five years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is good. I have not seen a lag time and we haven't been down when I've had to use it.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is good. We have 20 to 25 project managers that use Planview, a couple of team leaders, and then we do our time cards in Planview, so really the entire organization uses it, at least in IT, so it's probably around 400 to 600 people.

I would like to see us use it more. When we use Planview I would like to use it at senior level leadership planning where we can see forecasted spend, my allocation for the budget, my resources, and all of those things. I want to be able to tie that to detail work that's in Azure DevOps.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup went smoothly. It was straightforward. I don't think we had a whole lot of tickets.

We do a lot of upgrades. It's usually overnight and it doesn't take long. We had a major reconfiguration about two months ago and it went pretty smoothly.

From our side, I think we had about four or five analysts involved.

For the management, we have two people that help support and manage Planview.

What about the implementation team?

We only worked with Planview, not third-party integrators. 

What other advice do I have?

It's pretty easy to use. It's not that difficult.

I would rate Enterprise One a seven out of ten. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
IT Architect at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Gives us visibility into future demand to help us plan for resourcing
Pros and Cons
  • "The financial planning capabilities are very useful. We have integration for an SAP system, and so we load financial data from SAP into Planview for prior months. And then we use the forecasting capabilities to get a complete picture of the cost of a specific project. The financial management is very useful."
  • "Their off-shore support is something new that they're laying out and the team just needed some development in terms of skill and experience."

What is our primary use case?

Enterprise One supports our portfolio planning and approval process. People who are interested in having a project done would enter it in Planview and we would use Planview to facilitate the approval process. If it's disapproved, then we would cancel the entry and nothing would happen. If it's approved, then we use the tool to facilitate the execution of that project from a cost estimation and management resource as well as tracking the project progress and current status.

We also use it for risk management and to facilitate change management.

How has it helped my organization?

One example of how it has improved my organization is the introduction of Microsoft Power BI reporting. It greatly improved the visibility and the flexibility in those management reports. Prior to that, oftentimes there was data taken out of Planview and Excel created visuals for management. But with Power BI, definitely, the visualization capabilities are very strong.

It has definitely helped with the prioritization of projects through alignment with the strategic objective in terms of strategy, outcomes, and capabilities. It lets us tie projects to strategies, rank them, and prioritize them based on a number of attributes.

Enterprise One also allows program managers to group work together and see the resource demands and the costs at a consolidated level. That's basically the core of what Planview Enterprise One does. It gives you the ability to see across a portfolio the cost and resource demands. It doesn't affect project management ability specifically, but it helps us in the portfolio management to make sure that we're working on the right things and have the right amount of resources and it gives us visibility into future demand to help us plan for resourcing.

It drills down into the details underlying the consolidated information to a number of different levels, all the way to tell individual tasks and assignments. This lets us see what the resources are working on to help us prioritize. If we have constraints in a certain skill, we can see the detail and then make intelligent decisions on what work may need to be put off versus what work needs to get done now.

I'm not sure it has increased our on-time completion rate specifically itself, but it certainly gives us visibility into what is on time versus what is finished not on time.

What is most valuable?

The financial planning capabilities are very useful. We have integration for an SAP system, and so we load financial data from SAP into Planview for prior months. And then we use the forecasting capabilities to get a complete picture of the cost of a specific project. The financial management is very useful.

The resource management is also useful to show us resources utilization, as well as capacity and it gives us a picture across our employees as to what capacity we have, which helps us plan what work we can take on. It helps us with scheduling when certain things might begin or not begin. It also gives us visibility into if we need to consider going external for contracting or consulting resources to perform certain tasks.

Enterprise One does a very nice job of telling us what stage a project's at. We also use it from a portfolio management standpoint to gauge the health of an overall portfolio of projects. And from a planning perspective, knowing when projects are going to be ending helps us in planning future work.

It also does a nice job of letting us forecast effort either by an individual person or by skillset. If I have an individual person assigned, I can plan out their work into the future. If I have a need for a certain skill set, but I don't have anyone assigned yet, I can still plan the work being done.

It does a very good job of providing summary reports across multiple projects if there are different options of reporting available within the tool itself. It also connects with Microsoft's Power BI. That's integrated as well to provide some dashboarding KPIs.

Enterprise One provides end-to-end work management for the full spectrum of types of work in one tool. We use it for different types of work. We use it for project work. We use it for production support monitoring and production support work. We also use it for managing smaller work requests that don't require a formal project driven by a project manager.

What needs improvement?

In terms of improvement, I know one of the things they're moving to is a single Planview account ID. Right now, if you have multiple Planview products, you have to log on multiple times. But that's a general statement. It's not specific to Enterprise One.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using Planview for 14 years. Enterprise One is their current version, their core PPM application.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's very stable. In the four years I've used it at my current employer, I think only once I've had an actual issue where there was something that they needed to fix. It's a very stable platform.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I know in our case specifically, we've had over 1,000 active projects at any one time with over 1,000 users using it all over the world, and it performs fine. I know other companies only manage several dozen projects at a time but Enterprise One definitely seems scalable.

When I joined, we had about 1,200 users. We've spun off a couple of parts of our business that used to use it. Presently, we're smaller, but when I first joined, we had about 1,200 users.

We use it within our IT organization and within IT the adoption rate is 100%. There were other business areas that were using it that we sold off. We're having discussions with other business areas on using the functionality.

In terms of the types of users using Enterprise One, project management obviously is very active in it every day. We have people that work in portfolio management. They're in it quite often. We have a team that we call our relationship managers. They're folks that work with a business on project prioritization and project ideas. And management uses it, again, for visualization reporting. Resource managers are also in it to view what their people are working on and view assignments to projects and approve assignments.

I manage the solution. I'm an IT manager, but in this capacity, I'm the Planview architect so I do all the configuration of it.

How are customer service and technical support?

The technical support seems strong. I know they've started doing some more off-shore support, and that space still needs some growth. But the US-based technical support is fine. Their off-shore support is something new that they're laying out and the team just needed some development in terms of skill and experience. 

How was the initial setup?

I was not involved in the initial deployment here. I've used this product at two different companies and I actually wasn't involved in the initial deployment in either one.

What was our ROI?

In hard dollars, I have not seen ROI. In productivity and the ability to help support achieving our strategic objectives, I have. But I couldn't put a dollar figure next to it.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I'm not involved really in the pricing or licensing aspects of it. One of the things that Planview as a company has done is introduce something they call FLEX licensing, where if you have Enterprise One licenses that you're not using, you can exchange them for licenses for other Planview products. So as a company, the licensing seems flexible. But that's not an Enterprise One statement specifically.

What other advice do I have?

One of the big lessons, and this applies to any solution, is not to customize it and use it as it's designed to be used. Adopt your processes to leverage the capabilities of the tool. I've seen many instances where people take applications and customize them to fit their processes. And it just ends up being problematic later on. That's one of the things we did in the latest implementation of Planview four years ago. We had an on-premise version that was heavily customized. We moved to a SaaS model that was not customized at all, and we've been able to keep it current. Upgrades are easy. So one of the lessons I would recommend is: Don't customize.

I would rate Enterprise One an eight out of ten. It does an outstanding job of supporting our needs in this space, and the company has done a great job of continuing to enhance and improve it.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Enterprise Architect at Qualcomm Incorporated
Real User
Good metamodel and flexibility, but should be more easily customizable and the survey engine needs improvement
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature of this solution is the completeness of the standard, underlying metamodel."
  • "Configuring the UI in the content management system is too elaborate and too time-consuming."

What is our primary use case?

We use this solution for managing our application portfolio. We do some lightweight business architecture connecting to our portfolio. We started rolling into the information portfolio and connecting that also to our application portfolio. Those are the primary use cases. It's also to support the bigger M&A activities that we have in our company.

How has it helped my organization?

One of our latest use cases is basically onboarding. Our information and risk management team were looking for a system that could house a catalog of information objects. I suggested that that can leverage our platform, and it already had prebuilt configuration screens so they could easily be on-boarded in starting to use it. We configured more elaborate workflows for the use cases, and that took a couple of months. Now, they are rolling it out. Time to market is important and we leveraged it in the existing system.

This solution has not yet transformed our organization strategy. While we have been using this solution for eleven years, our EA department got canned two years ago. We restarted based on the merger and acquisition. So, it's rebuilding and we're still a small team of only three people. It's basically restarting the whole discipline and also getting strategy, business architecture, and information architecture. While we were in IT, we only considered our application and technology. But we are now focused more on business and information. Once that is in place, then we can think about strategies, roadmaps, and the whole thing.

We do not use the Collaborative Work Management features.

We do not yet use the Lean/Agile Delivery tools.

The biggest impact that using Planview has had is the flexibility that it provides, as well as the ability to use the predefined metamodel and the new portal.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature of this solution is the completeness of the standard, underlying metamodel. We can put most of our attributes or information that we want into the standard metamodel. This is important because we don't need to think about what kinds of attributes or objects we need to create because they are already provided. If we stick to what is called the active metamodel, then the UI is on top of that and we don't need to do a lot of UI customization in order to manage that data.

This is a flexible solution in the places where it needs to be, although it is rigid in certain places because it still uses old technologies. For example, you can see this in the reporting. They started with a Cognos Business Intelligence/Business Objects, then they moved to BIRT, and now they have moved to SSRS. There are still some legacy flash components in there, so there is no clear strategy on that side.

The flexibility helps in that it has a vast amount of predefined roles. It's flexible to safeguard the areas of the platform that you open up. The new portal is flexible enough to create your own portfolios and column sets, which will cater eighty-percent to what people want. The flexibility allows it to become more self-service, and we can on-board users that do not have an IT or enterprise role, but more like an add-on list or even a business user.

What needs improvement?

Configuring the UI in the content management system is too elaborate and too time-consuming. The look and feel are outdated because it's more than ten years old, so it's not that flexible when it comes to using the real estate that you have on the screen to cater to certain persons. If you look nowadays at web UIs, they are more intuitive than what is currently provided.

The workflow engine needs to be improved to provide for easier configuration and better functionality. Creating workflows needs to be done in multiple places, and the process is elaborate and time-consuming.

We would like to see improvements made on the CTM side and the survey engine. We are now doing app rationalization and we took all of our applications out of Planview CTM and put them into a different tool to run the surveys.

All the parts are there for a low code platform, it needs some uplifting in the UI and workflow. this is the real untapped possibility of CTM.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using this solution for 12 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I think that the stability of this solution is below average. With every new update, I find bugs. We have on average twelve bugs active overall and the number doesn't go down with each release. They will fix something and then I find something else.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability of this solution is good. We're onboarding more people and because we're running on-premises, we can scale our VMs ourselves.

How are customer service and technical support?

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate the technical support an eight. It depends on the question that I asked because we do a lot of our own development on Planview, and sometimes it's in a gray area. At times it will need to be Professional Services, but in most cases, I will get my answers and technology questions answered.

What was our ROI?

I believe that we have seen ROI because for us it brings value, but I cannot quantify it in a monetary sense. It's more in the insight and knowledge that makes things feasible. That's what is important. We're not in a place where we can put a figure against it. It is a subjective measure, rather than objective.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Our licensing fees are approximately $50,000 USD annually.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

As an enterprise architect, it's our role to see what's out in the market and evaluate competing solutions. I do have contacts with two of their competitors, BiZZdesign and LeanIX, who would prefer me to use their solution. 

There are several reasons that we have stayed with Planview so far. First, we have a lot invested in this solution. The metamodel is still great. We are used to their UI and we have integrated our application portfolios into other systems. Moving away from this solution would require changing some of our integrations.

LeanIX is not ArchiMate 3 compliant and has a limited set of relationships and components.

With BiZZdesign, you need to have multiple products to match what Planview can do. 

Generally, Planview is always keeping in touch with the players in that field. They are always heading towards a common discipline.

What other advice do I have?

My advice to anybody who is implementing this solution is to start small. Think about your primary use cases and build it out from there. Also, think about what kind of information you want to use or start with. Make sure that you are safeguarded for scope because Enterprise One is a strategic and tactical system, and don't try to make it an operational system. We tried to do that in the past, doing more like IT operations, like CMDB, and the system is not geared for that. It's more on the strategy side, but that also means that you are more thinking in logical construct and conceptual, than really operational things.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Senior Consultant / Project Manager at a government with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Has good program reports but the user interface is not immediately intuitive
Pros and Cons
  • "We're still in an early stage. Things will change as we use it more. I did program reports that are important and that will provide us with value."
  • "I think that the user interface needs some getting used to. It's not immediately intuitive. That's potentially room for improvement. I think also that an organization needs to have good support from some senior management to get something like Planview established."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use case is to provide an overview of the status of multiple programs and projects. We're doing many programs and projects at the same time and this is a way to provide a consistent way of reporting on their status and progress.

What is most valuable?

We're still in an early stage. Things will change as we use it more. I did program reports that are important and that will provide us with value.

What needs improvement?

I think that the user interface needs some getting used to. It's not immediately intuitive. That's potentially room for improvement. I think also that an organization needs to have good support from some senior management to get something like Planview established. If that's missing, then it's not so easy to get support for it in the organization. If I was to talk about a feature or something for improvement, I think it would be the user interface and, in particular, the link between strategy and work.

For how long have I used the solution?

We started using Planview in November of last year. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We haven't experienced any issues with scalability or stability. So far, the application seems very stable and scalable. But we're not using it for 5,000 users at the same time. We're more like a couple of hundred.

How was the initial setup?

We worked with Planview consultants to configure Planview to the organization's needs. So, if there's something that is important that the customer, namely ourselves, understand what we want so we can help Planview to configure it well. Investing in knowledge before starting is quite important.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I suspect it's perhaps a bit more expensive than some other competitors, but I wasn't involved in the competitive bid. My job was to implement what we had bought. I don't have comparison prices.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Planview a seven out of ten. 

In the next release, I would like to potentially see better integration between the strategy and the work aspects of Planview, so that you can report across them better. I think it's also quite early to say. We need to use it for several months to get a better feeling for that.

The interface has to do with the fact that it takes some time for new people to understand the tool. I don't think it's too bad myself, but, potentially, they could make it even better. More intuitive. In the first instance, the user interface requires some familiarization. It takes a while to get familiar with it. It could be improved.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Sr Information Technology Supervisor at Solar Turbines
Real User
The product has been stable and reliable throughout our testing
Pros and Cons
  • "We do a lot of big projects which are pretty expensive to structure the product development around and see the progress. Every time we start a project, we have to expense the spends for certain amounts. We need some baselines, like predictive versus actual."
  • "The technical people are very competent, but there is so much turnover in the people that we talk to, and that's frustrating. They will say, "We can make this work." Suddenly, that guy has left, and we have no one. Then, we have to start all over."

What is our primary use case?

The primary use case is for portfolio management on product development.

What is most valuable?

We do a lot of big projects which are pretty expensive to structure the product development around and see the progress. Every time we start a project, we have to expense the spends for certain amounts. We need some baselines, like predictive versus actual.

For how long have I used the solution?

We are just getting started. We got into Planview a couple of years back. We are still learning.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The product has been stable and reliable throughout our testing.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

So far, it has been scalable.

How are customer service and technical support?

The support is good. There are some good people there.

My frustration is that there is so much turnover at Planview. Every time we have had an issue, particularly on the sales side, you're talking to a new set of people. 

The technical people are very competent, but there is so much turnover in the people that we talk to, and that's frustrating. They will say, "We can make this work." Suddenly, that guy has left, and we have no one. Then, we have to start all over.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

The decision was made before I was in charge of Planview.

How was the initial setup?

We found it the best to hire the Planview team and get the setup done through them. It took a couple of days.

What about the implementation team?

We used Planview for the implementation.

What was our ROI?

It is way too soon.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Our licensing costs are about a quarter of a million dollars per year.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate the product a seven out of 10.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Other
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Business Analyst at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Intuitive to use and has good custom reporting capabilities
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature for me is the ease and customizability of reporting."
  • "I would like to be able to integrate with Oracle to supplement what we're currently doing with reporting."

What is our primary use case?

I have a governance role in our strategic portfolio management and I use this solution for reporting out against the strategic portfolio. I interact with the PMOs and FPNA and help to get the two on the same page.

How has it helped my organization?

Our ability to do strategic portfolio reporting has gotten much better. We're more accurate with how we report out. One of the biggest things is that each year, we've had a lot of shifts in how our pillars are set up and we can quickly shift to meet those needs without having it be too lengthy or too difficult.

Using this solution has helped improve how quickly we can deliver. It saves us time.

Collaborative Work Management has affected our operations because we're able to collaborate with different groups. We've got our PMO groups, and I'm able to get the information that I need from them. They go in, pull all of their information and I get the reports. We collaborate really well, from what I can tell.

My understanding is that we are using the Lean/Agile delivery tools, but I am not sure if we are using them to the full extent.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature for me is the ease and customizability of reporting. We can get different reports and customize them to do different things.

I also like business objects capabilities, although I haven't used them in my current role.

This is a flexible solution.

This tool is easy to use. I have used solutions such as SAP and Oracle and compared to using those products, I picked up up this tool right away. Once I had a little bit of training from our admins, I thought that it was really intuitive. It was easy for me to go in and build reports, where I didn't constantly need other people to do it for me. That is nice because I have administrative access, so I can do pretty much anything within the tool that I have the knowledge for. That is a plus for a business analyst. You can get the data you want quickly, export it to Excel, and slice and dice it the way you want to.

What needs improvement?

I would like to be able to integrate with Oracle to supplement what we're currently doing with reporting. We aren't doing it right now, although I don't know if it's a limitation with Planview or it's a limitation with us. I know that it would be helpful for me to bridge that gap because we have to deal with two different datasets.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

From a stability standpoint, I think it's solid. I haven't had any major issues with it. I'm always able to get my reporting and I'm always able to do the things that I want to do.

What was our ROI?

My understanding is that we have seen ROI from this solution, but I am not aware of the specifics. I know that other Blue Shield organizations are using it, and I have heard that it has been successful for us.

What other advice do I have?

Currently, we are not taking advantage of the full functionality that is offered by this solution. We really need to push to get to that next level and use everything that is being offered. I think that there is a disconnect between the people who are the administrators of it and the people who tweak it to get it to do what we want. We just need to have the conversations and that vision of what we want it to do. I know we've got some limitations within our own company, where I think we have a vision of where we want to go and things that I want to get. We're just not quite there, yet.

We've always struggled, but we have been getting better with our reporting each year.

This is a great tool. I have a stronger finance background, so I've used more ERP-type systems and this is my first project management system. From what I can tell, it's great. I haven't used Oracle's or one from another vendor, but I think that this one works well.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PPM Services Manager at Roche Diabetes Care
Real User
Brings transparency to our projects. The UI should be less technical and focused more on open users.
Pros and Cons
  • "It gives us the vast ability to churn out-of-the-box reports and have an overview about approach rates and resource utilization."
  • "The UI needs improvement. The UI should have more possibilities for users who are not specialized in using Planview. At the moment, it is more of a technical UI. I would like it to be an open user UI."

What is our primary use case?

The primary use cases are soft management and work management. We are expanding at the moment to outcome management and strategy management as well as ICP planning. Next year, we will expand to CTM.

How has it helped my organization?

When I started in the group on the German side, we could only have aliases as resources. Now, we are able to have named resources through the agreement, and pulled from the worker's council, for example. 

We have more stability in the data. Our group has plenty of portrait data now, as we are part of the source of the tools for portrait data.

Planview has helped connect funding and strategic outcomes with work execution. We started to have strategic planning inside going then down to the outcomes. Out of the outcomes, we will try to wait on the projects and other teams, then growing slowly to link it.

It brings transparency to our projects.

What is most valuable?

I like the Excel interfaces that we have and use it for. 

It gives us the vast ability to churn out-of-the-box reports and have an overview about approach rates and resource utilization.

The product is flexible. E.g., the work infrastructure is easy to adjust. Some other structures are really easy to configure, adjust to our behavior, and adjust to our processes.

What needs improvement?

Overall, the UI needs improvement. The UI should have more possibilities for users who are not specialized in using Planview. At the moment, it is more of a technical UI. I would like it to be an open user UI. 

improvement is needed on several modules, like resource management and outcome management. 

For how long have I used the solution?

Two years.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The product can grow with us. We can add more users.

How are customer service and technical support?

The customer support center is really valuable. I have had a lot of email discussions and talks with them. We have found several solutions. Sometimes, it ends in an enhancement request.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straightforward.

We plan to upgrade to version 18 next year.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did an assessment of several companies.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate the product as a seven out of 10. 

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Report Architect/Developer at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Flexible, customizable reporting, and integrates well with Power BI
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature of this solution is reporting."
  • "Some of the out-of-the-box reporting is not immediately useful and although it can be configured or customized, there are still improvements that can be made."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use case for this solution is for managing a 450 million dollar portfolio from the inception and ideas into a strategy. We do this by turning it into an actual project and then understanding how that project performed and taking lessons learned for the next time around.

How has it helped my organization?

The biggest benefit that we have seen is that it's increased visibility across the board. It's given us a lot of data to actually make data-driven decisions, whereas before this product we didn't have the level of detail to make informed decisions around a lot of trade-offs with our strategic portfolio.

With respect to our organizational strategy, it has not been transformed by this solution, but it has enabled us to achieve our strategy and achieve our goals. We went through the large process of setting up our own IT shop in the past ten years, and Planview was a big part of being able to do that.

Collaborative Work Management has affected our operations by providing visibility and transparency throughout.

We do not yet use the Lean/Agile Delivery tools.

This solution has helped us connect funding and strategic outcomes with work execution. I do not have specific examples of this but that is my understanding from my colleagues.

The biggest impact that using Planview has had is that it has given us the ability to manage the main capacity of working our resources and getting better at that over time. We are better at planning for our people and making sure that we use them appropriately.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature of this solution is reporting.

The integration with Power BI, in particular, makes it very easy to get information in a useable format out to our stakeholders.

This is a flexible solution. The flexibility allows you to take care of your stakeholders in different ways. Depending on their way of working, you can accommodate several different processes.

What needs improvement?

Some of the out-of-the-box reporting is not immediately useful and although it can be configured or customized, there are still improvements that can be made.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

This solution is stable. I've not had a technical issue where I was not able to access it. It has always been a solid, high-quality platform.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

This solution is easily scalable. It really just depends on the administration team that you have in your company. When somebody wants it, you ask them a few questions then you turn things on for them.

How are customer service and technical support?

The technical support is among the best in the industry. They're very clear, very thorough and they get right to the heart of the problem. They're willing to work with you and help discover any issues that arise, as well as the implications.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Prior to the solution, we were using the HP Portfolio and Performance Management System. We switched because it wasn't as comprehensive and couldn't handle tying everything together. We had a big issue with getting visibility.

What was our ROI?

We realize ROI through this solution because it is the way that we manage our strategic portfolio. It is difficult to quantify, but it is an essential part of our operations.

What other advice do I have?

This solution has reached a pretty comprehensive state, so it is difficult to immediately think of features that it is lacking.

My advice to anybody who is researching this type of solution is to make sure you're working with a vendor like Planview, who has a comprehensive solution from innovation to the inception of ideas all the way through getting your teams to be able to collaborate together. It really makes a difference if they're all in the same environment.

This is a good solution, but there is always room for improvement. Planview seems great at identifying what needs to be improved and then moving the ball forward.

I would rate this solution a nine 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.
PeerSpot user
Specialist Project Solutions at Flowserve Corporation
Real User
Data can be limited to a user's needs and roles
Pros and Cons
  • "The integration stuff from tool to tool, like Projectplace to Planview, to manage projects is the most valuable feature. It keeps all our tasks up-to-date. It closely follows up with everything, which is really cool."
  • "We had issues with the data rephrasing."

What is our primary use case?

It is for total strategic management, portfolio management, etc. It is used for end-to-end projects from the beginning to the end. Our entire company is using it.

I am a developer. I work on RBI reports (financial reporting) in Enterprise One for our business leaders.

How has it helped my organization?

The product has been good. The strategic planning started in 2017. They have been making good decisions based on the data that is available in Planview. They can do a drill down to the results level and what is happening exactly in every project.

They are trying to use the product portfolio. I had news that our management team is trying to get the product portfolios in place. It's about to launch.

What is most valuable?

The integration stuff from tool to tool, like Projectplace to Planview, to manage projects is the most valuable feature. It keeps all our tasks up-to-date. It closely follows up with everything, which is really cool.

From a reporting angle, it is flexible. We can use it in multiple ways, like with the in-house dashboards inside of Planview. With the security and all its options, the data can be limited to the extent of that user's need based on their roles, which is awesome. There is a lot of connectivity to a number of tools.

What needs improvement?

We had issues with the data rephrasing. 

The integration stuff is not going so well. I heard that there are a lot of updates to version 18. It is almost 40 to 50 percent updates on the integration part. We should feel the difference and our problem should be resolved.

I am looking forward to exploring the bots on the recording part. This will really help us out when it is added.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using it for a year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is good.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Impact-wise, more users and teams are getting onboard, seeing Planview within the organization. People are using it in IT, engineering, manufacturing, R&D, etc. Users are increasing daily.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support is awesome. I personally know Natalia. I have been interacting with her for my last couple of calls. Whenever we have support, we raise the last developmental request, and they are very good. They're very helpful all the time.

What other advice do I have?

The product is a nine out of 10. I need to give a little space for improvement.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Sr Analyst at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Enables us to see planned project start and end times along with their costs
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable features are the resource management, the time sheet entry and usage, and the financial planning. With our projects, we primarily focus on resource assignments, as far as determining the actual forecast and actuals of our projects. A lot of it is based off of the resources utilized on those projects. The time based helps us capture the actuals. The amount of time people are spending on working on their project tasks. Because they've built this into the schedule, so we can build the forecast. With financial planning, we're able to look back on what our variance is and if there is anything between the scheduled forecasted hours, dollars against the actual hours, and the costs that they utilize."
  • "I would like a bit more flexibility, as far as the configuration, and have additional capabilities to configure, making it more flexible for our use."

What is our primary use case?

It's primarily for project and portfolio management, which includes resource assignments onto projects as well as financial management of our projects.

How has it helped my organization?

When we implemented it, we were able to intentionally assign resources to the projects that they've been approved for. Previously, we didn't have a way of restricting resources from charging time against any active projects that we have. By utilizing Enterprise One, we were able to reflect and show the resources when they went to enter their time sheets for only active projects and projects that they were approved to work on. This meant that they were charging hours against work that their project manager was expecting them to work on.

We are still going through a lot of transformation as an organization on the whole. Planview is a good partner because one of the ways that we have tried to change our strategies is to move to a product-based approach. I think Planview will help us with that.

It has helped to transform our organization’s delivery. It is enabled us to see actual planned start and end times of projects, then we can look back when the projects actually closed out. This gives us an opportunity to look back, and say, "Why did it take us so long to finish a project, especially if it went above the proposed plan?" It also manages our costs to say, "Based on how we're trending on our costs, how are we going to finish within budget? Are we likely to go over budget?" This also affects schedule.

Planview has helped connect funding and strategic outcomes with work execution because we utilize the strategic module within Enterprise One to help with that work.

The biggest impact has been resource assignment and management. It has helped us consolidate those and be very intentional as far as the tasks that resources are assigned to track. It has a big impact on our financial planning as well.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features are the resource management, the time sheet entry and usage, and the financial planning. With our projects, we primarily focus on resource assignments, as far as determining the actual forecast and actuals of our projects. A lot of it is based off of the resources utilized on those projects. The time based helps us capture the actuals. The amount of time people are spending on working on their project tasks. Because they've built this into the schedule, so we can build the forecast. With financial planning, we're able to look back on what our variance is and if there is anything between the scheduled forecasted hours, dollars against the actual hours, and the costs that they utilize.

We are able to adjust it based on any process changes that I've identified as far as our work types and the way our workflows work. We're able to go in there and make those changes ourselves. It's helped us because we can do some self configurations.

What needs improvement?

I would like a bit more flexibility, as far as the configuration, and have additional capabilities to configure, making it more flexible for our use.

For how long have I used the solution?

We've been using it for 14 months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's very stable. I am very happy with the stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is very scalable. I think it's helping us grow, as far as we are a changing organization. Planview has been able to grow with us in that respect.

How are customer service and technical support?

We've used that technical support. We have faced some challenges with some of the enhancement requests that we might want information on and the process it takes to get some of those changes put in. The process has improved from when we first implemented it. We have noticed a difference. 

I am leaning towards rating the technical support a seven and a half to eight out of 10. I would expect that next year, I'll probably be able to rate them a 10.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We're using Innotas at the time, which is now Planview PPM Pro. Ironically, we didn't realize that they were going to be acquired by Planview when we started using it. We switched over just for maturity and to have better financial planning and reporting application as well.

How was the initial setup?

It was a bit complex due to the change nature of the product from where we were with our old legacy application, then moving onto Planview. Once we settled in, it became easier to use and manage.

What about the implementation team?

We partnered with Planview in terms of the initial deployment. They had an onsite consultant who helped us with the configuration and creating the test environment before we were able to cut over and move into the extra production environment. The experience with them was very good. I would rate the experience as a 10 out of 10. We had a very good cut over experience.

What was our ROI?

We don't track the ROI. I think that there is some ROI available just based on the cost of how much we've been spending on our portfolio the last year and on how Planview has helped us manage those costs.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

From PPM Pro to Planview Enterprise One, we did not evaluate other vendors. We already had the relationship with Planview from using PPM Pro so that helped us. Planview came to us very receptive. Also with the costs, they were very understanding. Knowing that we were an existing customer, they were very much willing to work with us to make sure that we were able to transition to Enterprise One.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate them as a solid nine out of 10.

Give Enterprise One a fair consideration. It is very scalable and flexible with the changes that we are seeing with version 17. There are a lot of integrations, so the capabilities are much broader than what you may initially perceive. I would definitely put it up there as a product that is as good, if not better, than anything that's out there in the marketplace that is similar.

We are not yet using the Lean/Agile delivery tools, but we're hoping to do so in the next couple of months.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Other
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
IT Project Director at UT MD Anderson
Real User
Created a consistent way of reporting our schedules and milestones
Pros and Cons
  • "Our reporting is much better. There is much more visibility on projects, schedules, tasks, and in our milestones. Now, we have a consistent way of reporting out to the committees and getting all of our schedules and milestones."
  • "Sometimes within the application, when you pull a report, it takes awhile performance-wise for the reports to pull up."

What is our primary use case?

Mainly, we use it to manage all of our strategic and capital projects. There are about 80 to 100 projects per year that we manage with it: schedules, issues, risks, and financials. We manage everything in the tool.

How has it helped my organization?

Our reporting is much better. There is much more visibility on projects, schedules, tasks, and in our milestones. Now, we have a consistent way of reporting out to the committees and getting all of our schedules and milestones.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the reporting. We are able to extract monthly reports out of Planview Enterprise One. We then report out to our leadership and executive committees. It is a combined report that lists all of the issues, risks, our schedule, and milestone. It gives leadership as well as all the committee members and everyone a one page view of the progress of the project.

The tool is easy to use, and that is good.

What needs improvement?

We had some learning issues at the start, but now that the users are in the tool day after day, they are getting there.

Power BI versus getting reports within Planview could improve. Instead of having to leverage Power BI, those reports could just be generated within the Planview tool using the tiles. This would be a huge jump for the product.

For how long have I used the solution?

We just went live in March, so about six months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

For most part, it's pretty stable. The only issue that we have seen is with the reports. Sometimes within the application, when you pull a report, it takes awhile performance-wise for the reports to pull up. Otherwise, it's good for the most part.

How are customer service and technical support?

The technical support is pretty good. We have opened up many cases with Planview which get addressed in a timely fashion. 

It's when we want to get into integrations that the time response could be a bit quicker.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

It is changing the culture of project management within our company a little bit. Before, we had multiple tools, so project managers were either using Excel or some had Microsoft Project. Reporting was done in different ways. This tool just brings the project management community together. We're all on the same tool and reporting on the same structure.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was complex because we also implemented it in a three month time frame. This was a pretty aggressive timeline for us. We got it done.

We didn't get all the integrations done, but that was sort of our phase two. We started in December with our build portion and went live in March.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did not other vendors. 

We're part of UT. Because we already had an existing contract within the UT system, we piggybacked on that contract and utilized that to implement Planview.

What other advice do I have?

It is about a seven or eight out of 10. I think for the most part that the tool itself is excellent. It meets our needs. It gets us the reports that we want. It has all of the portfolio and program management functionality. All of that is working well. I would've given it a 10 out of 10 if the integrations in some of the reporting capabilities were easier,

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Manager, PM Tools at a logistics company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Projects are in a single place allowing us to do portfolio level planning. We have experienced significant issues around integrations.
Pros and Cons
  • "It has been effective for our delivery. It's given us much better visibility into what is being delivered and when."
  • "We do have some significant issues with our integrations that we're working through. Those are not as stable or reliable as what we would like."

What is our primary use case?

We're using it for IT project management and annual planning. We also have CTM (part of Enterprise One), which is the true application portfolio management tool. The application portfolio management tool is more about managing metadata around our applications that we support. However, we are looking to do the integration between CTM and the PM modules.

How has it helped my organization?

The biggest impact is the maturity around getting projects in a single place so we can do portfolio level planning and use the tool for more than just timekeeping. This has been the biggest step that we've taken so far. This year was the first year that we did all of our annual planning in the tool instead of starting it in the tool, then doing it in spreadsheets afterwards. So, we're still growing there.

It has been effective for our delivery. It's given us much better visibility into what is being delivered and when.

Our finance/accounting department has been able to get more information than what they had before.

It helps connect funding with work execution. All of our projects have budgets and expected benefits to calculate an NPV. That is part of our annual planning processes. Then, we track monthly reforecasts and progress against those plans.

What is most valuable?

The visibility across the portfolio, who is responsible for what projects, who is working them, and where we are in terms of financials.

What needs improvement?

The integrations need improvement. We have some data exports. They're not even live app integrations. They're just data exports that run with our SAP instance. They either fail, hang up, or aren't configured correctly to operate. Those are the issues that we're running into now.

Some things that we're looking forward to are alerts and monitoring notifications for active notifications. We would also like more about the history of actions which are happening within the tool, so more recordable history.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using the tool since 2016.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The platform is stable. We rarely have any issues with Planview for functionality. We don't have any issues with crashes.

We do have some significant issues with our integrations that we're working through. Those are not as stable or reliable as what we would like. I think it's processed-related, but it's all on the Planview side.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We haven't run into any issues with scalability.

We have run into a few issues with performance. It just seems to be slow, depending on how many activities you have in a work breakdown structure, how many projects in a portfolio resource, etc.

We are planning to implement more features, as the organization can absorb that change. We haven't tapped all of the capabilities of it yet.

How are customer service and technical support?

We have used the professional services for the integrations. Their support is good except when the applications don't work. 

We have had several conversation, even at Horizons. It is really a process issue.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We switched from Primavera. We had sort of outgrown it. We needed more of a project and something that would be a little bit easier to use for our projects. We weren't taking advantage of the full capabilities of Primavera.

How was the initial setup?

It's very complex. Maybe it was a lack of defined processes on our side of things. We really struggled to understand how we needed to answer the questions that they were asking, so they could configure it to support our processes.

We overcame it by trial and error. We kept at it until we got to a point where we could at least deploy and start tracking time, then grew from there.

What about the implementation team?

It's been several years, but we did use professional services for their initial rapid deployment.

What was our ROI?

We would have a hard time calculating ROI at this point. It has been part of our normal operations for several years. Knowing what it would be without the tool, that would be difficult to calculate.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We recently did a new bundle for all of Enterprise One. It includes some of the newer pieces, like Projectplace and LeanKit. It bundled our CTM in with it as well. I think the total came out to be about $900,000 a year. This is for unlimited licenses.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did evaluate other vendors.

We don't use Planview's Lean/Agile delivery tools. We use VersionOne.

What other advice do I have?

Start with processes first. Do that hard work before you get Planview in and start talking about the capabilities of the tool. The tool can do pretty much anything you need it to do, but you need to know first what it needs to do for your company.

The tool is very powerful. Sometimes that complexity makes it difficult to use, but it certainly has more than what we need.

The tool has a lot of potential. Our particular implementation of it has some work to be done. I would rate it a seven out of 10.

We don't use Projectplace.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Other
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Senior Engineer at Northwestern Mutual
Real User
Provides visibility into our IT assets. However, there have been some interruptions in service.
Pros and Cons
  • "The biggest impact has been the visibility into our IT assets."
  • "Support is still a challenge. We find it challenging more due to the responsiveness and getting a case or ticket assigned to an analyst. That's what I was just doing. I was following up on an email that we opened last week. We haven't heard anything, so following up on that."

What is our primary use case?

We use it to help us manage our IT assets for our company.

How has it helped my organization?

We've heard many heard sound bites from other areas where, five to seven years ago, they did not have this type of visibility into the IT assets for the organization. As it is now, we work with multiple teams who ask us for these different types of information. None of which would have been possible without having an application like Enterprise One.

The biggest impact has been the visibility into our IT assets.

What is most valuable?

Some of the most important features that we find are the ability to relate assets to one another (applications to software and hardware) and associate capabilities to each of our assets, as well as to whom the users in our user base are, whether they're internal/external customers and which departments. From this, we can create reports which can help identify for a particular department the applications that they use or own. Then, from there, the capabilities they offer.

We do find the solution flexible. Having the ability to make customizations to the product offers a great deal of flexibility to buy business requirements as well as meet the needs of our clients and customers.

What needs improvement?

The product can probably improve in a couple areas: 

  1. Support is still a challenge. We find it challenging more due to the responsiveness and getting a case or ticket assigned to an analyst. That's what I was just doing. I was following up on an email that we opened last week. We haven't heard anything, so following up on that. So, that's one area of opportunity.
  2. I would like them to be more product-focused with the continuing evolution of the product. As companies transform the way they do IT asset management, the product should continually change with it as well.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We do have some interruptions in service for one reason or another, but a majority of the time, it seems very stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We don't scale. We don't have a lot of users, just in the hundreds, even though our organization is in the thousands. 

It seems fairly scalable, particularly as our organization is in the cloud.

How are customer service and technical support?

We interact with technical support quite often, whether it's deployments, bugs, or errors that we run into. We work with them on a fairly regular basis, whether it's just typical deployments or if it's actual issues that we run into. Most of the time, it's on the Planview side, whether it is an outage or some performance issues. Occasionally, it's something that we introduced.

How was the initial setup?

I was not involved with the initial setup.

What was our ROI?

Our ROI is the visibility and relationships between our applications and software with one another along with the ability to tie capabilities and assign owners to identify individuals who are related to the assets. In a lot of cases, different areas of the organization have different needs. They come to us for information regarding different IT assets, and we're fortunate enough to be able to provide that information from what we've captured and placed into the Enterprise One application.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate the product a seven out of 10.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PVA at Prime Therapeutics
Real User
Easy for users to learn and pick up. We have lost horsepower when upgrading.
Pros and Cons
  • "I like that the data that we store is available for everybody. We're not trying to hide anything. Being an administrator, I know a lot about the tool. It is very easy to show somebody how to use the tool and get used to it. Hopefully that user doesn't come back and ask the same question twice is really what it is about. It's a very intuitive product as well. For what we use the tool for today, it's easy to learn and pick up."
  • "One of the reasons why we've upgraded so many times is because of performance standards. We've just run into issues where we've had performance problems. Maybe they are not upgrading, but they're adding more horsepower. Then, we do go upgrade and lose that horsepower, which is frustrating from my perspective as an admin to lose that horsepower. Hopefully, that'll change."

What is our primary use case?

The primary use cases are project management and resource management. We use both of those modules of the tool today.

How has it helped my organization?

The transparency piece has improved our organization. We're big into financials. We set targets annually. We are able see real-time based upon our reporting structure, and we do this on a monthly basis. We use some of the reporting features that they have in the tool to show this information to key leaders in our organization to be able to keep the wheels turning down the road.

What is most valuable?

We are in a very transparent company. I like that the data that we store is available for everybody. We're not trying to hide anything. Being an administrator, I know a lot about the tool. It is very easy to show somebody how to use the tool and get used to it. Hopefully that user doesn't come back and ask the same question twice is really what it is about. It's a very intuitive product as well. For what we use the tool for today, it's easy to learn and pick up.

What needs improvement?

I am looking forward to the upcoming features. Previously, we have had continuous upgrades, so not having to put in so many tickets to get in a queue to get the migration up and running. we'll leverage that. Based on issues that we've run into, such as, having to open up a ticket, then going through development and that whole process, it lengthens out to find out that, "Oh, we can't fix it. It's going to be in the next release." Then, we have to wait for that release to come out. From an admin perspective, I think the upcoming features are great. 

Some of the other administrative screens, like the configured screens, they are modernizing those, which is exciting. This will help me out.

For how long have I used the solution?

About six and a half years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We started in version 10. We have gone through the migration path of upgrading and the pains that they've talked about today of having to go through the process of upgrading to a new version. I'm very excited to see the features which are coming.

For the most part, it is stable, but we've had our struggles as well. From a reliability and performance perspective, we don't have a lot of users. We have about 350 users, not all online at the same time, but we've had our struggles with performance. It is good to see that Planview has seen that themselves and are doing everything they can to fix and remedy this. 

One of the reasons why we've upgraded so many times is because of performance standards. We've just run into issues where we've had performance problems. Maybe they are not upgrading, but they're adding more horsepower. Then, we do go upgrade and lose that horsepower, which is frustrating from my perspective as an admin to lose that horsepower. Hopefully, that'll change. It's been pretty stable though in the version 17.

How are customer service and support?

The support is slow. I've heard that they're beefing up that side of the company. It just seems to be the same people who are slow. It's getting that first contact resolution to the customer after I submit a ticket. It's literally within two minutes that I get a response back that says, "Hey, we got that." Then, it may be a day or two after that before they will get back to me. It is just going back on their words. If you're going to say something, just do it. That's the way I was growing up: Finish it out. If it's going to be two days, just tell me it's going to be two days. But, if you're going to tell me that you're going to get back to me today or tomorrow, and you don't, that to me is a little shot in the foot.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Planview Enterprise One is way better than what we had before. We have been through spreadsheet hell. Being able to leverage Planview to get us out of that has been great. We've had some great success stories come in since we have launched PlanView.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate them as a seven point two out of 10. The magic quadrant says they are at the top of the top, and I don't disagree with them, but I think there's room to grow. I have seen that every year. This is my seventh time being at Horizons. It's just great to come back every year to be able to see what is coming next. You can definitely tell that they are listening to customers and trying to do everything they can to build the best in show product in this space.

I personally integrate with SAP, Workday, and JIRA. My stance on JIRA is that LeanKit is the way to go. I believe that. I think our company is just stuck on JIRA. We're in JIRA land. Everything is JIRA. It's not for everybody. I think the flexibility with LeanKit is the answer. It's just getting that message to the right people in our company to take that leap and go that route. I integrate with Workday and ServiceNow within our tool set at our company. They're all cloud-based.

We have a number of custom fields, but not really. It's pretty generic from that standpoint. We don't have a lot of bolt on things that need integrations. Flexibility-wise, it's good for our needs right now. We are right in the thick of agile transformations. So, it'll be interesting to see how we can hopefully leverage the tools that Planview offers to help ourselves and our company transform along the way. I'm looking forward to that.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Director of Operations at UK Santander Technology
Real User
Increases transparency by allowing conversations between people
Pros and Cons
  • "Our transparency is increasing a lot. It is helping us to get people together. There are no dark rooms anymore. In some areas or concepts, we want to add more light to every single concept. That's the big impact that the tool is having. It allows conversations between people."
  • "It could do with a quicker response time for some reports or portfolios."

What is our primary use case?

We are using it to monitor all the investment planning from the business. In IT. we using it for monitoring all activities, the financial spent, and the delivery of the work.

How has it helped my organization?

There have been new additional features helping us quite a lot, which have helped us to get executive adoption of the tool. Now that we are moving into version 18 with automated things, we will get more value with that. It's going to help us facilitate upgrades, I am looking forward to that as well.

It's helping us to be more mature in the way we handle change and projects from the business point of view. We have some transparency in what we do and are auditable in our different steps. That's a huge basic step, but a good start from the business point of view. We are now connecting to the IT through Columbia. There is now a nice simple flow.

It is helping to have a more structured process for planning and investment in capacity management for decisions. Now, we have information that is visible and helps to have more certainty that the decisions made are the right decisions. It's helping us to be more on the right side of the decision or have more confidence in the decision that is made.

Our transparency is increasing a lot. It is helping us to get people together. There are no dark rooms anymore. In some areas or concepts, we want to add more light to every single concept. That's the big impact that the tool is having. It allows conversations between people.

What is most valuable?

It gives us room to grow because it's very flexible. It gives us a lot of configuration that we can do on our own, so we can set up at our own pace. 

At the moment, the company goes at a slower pace than the capabilities offered. So, we can develop a lot until we hit its limits. This is a very valuable thing for me.

You have more capabilities. You can do things more quickly. It is helping us to transform the way that we are organized, communicate with each other, and interact with one another.

What needs improvement?

It could do with a quicker response time for some reports or portfolios.

What we are exploring now: 

  • What happens after a business decision is made in Planwiew? 
  • How is it enabled through other processes of the company, such as purchasing? 
  • How we create a straight line of action for the users? 

We want to see what it does that is possible and what could be a good use case for it. The same way when information is collected in other systems financially, how does it comes back so we can reallocate it. Can we use something similar to ITV's business management in Planview? Is anyone else experiencing that? If so, that would be a great use case for the whole Planview community.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using it for nearly two years. We started in January 2018.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is stable and reliable. Downtime is marginal. 

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Planview alignment is a replacement for SAP cost center, specifically the finance, controlling, and some PPM. That was the comparison that we started with. We didn't compare Planview to other PPM tools because what we saw gave us a run for our money with what we had before. 

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was quite straightforward. We had a very special launch that took three months during its configuration cycle. This was unprecedented compared to similar implementations that we had in the past course. It was brilliant.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate it an eight out of 10. We have angles that can still be better, but the product gives us enough growth for years.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Senior Project Analyst at Otpp
Real User
It's good to have everything in a centralized place
Pros and Cons
  • "It has helped improve governance, mostly. People want to know where their money's going. Projects sponsors need to know what we're spending money on and what our burn rate is. Planview can give that to you straightaway."
  • "It is a bit of a rigid system."

What is our primary use case?

We use it for resource management, financial forecasting, and time reporting.

I am a user, not an administrator. I mostly do portfolio management.

How has it helped my organization?

It is good to have everything in a centralized place.

It has helped improve governance, mostly. People want to know where their money's going. Projects sponsors need to know what we're spending money on and what our burn rate is. Planview can give that to you straightaway.

What is most valuable?

The forecasting and time reporting functions are the most valuable features. We have about 200 people and can accurately forecast to the penny how much it's going to cost us for the year.

What needs improvement?

It is a bit of a rigid system.

We are looking to upgrade next year and the big thing for us is BI integration. The project already has that, so that is what I'm looking for, and Planview has sort of covered that base already. This will make our reporting a lot more customized. We can be more flexible. Right now, we are sort of using custom reports, which can be a bit buggy, as they're not native to Planview. This will be native integration.

For how long have I used the solution?

About three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Stability and reliability are absolutely fine.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We use it very basically. We only have 200 people on it. Most other organizations have thousands of people on it. Our entire company is 1,500 employees.

In the time that I've used it, we've doubled up the amount of dollars on our intended projects. We have managed to double the number of people using it and doubled the amount of projects. We went from one portfolio to three. All of that was a walk in the park.

How are customer service and technical support?

I am a user, so I don't have to contact technical support.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

It was there before I came.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I would recommend Planview compared to what is on the market. I would even say that Planview is the market leader.

I have also used a customer solution in the UK and Microsoft Project.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate the solution as a 10 out of 10. It does what I need it to do, so I've got no complaints. From a user perspective, it's perfect.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Sr Program Manager at Fresenius Medical Care
Real User
The collaboration piece gives us visibility and the ability to view what is happening in our organization
Pros and Cons
  • "The biggest impact has been getting all these global groups into one space so we can even have intelligent conversations about what are we trying to accomplish. Before, it was just different regions doing whatever. Now, we're all talking the same language, and that's good."
  • "We have almost like a third-party group who has to do a lot of our configurations. It's a bit painful for us anytime we want to make a change. The other issue is that we have different groups all in the same instance. So, if one group wants to make a change, it impacts everyone. Then, we all have to come together, to say, "Yes, we approve this change, or no, we do not." Thus, it has not been as flexible for us."

What is our primary use case?

We're a global company. The biggest thing for us was to find a digital solution that enabled our global company to see everything across the globe. We have a lot of different groups at this point going up on it. We have manufacturing facilities, quality, human resources, IT, etc. The whole gamut is using Enterprise One, then beneath that we have certain groups who are using Projectplace and we will be implementing LeanKit as well.

How has it helped my organization?

We can see all the different initiatives that folks are working on and have been able to hook groups up, to say, "Let's not redo that. We're already working on that." Instead of having all this duplicity, we have one streamlined group working on it together.

The solution’s collaborative work management has affected our operations. We were in a place of using a billion emails, Excel templates, etc., so project documentation would get lost and no one knew what was going on. From a time savings perspective, the fact that we have Projectplace specifically, with everything in one place and we are part of a workspace where we can go and see what's going on, that has had a major impact in the way that we work.

It helps make sure stuff is aligned to strategy.

The biggest impact has been getting all these global groups into one space so we can even have intelligent conversations about what are we trying to accomplish. Before, it was just different regions doing whatever. Now, we're all talking the same language, and that's good.

What is most valuable?

It gives us the visibility and ability to see exactly what is happening for our organization. Even though we're a global company, we had our Asia Pacific and EMEA groups doing whatever they did. Then, in North America, there was no visibility across the board. So, there was a lot of duplicity and duplication in different projects, initiatives, etc. So, this solution is really giving us the ability to say, "Wait a minute. You're about to initiate this. We've got another group who is already doing that. Why don't we link you guys up together to figure that out?"

This has been a huge win because of the collaboration piece. Unfortunately, our organization has two different tenants of Microsoft Office, which means we can't communicate on teams, as an example. So, we have groups utilize Projectplace in place of that. Therefore, we can all talk, understand what's happening, and communicate that way, which has been amazing.

The colloboration between Enterprise One and Projectplace has been good because we didn't have a standard place to do this type of collaboration. There are a billion emails with Excel sheets, etc., and the way that we've utilized it is from the PM up. They are in Enterprise One, and they build their plans, doing whatever provides good reporting for our executive level leadership. Then, at the team level, there is Projectplace. The fact that we can integrate our Enterprise One down into Projectplace or sync the spaces has been really helpful.

What needs improvement?

I don't find the solution flexible. We have almost like a third-party group who has to do a lot of our configurations. It's a bit painful for us anytime we want to make a change. The other issue is that we have different groups all in the same instance. So, if one group wants to make a change, it impacts everyone. Then, we all have to come together, to say, "Yes, we approve this change, or no, we do not." Thus, it has not been as flexible for us. However, I don't know how much of this is a result of the way that we set up the configuration versus the true flexibility within the tool.

For how long have I used the solution?

As an organization, we implemented it four years ago. Recently, they created another group, which I just joined. Hence, why I've only been using it for about two months. We're in the process right now of taking out what was put in because they didn't put it in well. We're redesigning our whole Enterprise One configuration.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I've only been in it for a couple months, so I haven't really noticed any stability type issues. 

Some of it's a bit slow. We are starting to get some Power BI dashboards built into it. Sometimes, we have to stay updated or refresh them, which I have noticed that in comparison to other BI solutions I've used, there seems to be a bit of a lag. However, I don't know how much of this is because the way it's hosted or if it's a true issue.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Because we're in this process, I know that our organization right now doesn't have a very positive view of Planview's scalability because of the way it was implemented initially. So, we're in this whole process of ripping the whole thing out, reconfiguring it, and putting it back. 

How are customer service and technical support?

So far, the support has been really good. We have a third-party through whom we submit most of our ticket issues. 

We got to sit down with the technical support face to face to sort of crafting what our solution would look like. I thought that part went really well. They seemed to have a really good understanding of what we are trying to accomplish and what our prior challenges were. So, I feel really confident that the solution they're proposing is going to meet the basic needs of where we need to go. 

How was the initial setup?

The initial part of the problem was when they implemented the original Enterprise One, they implemented the most complex version of it. Our maturity level is that we can't get people to follow basic Projectplace. So, we definitely see the roadmap for it to do transform our company's strategy, but we're just not there.

What about the implementation team?

We're going to be doing a fast track deployment with Planview. We have our first meeting to talk timeline on Monday following the Horizons conference.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We went to a roadmap meeting with this very specific thought in mind that if we couldn't figure out how to do this in the way we needed to, then we were prepared to walk away from it. But, we did not have another vendor selected because we recognize and can see the power of the tool. It's just figuring out how do we best use it for our offices.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate the product an eight (out of 10). I've seen enough use cases from other organizations who have really transformed the way that they work. It's just clear that my organization is just not there. I have a lot of hope that this product will be what we need it to be once we get this initial configurations figured out.

The biggest advice is to make sure you've done a maturity assessment on your organization. Whatever you initially implement, you're implementing at the lowest common denominator. For us, they tried to go immediately after things like capacity planning and resource management, but our maturity isn't fast. As a result, our users ended up being very frustrated. The other piece would be, when you implement it, think about the users who are doing the work. We implemented based on what we thought our executives would want to see, and that is backwards. Those are the two biggest things. The tool is so big and powerful that it is very easy to say, "I want to do all these amazing things." But, if your business maturity isn't there, you're going to fall and that will hurt.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Manager, Project Governance at Clorox
Real User
An end-to-end integrated tool where we can look at resources, finances, and tasks
Pros and Cons
  • "We can easily see which functions are overcapacity. Before, we did not have visibility into that."
  • "When we first deployed, there were some issues. We never got to the root cause of why they happened. Since we didn't have any history with it, we weren't quite sure if this was a standard operating procedure or it truly was a glitch."

What is our primary use case?

The primary use case is project management (PPM) for the IT and PMO departments.

How has it helped my organization?

We can easily see which functions are overcapacity. Before, we did not have visibility into that.

Planview has helped us connect funding and strategic outcomes with work execution. Now we understand that if we reprioritize projects in the pipeline, it will impact downstream capacity.

It hasn't transformed our delivery yet. We are still new at it. We're learning all the functionality, so this is something that we're working towards.

Once we get more comfortable with the tool and the data accuracy, strategy will be a great step forward for us.

What is most valuable?

It's an end-to-end integrated tool. We can look at resources, finances, tasks, etc. 

It is very flexible. It's almost too flexible and lets us do stuff we shouldn't do.

What needs improvement?

We want to deploy the program management function. We are not there yet. It's not already part of our solution. It's a further enhancement that we want to purchase eventually.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using it since April 2019.

How are customer service and technical support?

I would rate Planview technical support as a seven out of 10. When we first deployed, there were some issues. We never got to the root cause of why they happened. Since we didn't have any history with it, we weren't quite sure if this was a standard operating procedure or it truly was a glitch.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Before, we did not have an integrated tool. Now, we can load all the resource and project requirements into a portfolio to see where we have gaps in resources, capacity, etc.

How was the initial setup?

It was straightforward. However, I don't think at the time we understood exactly how all the processes were integrated. So, it was the learning experience for us.

What about the implementation team?

We deployed it with the help of Planview consultants. Our experience with them was good. They came onsite, gave us a training, and were always available by phone.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated other vendors before going with Planview. We chose Planview because of the end-to-end integration.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend coming to the the Horizons conference first. Ask a lot of questions. Talk to other companies who have gone through a similar experience.

We use the waterfall delivery tools.

I would rate the solution as an eight out of 10, because I don't know all the functionality. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Other
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Director, Office of Process and Project Management at Electronic Arts Inc.
Real User
Organizes work, provides visibility and accountability
Pros and Cons
  • "The solution’s integrated product portfolio has transformed our organization’s delivery because people are a lot more accountable. When you have no accountability, then people don't always deliver the way that you want them to. Once you get accountability, they know that somebody is watching and the way that they manage their work changes quite a bit."
  • "Our challenge will be this tool is complex. It is not necessarily easy to start and learn from the beginning. How do you get people who are not professionals to adopt it, use it, and not be mean about it?"

What is our primary use case?

We have a smaller organization than some of the other organizations. We have 10 project managers. We manage it for the customer experience division for electronic arts. Therefore, we do only projects wrapped around how to improve our customer experience. Anybody who plays our games, we want to manage those projects to make life better for our customers.

How has it helped my organization?

We are able to organize work. Prior to Enterprise One, the organization had no visibility in the projects that we were doing. We had people doing random projects, and we didn't know if they were benefiting the business or harming the business. The fact that we have visibility into the work that we're doing along with the status of the work that we're doing has been incredibly impactful.

The solution’s integrated product portfolio has transformed our organization’s strategy as we continue to roll out different products. We started with Enterprise One. We now have Projectplace and are looking to use Spigit. We are also looking at all the different integrations with JIRA and Workday. It really has transformed the way that we do panel work and approach our work and company.

We use Enterprise One for the formal things in our organization that have been gated. So, we go through our fiscal year roadmap and we have X amount of things approved. All of those things are required to go through Enterprise One. There were some required to do phase-gate exits and all of those principles. Then, we have the Projectplace that is more task-oriented, and we have a ton of users on that. That is more task, activities, and people looking at doing agile work or combined work. We found a way to use these tools together. Hooking them together, we will do some great reporting. There are some cool things that we're trying to do with those two that will really change the way that we will work.

These are two different teams. The people who are on Projectplace were never Enterprise One candidates. The fact that we were able to get them to use one of our Planview tools and see that there is potential in it, maybe in the future they will be the ones who are running these projects and programs. Or, at least they'll have an idea of what the Planview tools can do. So, we feel like we're in a better starting place with them.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable to us is that we have a standardized schedule. We're able to put in our phase-gates and everything that we need to make sure that we're operating and running our projects effectively. 

We now use WRK14 reports and are moving to other more complex reports in order to manage our business. 

The solution’s integrated product portfolio has transformed our organization’s delivery because people are a lot more accountable. When you have no accountability, then people don't always deliver the way that you want them to. Once you get accountability, they know that somebody is watching and the way that they manage their work changes quite a bit.

It is flexible. We started off where we had a workflow that had about 150 steps in it with gates, because we didn't know any different. We went back and talked to Planview about it, and said, "We are in a really bad way. We need somebody to help us." They came back and helped us change everything. They helped us undo all the mess that we had created. They moved us to about a 15 to 20 step process. The flexibility of being able to create something, then redo it if it's wrong as you continue to evolve and partner with Planview is really important to us.

What needs improvement?

When you get a tool, you have to know your business before you get a tool. We didn't know our business. We put the tool in and tried to wrap the business around the tool. That doesn't really work. So, we need to continue to work with them to figure out:

  • What do we need? 
  • What is the best solution? 
  • How do we work with this tool when we just trying to figure out our business?

We're finally at a good place. Now, how do we restart with it the way that the tool thinks about work. Sometimes, it's just not the same way that we do. Therefore, how do we manage that within the business? How do we manage our internal customers? That's what we really have to work through.

The first step was to have Planview come in and retrain our organization. That was really helpful, at least to make people not so mad, because they hated the tool. They were really nasty about it. When we rolled it out to the organization, we rolled it out in a way where we didn't ask for their help. So, there was a small group of people at the leadership level who went in and said, "Okay, this is the tool we're going to use." But, we didn't really ask the people who are going to use the product. When you do that, they get angry.

They don't love that knowledge. Then, we had to go back, and say, "Okay, we're going to start over. Tell us what your grievances are." We had to identify whether the grievance was with having a tool or as a grievance with Planview. They are two very different things. Once we identified what their grievances were, Planview was able to come in, help retrain, and get some of the sentiment better just about the tool and using a product in general.

Primarily, we were only focused on the project side of it. This year, we are trying to roll it out to more operational people, which is different from project side. On the project side, these are people who are sort of career project managers, product managers, and program managers. They're willing to work with us a little bit. When you move over to the operations people, this is not their business. They don't know about tools. All they want to do is help the customers. They don't want to have to deal with tools. 

Our challenge will be this tool is complex. It is not necessarily easy to start and learn from the beginning. How do you get people who are not professionals to adopt it, use it, and not be mean about it? That's what we're trying to work with.

For how long have I used the solution?

We are on year four of using Enterprise One.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We haven't experienced any issues with the stability of it. So, I feel confident in the Planview tool. I feel confident in the employees. This is our third year of attending Horizons. Every time I meet more of the employees, I feel better about everything. I just get an overall good vibe. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

There is so much that we can do. They have Spigit, LeanKit, and all of these things which are really exciting to us. I just have to go find the money, but it's pretty exciting. It's really great. In regards to Enterprise One, they have resource management, and we haven't even touched that. We are just now getting into resource management. There is a lot that we haven't even scratched the surface with using the tools that we have.

We have a super small organization using Enterprise One. Right now, we are at 20 to 30 users. We have primarily only focused on the project side of it. Now, this year, we are trying to roll it out to the operational people.

With Projectplace, about a year ago, we had one user. Now, we have 108 users on it. For us, that is a huge win when we had to fight for every user on Enterprise One. We're not having to do that for Projectplace. Projectplace is now going out and selling itself into the business. So, we have parts of the businesses which are using it that are telling other person's business.

A specific example is the customer experience support: It is all about making it easier to get back in the game and play our games. We have a group that takes our customer escalations and they're able to take those and look at them in Projectplace. They can get cards and match everything up. We're solving their problems faster. We know what their problems are. We're able to group all of their problems together. These are big wins for us in terms of things that we couldn't do before because we were having to do it much more manually before we had Projectplace. So, it really changed the way that we do business.

How are customer service and support?

I would rate technical support as a 10 out of 10. We have the benefit of being right down the street from Planview. That helps us quite a bit. We have had no shortage of people willing to help. It's been no secret that we did not start off in a good place, but they helped us. Together, we admitted our flaws and they admitted their flaws, then they helped us get back on track.

We were about to quit because we were so frustrated. They came in and helped us. They did things for free that they probably weren't supposed to do. But, they came in and really tried to save us as a customer to understand what the problems were, what we were dealing with, and help us solve the issue, probably to their detriment financially. This was to make sure that we didn't leave and to help us tell the story. I think that signifies a pretty good company.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Prior to Enterprise One, we did not have a solution in the business. So, people could use Excel or anything that they wanted.

We also had no reporting. Or, any reporting that we had, it wasn't manual. It was whatever somebody thought it was.

I was hired. We had had six tools come into the environment prior to me coming onboard. So, the company knew that they needed something to organize the work, but they didn't know what. They didn't know why they needed it other than they heard that they needed it. 

It was, "Well, we have to have this, and we need it right now."

"Why do we need it right now?" 

"Because we do."

Now, we are able to be more structured. We had no structure nor accountability. With the manual reporting, we had no idea if we were on track, behind, or how much we were spending. We couldn't track the way that we did our business. To be able to understand our business and make progress towards our goals, this has been incredibly important. The tool allows us to do that.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was super complex. We were being asked questions that we didn't understand. It was pretty clear that we didn't understand. It just wasn't a great experience. We weren't ready for it. It was more complex than what we could take in the environment. We were answering questions on behalf of the entire organization when we didn't know what the organization's needs were. It was complex and compounded by the fact that we didn't know anything, making it incredibly challenging. Some of that was on us and some of that was on them.

If they could walk you through step by step:

  • What is it that you're doing? 
  • What is it that we're doing of this stuff? 
  • You are making decisions. 

We didn't understand the downstream impact. Nobody told us this is a critically important decision, and if you make this wrong, we're going to set up the whole tool wrong. It felt like there were a handful of those. If someone would've said that to us, maybe we would've been like, "Oh yeah, hold on a sec." We probably would've at least paused, which we didn't do.

What about the implementation team?

We did the initial deployment with the help of Planview. We went in and gave them the parameters, and they implemented the parameters that we asked them to do. 

What was our ROI?

We have seen ROI with just being able to trace everything, do the reporting, understand the status, the accountability, etc. We have already renewed our contract once. Spending the money on this is a really big investment for us, where with other companies it might not be as much. However, it's a big percentage of our budget. The fact that we've been able to renew is a pretty good indication that the leadership team is seeing value in it.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I think all in we are at $33,000 a year and that includes Projectplace and Planview. We used to have the integration to JIRA, but we don't pay for that anymore. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did an RFP where we selected Planview. It was an RFP for probably 10 vendors on the list. Workday was on there, for sure. However, we did not look at Microsoft Project because we are an Apple shop. That wasn't anything that we ever wanted to do.

The main reason that we went with Planview was something we haven't even used, which is ironic is we wanted it for the prioritization. With the prioritization, we can move things up and down within the tool. We could show our leadership team because prioritization was taking us like a month and a half. We felt with the tool, it could take us just a few hours. We still use it, but we just don't show it to the leadership team. But, it has helped us.

What other advice do I have?

The tool is a nine out of 10. Mostly, because I don't give anything a ten. There is always areas of improvement. We have had a lot of pushback when people started up in Planview. I think we're past the cultural part of it. I don't know what makes it difficult. I think it's more difficult than other tools that people have used. I hear over and over that it's not intuitive. Some of it is counterintuitive to the other tools that they've used. Once they get going on it, they're better. The word within our user community is that features are great, but the user interface seems to be very difficult for our team to use.

The problem is a lot of them came from Microsoft Project, which is really easy to use, but you also don't get any of the reporting. There are just some things with the parent-child relationships and how you link them. Also, there's something with start and end dates and the rolling of them, which really angers them. They just don't fundamentally understand it.

We were not ready for the tool when they bought the tool in. I would encourage people to know their business, have their processes in place, and understand what they're trying to achieve before they go out and buy the tool. Then, they will be better suited for it. It doesn't matter how amazing the tool is, if they don't have the processes and things in place that they need to do, then it's never going to be successful.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Other
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.
PeerSpot user
Platforms Administrator at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Easy to access information for sharing analytics and reporting
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable features are the control and visibility that you have for portfolio management in terms of projects and capacity planning for resources along with strategies and outcomes, etc. It's so easy to access information for sharing analytics and reporting."
  • "When I started working with Planview, I didn't know anything about project or resource management. I had to learn everything: the admin side, then the user side of it. Probably, in the beginning, I would implement in the blueprint or workshops more demos. A live demo of how the system works because we would like a little deeper dive in how the application works for us to understand what we need to provide, what we are doing, what we will be doing. Because in the beginning, it was so overwhelming, and we didn't know anything about the tool."

What is our primary use case?

The primary use is project and resource management. Right now, it's just used for technical infrastructure, which is IT. But, we are also configuring it for business.

How has it helped my organization?

We are not live yet. It will make us more "agile" in things whenever we deliver. It will bring better visibility for projects, in terms of: resources, whether we are lacking resources or not, If we are in alignment with the global strategy of the company before a project has been delivered, financials, etc. 

The flexibility is whenever we implement for technical infrastructure, we have our business transformation process with targets, etc. Now that we are in the process of configuring for the business, there is a totally different solution. We have all the lifecycles, capability, and capacity to create screens based on workflow, shifts, etc. This is giving us huge flexibility to accommodate the company's needs. If we didn't have this flexibility, there would be one global solution for different processes of project management in the organization.

We are using the Lean/Agile delivery tools. The new solution for waterfall will be extremely helpful in making delivery faster because of visibility that the application brings to us, such as the schedule, resources, and what is happening in the background. Before, we had projects, but we didn't know if we'd have enough resources. We didn't know a lot of things. Now, with this tool, we have the full visibility of what's happening: 

  • Do we need to hire resources? 
  • Do we need more project managers? 
  • What is our capacity? 
  • What are our investments? 

Now, we can see fully into the portfolios and that everything is integrated. For the project financials, we can roll up and spread down. It's pretty good.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features are the control and visibility that you have for portfolio management in terms of projects and capacity planning for resources along with strategies and outcomes, etc. It's so easy to access information for sharing analytics and reporting.

What needs improvement?

When I started working with Planview, I didn't know anything about project or resource management. I had to learn everything: the admin side, then the user side of it. Probably, in the beginning, I would implement in the blueprint or workshops more demos. A live demo of how the system works because we would like a little deeper dive in how the application works for us to understand what we need to provide, what we are doing, what we will be doing. Because in the beginning, it was so overwhelming, and we didn't know anything about the tool. 

You know your process. You know how you work, but you don't know how you're going to put that in the tool. If we had more demos in the beginning to make us more comfortable with the tool, we could have improved the success of the configuration.

For how long have I used the solution?

We finished our configuration in June. We have been proving the solution here and there by running test and everything else. It does work the way that we want it.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

So far, the stability is good. We haven't had any issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is good. The only thing that is hard with scalability, and may have a little hiccup, are the structure levels that we need to define in the beginning of the configuration. It makes for a lack of ability to be flexible whenever we are scaling, and we are growing as an organization. We are stuck with the levels that we set up in the beginning.

Whenever we define these levels, we state the amount of levels in a way that will allow us to scale in the future. That is our workaround.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

It's just moving with technology. We cannot be living in Excel files. The company needs to be able to grow. Yet, we were still using Excel or other applications from Microsoft. So, we needed something more robust to support the growth of the organization. I think Planview came at the right time.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was complex. We didn't know the tool in the beginning. So, it was harder to understand what is being done and what information we need to gather. Planview helped us gather all the information and deliver it. However, in the beginning, it was so blurry. We didn't know what was happening. We just went with the flow, then suddenly, "Ah!" Things started clicking. We started seeing things as they became live. Then, we were like, "Okay, now I'm getting it."

Configuration-wise, we took six weeks. Then, we had some issues after the configuration. It took us four more weeks to get it back into shape. Overall, it took us about 10 weeks.

We are planning to go with this project now that we finished the configuration. We are planning to go live on the second week of January 2020.

What about the implementation team?

We used a Planview consultant for the deployment. Our experience with them was challenging. The initial consultant lacked some knowledge to help us. He didn't know the user interface, plus had very superficial administrative knowledge. 

Once we escalated the issue, we were taken care of immediately. Now, we have a way better consultant. We are extremely happy with our current solution architect (consultant).

Planview just jumped on this issue. They have been great and extremely supportive. They have been making sure that we are on the right path. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

The company evaluated other vendors.

The company chose Enterprise One because of the potential of the platform. It links to Spigit, PPM Pro, and a lot of other things that will support the scalability and growth of the organization on one single platform. This make it easier to manage licenses, administrate contracts, and everything else. It's one vendor with many solutions.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate the product a 10 out of 10.

We are not using outcomes yet. But on the course I took on Monday, we saw the value of having outcomes. It was also brought to our attention the gap that exists between strategy programs and how you connect everything together: strategy outcomes and programs. How we can connect all this, it seems to be the way to go.

We are a big company, which has almost 30,000 employees.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Other
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Sr IT Consultant at a university with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Improves the way that we show our project data
Pros and Cons
  • "The data is the most valuable because the reporting that we provide out of Planview is priceless when compared to any other tool. The reporting has a variety of reports. It has the capabilities of Power BI. It gives us all these dashboards that we can show to our executive leadership, and they have been very well-received."
  • "We are not very happy with the customer service. This is one of our main pain points. It doesn't cover the entirety of customer service, as there are reps who are really great and we've had good experiences. Many times, we've had people give us attitude, there was a delay in the response, or just a lack of interest. This got to the point where if there was a problem, we would rather try to solve it ourselves then call customer support."

What is our primary use case?

It is mainly for project management and resource capacity management across the IT department.

How has it helped my organization?

It has impacted our department within IT, which is the project management office.

It brings visibility to work being performed as well as resource capacity.

It certainly has improved the way we showcase our work. I'm part of the project management office. The way we show our projects data is certainly way better than what we could earlier.

What is most valuable?

The reporting, Power BI export are the most valuable. The dashboards & reports that we provide out of Planview are priceless when compared to any other tool. The tool itself has a variety of built-inr eports. The dashboards that we publish to our executive leadership been very well-received.

What needs improvement?

If you have a tool, you want customer support with people who you can depend on. It seems like we cannot depend on anyone. Customer service is lacking. Our sales rep did not bother to reach out to us in the past 2 years, and not even at the conference. He excluded us from a local meet-up he had organized. Our customer relationship manager keeps changing. It seems like we have nobody that we really can rely on. 

For how long have I used the solution?

We implemented Planview in 2014. We hope to upgrade next fiscal year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is pretty stable. We have hardly had any outages.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It grows with our needs. It is easy enough to scale.

How are customer service and technical support?

We are not very happy with the customer service. This is one of our main pain points. It doesn't cover the entirety of customer service, as there are reps who are really great and we've had good experiences. 

Many times, we've had people give us attitude, delays in response, or just a lack of interest. This got to the point where if there was a problem, we would rather try to solve it ourselves than call customer support. 

We did have a call with a manager or director from customer service. He will be looking into these issues. 


Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Different people were using different tools and the reporting was a problem. So, the new head of IT charged the PMO in 2004 to come up with a tool. We did an RFP and Planview was one of the finalists, and our final choice.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Licensing costs are pretty high.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate the solution itself as an eight (out of 10), though the overall experience at a 6. I like the solution. There are things that they can improve on. Planview is constantly working on new things for each situation that comes up.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Other
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Associate Director, PPM Governance & Operations at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
It's easy to add users and introduce new projects into the system
Pros and Cons
  • "The solution is flexible. Planview is always introducing new releases and functionality, which ends up being beneficial to the company. We are able to do some customizations on our own along with our IT department, and that's very helpful."
  • "The financial piece of the tool could be better. While it may have to do with the complexity of the work that we do, it seems that the tool should be able to drill down a bit deeper into the financial area."

What is our primary use case?

We use it for project and program management.

How has it helped my organization?

The solution is flexible. Planview is always introducing new releases and functionality, which ends up being beneficial to the company. We are able to do some customizations on our own along with our IT department, and that's very helpful.

The solution’s collaborative work management has affected our operations in a positive way.

What is most valuable?

  • The work and assignments
  • We can track the financials.
  • We can do portfolio management. We can look across the portfolio at several projects.

I find these features valuable because of their visibility.

What needs improvement?

I think our performance issues have to do with our large portfolio. We have a lot of data in there. We're a global organization with thousands of users, and that also has an impact.

The financial piece of the tool could be better. While it may have to do with the complexity of the work that we do, it seems that the tool should be able to drill down a bit deeper into the financial area.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using Planview tools since 2016. We rolled it out in two waves: wave one in 2016, then wave two in 2017. Currently, we are using version 17.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is fine. We are currently experiencing some performance issues, but as far as the stability of the system, it seems to be rather stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is easy to add users and introduce new projects into the system.

How are customer service and technical support?

There are people on my team in my organization who work with the technical team. I do not usually work with the technical team. They are happy with the support that Planview provides.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

The biggest impact was to the end user because we have always had a project management tool. We had a tool prior to implementing Planview. This tool is more user-friendly, so it was more easily adopted by the organization and end user community.

The switch between tools was made for better adoption throughout the organization and to move to a web-based system. Our previous system was not web-based. 

What about the implementation team?

We did the initial deployment with the help of Planview. There was good support.

They also helped with the deployment and training. They were available to help us through the whole rollout. Then, they took us further than that and provided some support after the rollout to make sure that things continued on.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated the current vendor that we had, Planview, and a third vendor.

What other advice do I have?

  • Understand what it is that you want the tool to deliver. 
  • Have clear expectations of what you expect to get out of the system. 
  • Have good user requirements.

I would rate the solution as an eight (out of 10). 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Other
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Analyst at Blue Shield of California
Real User
Provides a lot of ways to mold data and use it within the business
Pros and Cons
  • "Whenever we have issues, there is always someone ready to help us. Their people are knowledgeable and responsive. They get to tickets quickly. Just three or four weeks ago, we were having issues with getting data into Planview. We submitted a ticket and the turnaround was probably 45 minutes to get a response."
  • "There are some issues with how long it takes to load the data to Planview, It just depends on what your setup is. If there was a way Planview could maybe make the loading faster, in case you do have a lot of things going on with your setup."

What is our primary use case?

We use it a lot for managing project resources. We do a lot of research and project management with it.

How has it helped my organization?

I personally haven't improved that much yet using the tool, but I see how there's a lot of value in it. We even started doing proactive resource management. The way the data is presented in Planview, there are a lot of ways to take it and mold it for use within the business.

What is most valuable?

I like is how customizable it can get and how detailed some of the data you can get out of it can be. A lot of the basic reports come through it. I am a resource manager, so I slice it to see things like time sheet completion, compliance, etc. It's really useful to dig into some of the reasons why people aren't compliant.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the product for three months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's mostly reliable. There are some issues with how long it takes to load the data to Planview, It just depends on what your setup is. If there was a way Planview could maybe make the loading faster, in case you do have a lot of things going on with your setup.

How are customer service and technical support?

Whenever we have issues, there is always someone ready to help us. Their people are knowledgeable and responsive. They get to tickets quickly. Just three or four weeks ago, we were having issues with getting data into Planview. We submitted a ticket and the turnaround was probably 45 minutes to get a response.

A lot of our internal training came from Planview support. They were Planview videos from Planview.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend the product. There is a bit of a learning curve with it, as with any type of new software. Once you get a good grasp of the principles of Planview, it is a really powerful tool.

I would rate the product an eight (out of 10). It's pretty good. It gets a lot of what we need done. There are ways for it to improve, and we should always strive for that.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Director IT at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Cleaner, more intuitive, and easier to use than other products
Pros and Cons
  • "The look and feel of it is pretty clean."
  • "Our version is definitely set up a bit more waterfall world. It would be better if some of the agile features were more in the standard product."

What is our primary use case?

We use it for its intended purpose of project management. It is a typical PPM tool.

I don't think we're trying to do anything with it outside the norm that would need it to flex a whole lot. Our intent is to roll it out pretty much out-of-the-box.

How has it helped my organization?

This is a platform shift. If it works as advertised, it will potentially make us a bit more efficient.

What is most valuable?

The reporting looks pretty good. Although, we're not into it yet, so I can't say for sure how well that will work.

The look and feel of it is pretty clean, so that's good.

What needs improvement?

Our version is definitely set up a bit more waterfall world. It would be better if some of the agile features were more in the standard product.

For how long have I used the solution?

We are really not that far into testing yet. We're not going live until the beginning of the year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It doesn't look buggy based on what I have seen so far.

How are customer service and technical support?

We're not live yet, so I can't speak to post go-live technical support.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup has been pretty straightforward. The deployment process has taken us four to five months so far. We are hoping to wrap up by year-end.

What about the implementation team?

The implementation team has been good and responsive. They have been onsite quite a bit.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I don't think we have necessarily purchased everything that I would have liked to have seen.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We looked at other products, but I wasn't involved in the process of choosing Planview.

Compared to other tools, Enterprise One is definitely cleaner and easier to use. At least, that is the way it looks so far. It's a little more intuitive. It looks like the financial data entry piece is a little cleaner.

What other advice do I have?

Because we didn't buy everything that I would have liked to have seen us buy. Just based on what we have, it's probably in the seven to eight range (out of 10). Some of the agile functionality and features would definitely bump that up a bit. However, we didn't buy everything.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Associate at BlackRock, Inc.
Real User
Makes it easy to manage the workflow, but needs a better way to manage reporting titles
Pros and Cons
  • "We are able to see where everyone in the team is in terms of hours, where there is capacity, and where we can actually add them, e.g., other projects that they're not currently staffed to."
  • "The administrative tabs are very confusing, especially in terms of configuring screens and users. It's not very intuitive versus many other applications that I have worked in the past. I have to go to separate sections than I think I have to in order to get to the place that I need to adjust something."

What is our primary use case?

The primary use case is resource management. Enterprise One is built for this. We have a specific function that we use it for.

How has it helped my organization?

We are going to be leveraging the planning tool within Enterprise One. We had a demo of it. It will be a really good tool for us. It will help us visualize all the projects that we have lined up for the next year, where we can shift things around, and see the impact of different resources being staffed to individual projects.

People are happy using the tool. It has had a good impact on the business. Some people may not like the tracker time sheets, but it is just part of the role.

What is most valuable?

We are able to see where everyone in the team is in terms of hours, where there is capacity, and where we can actually add them, e.g., other projects that they're not currently staffed to.

It is relatively easy to manage the workflow.

What needs improvement?

I would like easier ways to manage reporting titles in Planview. A lot of our users like to see things on dashboards, etc. I know there are integrations with Power BI and other applications. But, I would like a little more of an intuitive way for us to manage that.

For how long have I used the solution?

The team has been using it since the beginning of the year, about nine to 10 months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

There are some concerns that I've had on my side from the administrative side and controlling certain things. From talking to some people at this conference, there are certain tricks around these things. It sounds like tomorrow that there will be some sessions on improving that functionality specifically.

The administrative tabs are very confusing, especially in terms of configuring screens and users. It's not very intuitive versus many other applications that I have worked in the past. I have to go to separate sections than I think I have to in order to get to the place that I need to adjust something.

How are customer service and technical support?

I have used the technical support more on the consulting side of things. There have been no issues there. Everything has been pretty straightforward.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Previously, we were just managing resources in Excel.

While I wasn't part of the integration, it's obviously a lot easier when you have a tool which can manage your resources. It's a lot easier to visualize.

What other advice do I have?

if you need a resource management tool, the tool definitely does that.

We're working on an older version right now, so it is interesting to see how we can upgrade. For example, I am interested in learning more about the cloud.

I would rate it maybe a seven (out of 10). Obviously, there is room for improvement and ways that the tool could be more intuitive for our users. But, we're a very niche use case. What might work better for us, probably wouldn't work better for others.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Program Manager at Citizens Bank
Real User
We have a fairly good picture of time tracking
Pros and Cons
  • "We have a fairly good picture of time tracking."
  • "There's still a lot of reluctance within the organization. We're not using all of the capabilities that we have today. We're still doing our strategic and capital investment planning on spreadsheets rather than using the capabilities that exist within Enterprise One. I definitely need to leverage the experts here at Planview to help drive a culture change. There's just a lot of reluctance on behalf of people within the company to put data into the tool."

What is our primary use case?

It's our primary PPM tool. All of the projects across the enterprise are being managed through Enterprise One.

We've been on version 13 for two years now. Prior to that, we were on earlier versions of Planview going back to 2009. So, we've been on Planview for 10 years. 

How has it helped my organization?

We have the flexibility to choose not to use things that would be really beneficial. Unfortunately, my predecessors made that choice, multiple times, so I'm trying to undo that.

One of the things that I hope to do, because we have to upgrade soon, is spend time putting together the business benefits of using some modules and pieces of the tool that we don't currently use.

We have a fairly good picture of time tracking. So, it's helping us get there.

What is most valuable?

As a user, I really liked the ease of the status reporting and the one stop shop of everything being in one location. 

What needs improvement?

There's still a lot of reluctance within the organization. We're not using all of the capabilities that we have today. We're still doing our strategic and capital investment planning on spreadsheets rather than using the capabilities that exist within Enterprise One. I definitely need to leverage the experts here at Planview to help drive a culture change. There's just a lot of reluctance on behalf of people within the company to put data into the tool.

We have some transparency in where people are spending their time, but we haven't done a good job of resource management in the sense of predicting demand. We have a lot of opportunity there to improve.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using it since the start. It is only in the last year that I have been involved in managing the application.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is scalable. It should growth with us.

How are customer service and technical support?

To the degree that we've needed it, the solution has been very helpful. 

Part of the struggle that we've had over the past year has been a 100 percent turnover on our team. Everyone on the Planview admin team today has been in the job for less than two years. So, we don't have the depth and breadth of knowledge and experience as an admin on the tool that other companies have. We're still learning. We don't know what we don't know.

It has been a struggle to make even simple changes because we have to go through statements of work to get the assistance that we need along with all of the legal hurdles and financial issues that those involve.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We were previously using PAC. The move away from PAC to Planview was based on our ownership by Royal Bank of Scotland at the time. They were using Planview, so we moved to Planview.

Our prior PPM tool was a little clunkier and harder to navigate. So, ease of use has been a strong suit here. But as we now look to expand and start using some of the other tools that Planview provides. the integration of the suite is going to be a strong sell point for us.

How was the initial setup?

The last version upgrade that we did from 10 to 13 was complex because we were moving to a cloud platform from a locally hosted platforms. So, there were all of those issues. There was a significant amount of testing. However, we also had an organizational change, which changed the management of the group which was doing that application enhancement. Therefore, we had that complexity. Now that we're on the cloud, it should be pretty straightforward.

What was our ROI?

We have seen time saved but I can't quantify it.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate the product as an eight (out of 10). This is based really on what I've learned the product can do, not on how we're using it.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Sr PPM Service Manager at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Gives greater visibility to resource management and financials
Pros and Cons
  • "I like that it's an enterprise environment. I can look across everything that's going on and have a sense of what is going on within the organization."
  • "The technical support is a little overworked. At least, they have been in the past year. We need them to focus on somethings from time to time. You can tell that they're really focusing on many things. It has gotten better, but I think they could still use some relief."

What is our primary use case?

We use it for a little bit of everything: R&D, product development, project management, resource management, and program management.

How has it helped my organization?

It has given us much greater visibility to resource management and financials.

What is most valuable?

I like that it's an enterprise environment. I can look across everything that's going on and have a sense of what is going on within the organization.

What needs improvement?

We're looking forward to version 18, upgrading there, and seeing what we can find there.

It would be nice if Planview were a little more flexible.

One thing that we'd absolutely really like to see is an improvement in the administration capabilities. With the Planview administrator, the interface is very time consuming, and that is not fun. We could be doing other things.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using Enterprise One for three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is very stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's pretty scalable.

How are customer service and technical support?

Overall, the technical support has good people who are knowledgeable. They are a little overworked. At least, they have been in the past year. We need them to focus on somethings from time to time. You can tell that they're really focusing on many things. It has gotten better, but I think they could still use some relief.

Karen Anderson has been a big help to us.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Historically, our company switched project management environments every three years globally and organizationally. When it was time to do a review, we looked at an entire enterprise portfolio management environment. Planview met the criteria that we had. It was a global organization. It was very solid from a financial perspective. It was able to do multiple currencies, etc.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straightforward. 

The deployment took us three and a half months.

What about the implementation team?

We deployed it ourselves. We did have an integration with our SAP environment, but that was through Planview. We didn't have a third-party do it.

The Planview consultants were very good. They came in with a plan. They said, "If you execute this, then this, then this, and then this. This is how long it will take. This is how much it will cost, and it did. It took this long across this much, then we were up and running.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We have several hundred licenses. It costs us several hundred thousand dollars a year. 

We overbought our licenses. We looked at our needs three to four years down the road and tried based our contract on that. 

However, we were over aggressive. We use about a third of the licenses that we have. We're looking to adjust the makeup so we can start utilizing the amount of money that we are spending. Right now, we're overspending, and my organization is not seeing the value in Planview because we are paying so much for licenses that we're not using.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

At the time of evaluation, there were only four or five environments in the entire world that could have met our requirements. Planview by far was the best. 

We evaluated SAP, Oracle, Planisware, and another vendor who dropped out. 

What other advice do I have?

Listen to what they have to say. They know what they have to say. Start small and grow into the environment. Definitely get executive management buy-in for the environment.

What I usually hear from our own implementations and other implementations, they tried to do all the modules, integrations into this environment, SAP, Windchill, and Integrity together. Instead of that, just get the thing up and running. Get people used to the interface. You will have the executive management screaming at you to get it all in one place. But, if you can't get the actual users onboard with using the environment in a simplified manner, then you're never going to get the advanced solution in.

We are beginning to use the solution’s Lean/Agile delivery tools.

I think it's an eight (out of 10). I really like it. I don't really rate anything a 10 I just don't think anything's perfect. I'm happy that they've worked on improving the reliability of the environment over the last year, and I think they need to finish the integrations with all the different components that they purchased over the last year. Once they get that all together, it will be something special. But, let's see it happen first.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Other
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Enterprise Portfolio Analyst at Wellmark
Real User
Helps provide information and insight back to our senior leadership
Pros and Cons
  • "The biggest impact for using Planview currently would be to understand the true costs of projects. We are trying to get to a point where not only do we take into account technical costs, but what the business cost is. Trying to integrate our business right now into Planview is helping us identify the true cost of the investments that we make so we can try and understand their value."
  • "I would like to be able to copy and paste from Excel into work and assignments along with roles and hours, as opposed to having to type it out one by one."

What is our primary use case?

We currently use it for all of our technical projects. We use work and resource management for our technical portfolios.

How has it helped my organization?

The biggest impact for using Planview currently would be to understand the true costs of projects. We are trying to get to a point where not only do we take into account technical costs, but what the business cost is. Trying to integrate our business right now into Planview is helping us identify the true cost of the investments that we make so we can try and understand their value.

The tool does have the potential to impact our organizational delivery. As we continue to integrate our entire business with our technical teams into Planview, I definitely see it changing how we deliver projects in the future.

Currently, it provides insight to leaders that they don't otherwise have access to get. As far as delivery leaders from technical teams and determining their resource capacity and constraints, they don't have another way of figuring this information out right now unless they were to do it manually on their own, which would be very time consuming.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is resource management. You get to work with a lot of resource leaders for capacity planning. Although, we don't use capacity planning to its full potential, we would like to go there as well as financial management for the projects.

All of the features that we get out of Planview, it just helps us to provide information back to our senior leadership and have those conversations to get insight. When we have that information, we get insight from them on what it is that they are looking for and what they need. Then we can transform that information from the tool and get them what they need. All the information is helpful for me to be able to provide the data that they need. We want to help them make the right decisions that they need.

What needs improvement?

I would like to be able to copy and paste from Excel into work and assignments along with roles and hours, as opposed to having to type it out one by one.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using Planview since 2013. I have been using Planview since 2015.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's very stable. It's a great tool that is evolving. It provides more information and opportunities for us to expand what we offer to our customers. 

How are customer service and technical support?

We do use the technical support. We always have a good experience. We have dedicated people who we can work with to submit tickets. The responses to tickets are always in a timely manner.

What about the implementation team?

We did the upgrades with the help of Planview. It was a really good experience. 

It wasn't just me. An entire team from Planview worked with my company, so this helped us get all the information so we could make each upgrade. We've done multiple upgrades so we could make each upgrade be as seamless as possible. So, the support that we got from Planview was nice.

What was our ROI?

We have seen some return on our investment within Planview. As we transform here to turning on more of the features, reworking what we've done, all the customizations, and trying to just start fresh, I think that we'll see an even bigger return once we can take advantage of the features that Planview offers that we aren't currently using right now.

This is information that we can leverage from PlanView once we transform how we use it today. The information that we can leverage that will, in turn, provide a return on decisions that we make, how we deliver work, and maybe delivering it faster. Then, we would see a reduction in costs for some of those projects as well as having our leadership setup to make better, more informed decisions than what they currently can do from the data that we provide. I believe that once we started leveraging all the tools that Planview can offer from what we have in Enterprise One now, we'll have more information for our leaders.

What other advice do I have?

My advice would be do to planning. Ask a lot of questions and do a lot of planning out first what the goal of the organization are. Then, from what their goals are, utilize the tool to try and meet those goals.

I am an everyday user of the tool. When you don't have everyday users, or users who go into the same task over and over, it probably is not as flexible for them. For myself, I do find it very flexible.

I would rate the tool a solid eight (out of 10). I wouldn't give it a 10. Part of it probably is that we haven't activated all of the capabilities that Planview has. The other part of it is that I work in the tool everyday. So, some of the things that we would like to do as an organization may very well be available to us. We just haven't utilized them yet. Once we go through this assessment process and sit down with Planview next week to go over what we can do, it may change the team. This is where we are in our current state for everything that we want to do.

We are in the process of having Planview help connect funding and strategic outcomes with work execution. We are just building a roadmap for this.

Our strategies have evolved from other factors, but not necessarily from the tool.

We do not use the solution's Lean/Agile delivery tools nor do we use Projectplace.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Other
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Sr Domain Specialist at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Gives an organization how much money and effort should be spent towards projects for better capacity planning
Pros and Cons
  • "The portfolio management gives you a view of all the projects as well as all the information about the total amount of effort, time, and cost being spent on the projects. It gives the organization how much money and effort should be spent towards projects so they can budget and do better capacity planning in the next fiscal year. It gives them visibility into their resources and if they have capacity."
  • "I would like to see more documentation pieces. Right now, they do have the content repository. I would like to see more out-of-the-box features with document repository capabilities."

What is our primary use case?

We have the business side who uses the project management stuff for managing their plan and stuff. We have our IT side who uses the project management as well as time management to keep track of all their projects and the hours being spent on projects by all their resources. This way they are time compliant, e.g., they run this every week to see how many of hours are being spent as people enter their hours.

How has it helped my organization?

With the IT side of it, the tool gave them visibility on all their projects from a program and enterprise perspective. The tool helps the enterprise with more capabilities in terms of decision-making, making better decisions on efforts, and the money that they spend.

The solution’s integrated product portfolio has transformed our organization’s strategy because previously we didn't have a specific tool which was being used for project management. People were using different sets of tools for managing their projects, and there was no centralized tool where the organization knew what people were working on. This tool gives them that visibility on all projects.

The solution’s integrated product portfolio has transformed our organization’s delivery. It gives them their capability to govern and set some governance models around what they want to see in terms of projects progressing and how they can make them better.

What is most valuable?

The portfolio management gives you a view of all the projects as well as all the information about the total amount of effort, time, and cost being spent on the projects. It gives the organization how much money and effort should be spent towards projects so they can budget and do better capacity planning in the next fiscal year. It gives them visibility into their resources and if they have capacity.

I have found this solution to be flexible. I have found it flexible enough in terms of tweaking different configurations for helping the customers doing VMs.

I can access the system anywhere. I can manage my project wherever I am. Since it's web-based, it's flexible enough for making any changes. I can go in at anytime. I can just login from my cell phone.

What needs improvement?

I would like to see more documentation pieces. Right now, they do have the content repository. I would like to see more out-of-the-box features with document repository capabilities.

For how long have I used the solution?

We are currently on Version 16.9. We started with Planview 13 and have been on it for more than three and a half years. We have using Planview for our medical center and plan to move to Planview 18.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

With Enterprise One, because it's cloud-based, we have never experienced type of crash. It's always available 24 hours. I've never seen any critical issues where the system is down more than an hour or so.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Since the IT side is already using the tool, we are promoting it to the entire business side as well. There are a lot of groups coming in trying to use the system now. We have an onboarding process that we follow for each group where we explain to them how the tool can help them. In terms of your project and portfolio management, we sort of customize or tweak the tool to satisfy their wants and needs. That is when they begin to agree to onboard the system.

We do one BU after another. We do workshop, training, and demo sessions where we understand their needs, then we do a customization of their requirements. We do custom configurations, which we show them, and they become happy.

How are customer service and support?

We have used the technical support for a number of things, like reporting. 

We use our customer success team for any questions where don't know the answers or if we have a query. We do put in a ticket for that and they are pretty good with their response.

I would rate them as a nine (out of 10) because they are pretty fast in their response. I would have rated them as 10, but we use the capability and technology management. That's where it's gone a little down in terms of the support. As far as Enterprise One and the PRM side goes, they are very good.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straightforward. In terms of the lifecycle, it was pretty straightforward and we wanted to start small and see how it went. We wanted to see how people would react to it. We were pretty small with the initial configurations.

What about the implementation team?

Our initial implementation was with Planview consultants. They were very good. We love them.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We have portfolio managers, resource managers, project managers, and time reporting licenses. These are the licenses that we have.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did on a comparison of different tools, such as, Planview and some other tools available. We did our evaluation of those tools and came up with Planview as the tool that we want to use.

Initially, the university and medical center were one company. Then, we split because the university was using Planview. Then, we also took the same tool but after evaluations we came across Clarity and Planview as the bigger, better tools. We went with Planview because it was already being used in the organization and everyone was familiar with it.

What other advice do I have?

The tool has transformed. I have seen it grow. I have more than 12 years of experience working in Planview and have seen the tool from the start. I've seen all the versions, and it's grown to a more flexible tool.

Right now, we are mostly focused on the waterfall method, but we are also promoting the lean and agile method. E.g., we are promoting tools like Projectplace and LeanKit. We're trying to get our customers and project managers to use those systems. Our developers are mostly more comfortable using JIRA because they've been using it for so many years. However, we are promoting these types of tools as well, where we can see if we can add value for them.

We don't use the financial management piece because we don't have clear visibility on the cost aspect of projects.

I would rate this product a 10 out of 10.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Other
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Project Manager at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
Validates the work that we're doing and the funding that we need
Pros and Cons
  • "Planview has helped connect funding and strategic outcomes with work execution. That is the key use that we have for it. We use it to validate the work that we're doing and the funding that we need. The difference between the previous version and current version for us would be the ICPM and the way it gives us different scenarios. We can go in and build that out."
  • "We have required more time from our resource managers to spend time in the tool. The adoption has been slower than we would have hoped. So, I would think from a rollout perspective, if Planview could help us with material which gets non-Planview users or previously light Planview users to become more heavy users of the system, then this would help us with the rollout."

What is our primary use case?

The primary use case is project costing, resource forecasting, and financial reporting of projects. It is implemented only in departments that touch what we call our project portfolio. So, the people in IT who do the coding, programming, developing products for customers, and the maintenance on our systems, they're all in the solution reporting time. However, our payroll and human resources do business as usual. They run the company and business, keeping the lights on, but they are not part of our time reporting community.

How has it helped my organization?

As we grow, it will help us because nobody in the company speaks or understands Planview data. It allows us to take that and put it into a format where we can walk into a boardroom, and say, "This is where we are. This is where we're going. This is what we need."

The biggest impact on our company is resource forecasting.

Planview has helped connect funding and strategic outcomes with work execution. That is the key use that we have for it. We use it to validate the work that we're doing and the funding that we need. The difference between the previous version and current version for us would be the ICPM and the way it gives us different scenarios. We can go in and build that out.

What is most valuable?

Nothing is the most valuable. We're really just tapping into what Enterprise One will do for us, such as, the ICPM. planning, and data that comes out of the system right now.

The flexibility of the solution would be around the reporting, resource forecasting, work breakdown structure and how we build out a project, and the lifecycles at the beginning of a project.

What needs improvement?

We have required more time from our resource managers to spend time in the tool. The adoption has been slower than we would have hoped. So, I would think from a rollout perspective, if Planview could help us with material which gets non-Planview users or previously light Planview users to become more heavy users of the system, then this would help us with the rollout. Our biggest improvement that we've seen has been in the annual planning process each year that we go through to map out what projects we're doing and what are we handling next. It has become noticeably easier the better that we have gotten in Planview.

It's still a project management tool. It's that slow adoption thing. It hasn't come full circle in the other parts of the company. Therefore, it hasn't transformed our company's delivery.

The technical support piece needs improvement. 

When we rolled it out, we rolled it out out-of-the-box, which didn't allow for hardly any customization. We found out that we probably should have slowed down and customized it. Giving advice to anybody, I would tell them don't do the out-of-the-box solution. It's worth it to sit down, customize it, and make it work your way.

For how long have I used the solution?

On December 3rd of 2018, we upgraded from version 11 to Enterprise One version 16.4. So, we've been using it for about 11 months now.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

So far, we've not had any problems with it. We did have a couple of little hiccups. Most of our stability issues have been around that it is hosted at Planview. When our network goes down, so does our connection to the outside world. Then, we lose all of our cloud-based solutions. When everything was on-prem before, we could lose that connection to the outside world and still function as a company. Now that all of our solutions have moved offsite, anytime we lose that connectivity, it's a whole office of people sitting around twiddling their thumbs because you can't get to JIRA, Confluence, etc. Most of our projects are still actively managed out of Microsoft Project and saved on their desktop. That's probably the only thing that we can still leverage when that connection goes down.

We lose Internet connectivity once every two to three months when there is a hiccup somewhere and something goes down in the matrix, then we lose connectivity. It is usually down for maybe 30 minutes to an hour, then we're up and running again.

How are customer service and technical support?

I would rate the technical support just slightly below poor. We have found that for us to communicate with Planview technical support and open a ticket, we have to make a business case with a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation including screenshots, red circles, and arrows. We have to draw it out for them, then we make a video showing this is us and everything the way it should look. Then, we do this activity: Here's the outcome and the malfunction with the explanation. We have to remind them that we don't use allocations, that we're just using reservations. We go through this whole diatribe of putting almost a packet together. Then, two weeks later somebody calls us, and says, "Hey, we're looking into your ticket. Can you explain what's going on?"

It's like, "I just spent all that time. Did you look at the video? Did you look at the PowerPoint?"

"Well, not really."

"Well, go back and look at it." Then it's, "Well, did you understand it?"

"Well, I don't know. I can't reproduce it. Let me..."

Then, the other day, we went through that same process. They called us up. and said, "Hey, we couldn't reproduce your problem, so we just went into your production version and updated your project for you." I don't ever want anybody from outside of my organization to touch one of my projects. So, I was pretty livid about that.

In some ways, the solution is flexible. In other ways, it is not. It seems that the support that we get from Planview when we call them up over the phone is almost misleading at times.

When we talk to people at Horizons that have had some of the same challenges, they found it very flexible because they knew about a thing to make Planview work the way they needed it to and we didn't get that assistance from Planview. The biggest benefit in being at Horizons isn't the support from Planview, as it is the support from the user community having been in the software.

My wish is the company, Planview, steps up to be just as valuable as the use cases and user stories.

How was the initial setup?

We found it straightforward. Some of our end users found it more complex because they were required to get in and do new things. The expression we used is, "We're all growing new muscles together. We're working out new muscles and we're learning new things." Like when you start a new workout routine, you're sore in the morning. You're going to get sore from Planview until you build up muscles to do this. There is a learning curve.

Our business users are still overcoming the learning curve, not as fast as we would like, but they are getting there.

What about the implementation team?

Glen Van Koojic and Mike Moulden were outside trainers and facilitators who helped us with the rapid deployment of Planview. They are contractors, not actual employees, of Planview. They are great guys and helped a tremendous amount.

What was our ROI?

We have seen ROI in non-tangible ways. There is still much more to be had there as we improve our business plan and operation.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated Clarity, Rally, and a Microsoft Project Enterprise solution.

We already had Planview. We looked for a while at Workday because Workday was coming on to do our HR stuff. The idea was, "Maybe we can get some sort of work management project piece out of Workday, then have it all be integrated into one tool with one check to write." There wasn't enough meat on the bone for us to go that route. So, we went with Planview.

We decided to go with Planview because of familiarity. We didn't have to change to a whole new system. Even though the difference between versions 11 and 16 was a totally different code base. It was beneficial for us to keep similar look and feel, layout, and shorter training time.

We still use Microsoft Project as a standalone. Most of our projects are managed out of that because we use Planview as a financial reporting tool. We will hopefully replace Microsoft Project with an expanded use of Planview Enterprise One.

What other advice do I have?

I am happy with Planview. I would give it an endorsement.

We're trying to move in a more lean, agile direction. Everything we use right now for that is JIRA, Excel spreadsheet, and Microsoft Project based.

We used Projectplace during the rollout. I really liked it and would like to keep using it. We don't currently use it, as we are not currently customers of it. I think it was their tool to use when they were rolling us up and because we were participating in that project with them, so we got access to it that way.

I find value in both products: Enterprise One and Projectplace. I didn't see any synchronization or data feeding between the two of them. So, I can't tell if there's any synergy between them. I believe there probably is based on what I've seen at Horizons, but I've not witnessed that synergy.

We barely use 20 percent of the features that are in the current version. I am excited about all of the products that Planview offers and how they seem to integrate together. I would like to see my company mature and develop to the point that we could bring on a second or third Planview product, then we can really start becoming lean, agile, and innovative. However, we need to get our own house in order before we can even talk about future features of Planview.

We need to do a better job of being us than we currently do. We need a little more leadership maturity. We need to refine our business processes. We have a new CEO, and he's setting a new direction for the company. We need to get his business vision a little further down the road than where we are. We're sort of in a state of flux right now.

The product is probably a seven or eight (out of 10), but I think our adoption of it and use of it right now is probably a five (out of 10). So, we need to be better at using the tool. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Other
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Manager of IT at Regions bank
Real User
Brings visibility into capacity and how that affects our projects
Pros and Cons
  • "I like that everyone is able to see the same data. All of our users who aren't just time reporters have read access to all the data that is out there. So, it is one source of truth where everybody can go in and see the exact same data that everybody else sees. It is transparent."
  • "There can be improvement on the sense of urgency because a lot of times we've exhausted everything that we can, and now, we're reaching out. So, it isn't a, "Well, have you tried to reboot this?" We've already done everything. Once we put in a ticket, there should be more of a sense of urgency on it."

What is our primary use case?

The primary use case is portfolio management. We're looking at the business unit portfolio and health of the portfolio as a whole. We are not just looking at projects on time, but capacity management for resources, and on the financial side, if we're on budget.

How has it helped my organization?

It brings visibility into capacity, how that affects our projects, and having the whole portfolio be able to see everything at the same time, then talk about it. 

One of our guys actually has a great quote that I use, "Planview Enterprise One isn't a tool that takes away communication. It actually increases the need for communication." It brings people to the table to talk about more things because we have transparency in all of our stuff.

What is most valuable?

I like that everyone is able to see the same data. All of our users who aren't just time reporters have read access to all the data that is out there. So, it is one source of truth where everybody can go in and see the exact same data that everybody else sees. It is transparent.

To see work, resources, and ICPM and those different cuts and views is very beneficial for us if we just want to focus on resources. E.g., here are all the resources, but here are the projects that they're working on. If we want to look at the work, then we can look at the work and can bring in the resources. Being able to slice and dice that way is really good.

What needs improvement?

  • Integration
  • The cost of other pieces and integrating them in.
  • The response to certain issues that pop up.

For how long have I used the solution?

We just implemented it in March.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It has been pretty stable.

How are customer service and technical support?

When we put in tickets, they are responded to them as quickly as possible.

There is improvement there on responding back to customers. On our side, we've got quite a bit of experience in tools and systems like this. Normally, when we are putting forth a ticket, we know that it needs to be escalated. 

There can be improvement on the sense of urgency because a lot of times we've exhausted everything that we can, and now, we're reaching out. So, it isn't a, "Well, have you tried to reboot this?" We've already done everything. Once we put in a ticket, there should be more of a sense of urgency on it.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

In 2006, we engaged Clarity. We were using Clarity. We had just gone through one merger. We were completing another merger while we were trying to implement a tool: two different banks, two different cultures, and one new tool. The implementation wasn't that successful. So, we had a system that was too robust for what we needed. We sort of needed what was now called a low code common language type tool.

We ended up building our own. From building our own tool, we made changes to that, and rebranded it. Then, we made changes to that, and rebranded it. 

One of our CIO's big things was we needed a tool that will be able to facilitate our evolution into automation, Agile, and everything else. That's how we came to Enterprise One.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is more straightforward for us because we've had other tools in the past, so everything is there. One of the things that we're excited about with version 18 is the configuration: Some of the entry points and user experience will be a lot better when we can collapse certain information. The clean look and feel of it will be really nice.

What other advice do I have?

The product is flexible. We have someone on our team named Allison Cobb who is our Power BI and reporting specialist. She went in and learned the whole schema of Enterprise One to where we have more flexibility than others because we can see certain things, and go, "We want to put that in a dashboard. We want to be able to use that in a different way."

I would give it an eight out of 10. The reason why I would give it an eight is what's being brought into the suite of Planview. The integrations that you're going to be able to do with Planview with LeanKit. All of these things, it's really forward thinking on, "These are all the different pieces which are needed to move forward." All of this is great. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Sr PPM Administrator with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Provides the ability to see your resources and what they're working on in one place
Pros and Cons
  • "With the lifecycles, it helps us step through our processes easier. We'll take a process and create it in Visio, then we'll go and implemented in Planview. Anytime that we have to do a new process, this is what we use. We just step it through the lifecycles and the configure screens are very easy to use. The fields that you need are easy to use."
  • "I would suggest for the request module that they open up the fields and columns so it's like we are doing our work in the work module. You can't do that with today. We also have to make sure that the fields can go both ways with the request and work modules. Including fields in the column sets would be helpful, because today they only use attributes."

What is our primary use case?

Our company has a PMO, which they use to intake their projects. They use the request module and do a process for the steering committee before its turned into a project. Once they turn it into a project, the project managers take it over and work the WBS all the way through to the end of the project.

The product is deployed on the Planview cloud.

How has it helped my organization?

With the lifecycles, it helps us step through our processes easier. We'll take a process and create it in Visio, then we'll go and implemented in Planview. Anytime that we have to do a new process, this is what we use. We just step it through the lifecycles and the configure screens are very easy to use. The fields that you need are easy to use.

With the prioritization that the company is getting into, it's easier to do that using this solution, including a ROM. Normally, the ROM is done in the work, but we put it in the request module. You don't have to have an in-depth ROM. You don't have to create a project, we just do it in a request module today, which has been very helpful.

For the delivery, we can tell when a project will be late, so the PM can find out why. The PM would have to tell management why it's going to be late, but they can see that right off because they do weekly status reports. So, they don't have to wait to get a status report. They can just go in there and look. Also, with the reporting capability, where they can do the subscriptions, they get it every Friday.

Resource managers can see their resources. They try to do things on their own, so that is good. Today, we don't have high-level resource management, but we are going to start doing that. We will start having demand or resource meetings to see where resources are available. However, we are still developing that. 

We don't have that today, but I worked at other companies who used Planview and saw where resources were available, scheduled, and short. It was very useful. We would meet every two weeks to view resource management. We would just sit in a room and say, "These are our projects. These are the projects that are incoming. Where are our resources today? What are they working on?" So, it was very good.

The biggest impact has been the ability to see your resources and what they're working on. Most importantly is having your projects in one place. We don't have that specifically here at GM today, but we're working towards that. That's our new initiative: Get everything in one place and have one place to go for intake. So, if you have a new request, they go straight to plan B. Once we post a project, they can do that today. We get on reporting for Power BI and the ease of use of Power BI is very big.

What is most valuable?

It's easy to use compared to other platforms that I've worked on, e.g., Microsoft Project. Innotas was one of our contenders, but they ended up buying them, so it's good to see that those features are coming out across Enterprise One. 

  • I love the requested intake.
  • I love how you can do calculations of fields. 
  • We put in the lifecycles, which I love. 
  • Love that you can get notifications within Outlook. 
  • The reporting: How you can do subscriptions of the reporting. So, you don't have to sit there and send reports manually. That's very helpful.

These features save me time. Anything that you can automate is always helpful. When somebody doesn't have to come and ask me, "Hey, can you do this for me?" They can do it themselves, then it's easy to use. You can show them one time, and they go through it the next time by themselves.

It's flexible and very easy to use. Just having all of our projects centralized and all our programs in one place so we can see what the PMs are working on. Now that we've gone global, we can bring in the other PMs and PMOs easily because we've already configured stuff. Although, they may have things that they're reporting on, we can easily integrate those into our current system. 

What needs improvement?

I would suggest for the request module that they open up the fields and columns so it's like we are doing our work in the work module. You can't do that with today. We also have to make sure that the fields can go both ways with the request and work modules. Including fields in the column sets would be helpful, because today they only use attributes.

For the multiple fields that you have, there is not a single select field, but multiple selections. You can't use those in column sets today. It excludes those fields when being reported on. So, you have to figure out another way to do that.

It would be beneficial for us if it was able to integrate with other tools and have those tools integrated into Planview, which they're working on. Examples of tools being integrated DevOps, JIRA and Projectplace. Since we're a mature PMO, and not all of our PMOs are, if they can integrate with Projectplace or the Planview PPM Pro, that's good. 

For how long have I used the solution?

The company has been on it for at least five years. I've used it previously with other companies for over seven years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I have never had an issue with the stability of Planview. That's one thing that they can tout very well. Performance issues have not been an issue. When running a report, all I have to do is let them know, and they will expand my timeout limits. So, I've never had an issue with performance with them, not in the cloud.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's very scalable. We're on Enterprise One, so you normally have to be pretty mature. Where I came from, we were immature. We adapted to Planview and became very mature. I know that other companies can do that too. They start out with Projectplace or PPM Pro, then they'll go to Enterprise One. So, it's very scalable. It's a great solution for scalability.

How are customer service and technical support?

The technical support is very good. I've never had an issue with them. They answer their tickets right away and always come back with a solution very quickly.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We moved from another tool to Planview. I don't know what tool this current company was on. I worked for them for 10 months, then I left and I came back. I've been with them since June again. Another company that I worked with, we went from MS Project Pro (the PPM tool) to Planview.

How was the initial setup?

It was more complex because I came from MS Project Pro. Planview has so much more to offer, so you had to consider a lot more. You had to figure out what its capability were, what your portfolio and programs were going to be, what your teams were, how they were structured, and what type of resources you had in what roles. So, there were things that we had to consider, but Planview asks the right questions. They bring that out of you.

We did a test for three months, then we did a soft launch. So, only our PMs were on it, and they brought all their projects over and managed their projects there. We had another tool, where we had to do double-duel entry for time sheets. So, when they ended their time sheet over there, then they started doing it in Planview. That was just to get them used to it, and saying, "We're going to do our time sheets." We were a company that already did time sheets. That seems to be a big thing for other companies. How do you get your people to do time sheets? But if you're doing financials, they're going to do time sheets.

What about the implementation team?

We used consultants, and I would recommend that for everyone. They're very easy to use. They listen to your needs and requirements. They gather them. They've been in the business so long that they understand what people are saying. Some people may want a lot of details, and they'll talk them down from that by saying, "Do you really need that? Let's start with this, and then we'll see. Does that give you what you need?" So, they're really good about listening to the requirements and providing what you need from the beginning.

When you talk to a consultant, make sure you know where you are, how many users you're going to have, what number of projects you have today, where you think you're going to go with it, and what are your pain points. 

Know your pain points, and definitely tell Planview what your pain points are, because they'll have a solution for them, whether it's reporting, which is real big, or just the ease of use. Everybody is so used to using Microsoft Project, but it's really not that different from Microsoft Project. You just have to use the tool, like Word or Excel, and the more you use it, the better you get at it. It's a very good PPM tool.

The learning curve is not steep. They have very good training and a lot of people. My recommendation is when you take on Planview, get the training. Have trainers come onsite and make sure you budget for that. Make sure you budget for consultants to come onsite and train your people. Don't try to do it yourself, let them do it.

What was our ROI?

I think our company has seen ROI. If you can see where all your projects are, what type of projects you have, what resources that they're working on, and finally, where your budget is. That's a win-win, all the way. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We have unlimited licenses for all of our functionalities. Since we went global, we went with that model.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated MS Project, because we thought we going to stay with them. We evaluated Planview and Innotas. There was another minor one too and we want to be more mature than that. Those were the main ones that we evaluated.

We chose Planview probably for the centralization of all the projects, ease of use, views, and the configured screens were very easy to use. Ours was more about resources, knowing where your resources are, for example:

"What projects are you working on?" 

"I'm over here working on these five projects." 

"But they're not on my list!" 

This solution is just about able to see what your resources are working on and having all your projects in one place, even team schedules.

What other advice do I have?

We do not use the solution’s Lean/Agile delivery tools yet. That's one reason why we were looking at this heavily at the conference. They seem to be really focused on that, which is good. A lot of companies that I talked to seemed to be struggling with it, so it's good to see that Planview is trying to move into that direction, taking everything with it.

Today, Planview does not help connect funding and strategic outcomes with work execution because we only have one PMO which is using finances. I don't think that they're doing a capital budget yet, to say, "These are the projects that we're going to work on." But, as we've gone global, we will start doing that. So, it'd be very beneficial. The other company that I worked for, it was very highly used. We forecasted constantly to see where our budgets were, what our capital budget was for that year, and what projects we were going to work on at the beginning of the year. That was good.

There are so many different functionalities within it that you don't have to take in all in one day. You can just grow with it. So, that's what I like about it.

I'm always a person who will never give anything a 10. I would probably give it, compared to other tools, a nine (out of 10). I would've given it an eight (out of 10), but they've made improvements this year. So many good things are coming out, and they really listen to the customers. I'll give them a nine for that.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
R&D Project Management Coach at Johnsonville Sausage
Real User
Brought our portfolios together giving us visibility
Pros and Cons
  • "We've brought our portfolio altogether. We have had multiple ways of reporting out what our portfolio is, whether it's in Excel, Word, or in different places. We brought all of our projects together in one place. That has worked out well for us. We've been able to manage the work on Gantt charts and our resources better. The big thing for us on research and development is around managing people's time, on which projects they are working on, and how much effort does it take to launch our projects."
  • "Recently, we have gotten on a newer version. We're currently on version 15. Some of the things that we've been running into roadblocks on, it looks like the solutions will be coming out in versions 17 or 18. So, we have to upgrade before somethings can get completed."

What is our primary use case?

We have three different teams on Enterprise One right now. We currently have research and development, MIS, and sourcing continuous improvement. The main business cases are new product introduction, MIS projects, and also continuous improvement of productivity projects.

We are on the cloud.

How has it helped my organization?

We have recently had some good portfolio discussions about what types of projects and how much effort is going against each type of project, then making better decisions around how they better tied back to the strategy that we want to chase. 

It's around innovation versus continuous improvement versus maintenance-type projects:

  • Do we understand how much time and effort we're putting against maintenance projects?
  • Where do we want to grow more in innovation? 
  • How do we better focus our resources on these types of things? 

That specifically has been how we've been doing it recently.

I don't think it's transformed our strategy yet. I think it's getting us better visibility into how we're working on the strategy. But, I wouldn't say it's changed our company's strategy.

What is most valuable?

We've brought our portfolio altogether. We have had multiple ways of reporting out what our portfolio is, whether it's in Excel, Word, or in different places. We brought all of our projects together in one place. That has worked out well for us. We've been able to manage the work on Gantt charts and our resources better. The big thing for us on research and development is around managing people's time, on which projects they are working on, and how much effort does it take to launch our projects.

I have found the solution to be flexible. It has the ability for us to have three teams working on it, plus we're going to have capital planning coming onto to Planview next year. The fact that we can all be working on it: MIS folks working on their projects at the same time that you have research and development, new products coming in, and we'll be doing capital projects. We've all been able to work on the same platforms, and it's very helpful that way.

What needs improvement?

I would rate it as an eight (out of 10). We have had some difficulties with trying to get the financial component of it to work the way that we want it to. The way that we do IRRs, we tried to do that in Planview and the financial model didn't quite get there. It depends on who you talk to, but some of our project managers would probably give it a higher score. When you start talking to some of our financial folks, they would probably give it a lower score, as they are trying to figure out how to best use it financially and have had some struggles.

For how long have I used the solution?

We launched Enterprise One a year ago.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability has been fine.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

So far, scalability has been fine. It's added quite a bit to it. It's worthwhile.

How are customer service and technical support?

The technical support has been pretty good. My technical team would be able to talk more to that than myself. Recently, we have gotten on a newer version. We're currently on version 15. Some of the things that we've been running into roadblocks on, it looks like the solutions will be coming out in versions 17 or 18. So, we have to upgrade before somethings can get completed, but I think for the most part, we've been happy with the support that we have been receiving from the help desk.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We had multiple groups on different tools. Those things were not working for us. We had one group on Access and another group doing things in Microsoft Project trying to manage a portfolio there. All of our project activators were in Excel, Word, and scattered all over the place. It was tough to find information.

How was the initial setup?

It was fairly straightforward. We understood it pretty well out of the gate. We understood the format. 

The format of the tool worked well for us, but there were some things that we were not too familiar with in the tool. We probably didn't learn some things and some training in the tool before we actually got into implementation would have been better. There were some things we were agreeing to ask along the way where we didn't quite see the end picture because we were trying to implement the tool. We were trying to make decisions when we were not sure what the end game looked like. Once we started working on it, it was pretty intuitive and worked well for us.

What about the implementation team?

Planview consultants helped us with it. Our experience with them was very good. It was a different approach than how we typically would have done it internally before. So, we did take a pause along the way and make sure that we were getting what we needed. For the most part, I think we did well with it.

What was our ROI?

We have not calculated a return on investment at this point. There actually wasn't necessarily an ROI project for this. It was more just trying to pull visibility and get multiple groups under one table. We didn't measure for this one on an ROI basis.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We are on the Flex licenses.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did talk with SAP and Planview. Originally, we also considered Innotas, which was acquired as Planview PPM Pro. 

Planview Enterprise One was handled best across multiple functions. Everyone came up with different requirements. Planview was good at meeting all of those for each one of us. We did a detailed RFP and scored it all the way through. Each group scored it where they thought it worked for us. Planview scored best.

What other advice do I have?

The big thing for us is that if you're having a difficult time trying to keep track of all the different projects that are going on in different areas and you need one place to be able to go for it. This has worked really well for us.

The biggest impact of using Planview in our company is visibility to everything that is being worked on.

We have not yet used Planview to help connect funding and strategic outcomes with work execution. I think we want to get there, but we're early on.

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.
PeerSpot user
it_user808140 - PeerSpot reviewer
Enterprise Solutions Architect with 10,001+ employees
User
The portfolio and technology management are well built, however the lack of templates harden the initial learning curve
Pros and Cons
  • "The portfolio and technology management are well built."
  • "Visualization and reporting areas could use improvements by having canned reports."
  • "The lack of templates harden the initial learning curve."
  • "Its support to legacy paying customers is something PlanView is not handling well.​ We were unable to implement due to lack of professional support by PlanView. ​"

What is our primary use case?

We have used Troux every day over the last three years. 

What is most valuable?

The portfolio and technology management are well built, however the lack of templates harden the initial learning curve.

What needs improvement?

Visualization and reporting areas could use improvements by having canned reports.

For how long have I used the solution?

Three to five years.

How is customer service and technical support?

Its support to legacy paying customers is something PlanView is not handling well. We were unable to implement due to lack of professional support by PlanView. 

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user661212 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
It puts together strategy and execution across all your investments.
Pros and Cons
  • "The overall interface is very easy to use. It puts together strategy and execution across all your investments."
  • "It would be great to see Planview incorporate agile interfacing/methods in it. Like CA Clarity and other leading PPM tools – Planview should enhance or develop the interfaces to ingrate with other market leading Agile tools."

What is most valuable?

The overall interface is very easy to use. It puts together strategy and execution across all your investments. The demand, organizational resources, financials, strategies, project execution, and ideation elements are all brought together in this solution.

How has it helped my organization?

It resulted in a high rate of adoption and sustainability of changes that are associated with the business unit and its regions.

It proved a single set of reliable and actionable portfolio plans, consisting of ranked ideas, projects, and services across the organization. Thus, it enhanced visibility.

What needs improvement?

It would be great to see Planview incorporate agile interfacing/methods in it. Like CA Clarity and other leading PPM tools – Planview should enhance or develop the interfaces to ingrate with other market leading Agile tools (like TFS, JIRA, RALLY, etc..) and collaboration tools to support the seamless Organizational investment data flow from and to these tools, it could prove as a great eco-system aligned with today’s emerging frameworks, methodologies………

I would like to see them publish their guides, FAQs, tips, and Knowledge Management Database (KMDB) for free in their community, as other market leading PPM tools do. Planview has not published, shared / made available it’s tool related guides, QRGs, release notes in public domain. Only the authorized customers can access their repository – I hope they should think about this and create the open / free / openly accessible community blog, sites where users can found the threads / discussions and can download the user / feature / admin / functional / module guides etc…

Scope of customization – it’s a great tool built with set of best practices from project management perspective, but they should provision the scope of customizations. I have grown up working with Planview versions 5 / 7.4.1 (10 years back, almost) and have never seen them provided the ability to create any custom object / module, if required. What Planview suggests is to use their existing modules as they suffice the PM and Strategic requirements. But like the other tools, they should provision for the scope of customizations so that users can create a custom module / object / entity – which will work individually (as the work, strategy entities do) having the object specific supporting attributes / lifecycles / Scripted dialogs etc… it would then certainly revolutionize the whole PPM space…

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used this solution for over ten years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

There were no stability issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

There were no scalability issues.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

10/10

Technical Support:

Technical support is great. They have got really good experts on their team.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have used other PPM tools before, but I found Planview Enterprise to really be the best-in-class for project and portfolio management practices.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The licensing part is a bit costly in comparison with the other available PPM tools. However, it is worth the price for those organizations who seek to bring their strategy to life in a world of limited resources.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated other solutions, namely Microsoft Office EPM and HPE PPM solutions.

What other advice do I have?

Go ahead and get this solution implemented. Do not limit your organization’s exposure to the timesheet/resource management. Instead, use Planview's solution starting from the intake part through the overall strategy management.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user580395 - PeerSpot reviewer
it_user580395Director of Product Management at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees
Real User

Great feedback, thanks! On your suggestion around agile, we've made a number of improvements. Planview LeanKit is a great answer for many teams, particularly those focused on lean and Kanban, or scaling Agile. We've also just announced a strategic partnership with Tasktop for enterprise-wide visibility to the progress of agile delivery teams regardless of where they choose to deliver.

https://www.planview.com/company/newsroom/planview-and-tasktop-establish-strategic-partnership-bringing-enterprise-wide-visibility-to-organizations-scaling-agile/

PeerSpot user
Planview System Admin/Project Coordinator IT PMO at a pharma/biotech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Vendor
The resource planning and tracking features are valuable. In project planning, the work plan is a bit kludgy and difficult to use.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features are the resource planning and tracking.

What needs improvement?

Project planning: The work plan is a bit kludgy and difficult to use. It does not work like MS Project which irritates a lot of PMs. The learning curve is pretty steep - this is a robust application with a LOT of moving parts - and most users do not have the time, or inclination, to dig in and learn it while in the middle of managing a project.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used it for 15 months.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

We only encountered deployment issues in the user up-take area.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We have not encountered any stability issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have not encountered any scalability issues.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

Customer service is hit and miss. GREAT front-end c/s; not so great once you're up and running. They have a difficult time determining, as do new customers, if an issue is a system error or knowledge gap. Most of their support team will not respond to requests for real-time conversations and the gap in email responses drags what turn out to be simple solutions into days-long aggravations.

They have a huge number of articles, videos, and documentation which they constantly refer users to. The amount of time that is taken researching an issue which would take a minimal amount of time for a support team member to answer is staggering.

Technical Support:

I rate technical support the same as customer service.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We previously used Excel spreadsheets and MS Project plans, and everyone used them differently. There was no systematic shared approach to project management or resources. Most of these docs were not shared, which made any sort of accurate, or even best-guess, projections nearly impossible and extremely time-consuming.

How was the initial setup?

Initial setup seemed straightforward but was relatively complex. As I've mentioned elsewhere - the system has a lot of moving parts. Additionally, their terminology is different from other mainstream tools.

What about the implementation team?

A combined in-house/vendor team implemented it. The vendor team was excellent!

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user171948 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Enterprise Architect at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Good product but allowing users to have a link that opens a specific sub-tab or folder is a challenge.

What is most valuable?

The layout of objects can be easily modified and customized based on the meta model requirements or user needs.

How has it helped my organization?

It's used as the source of record for the application portfolio so it allows information about applications to be linked to functions or projects giving a better picture of its impact.

What needs improvement?

Allowing users to have a link that opens a specific sub-tab or folder is a challenge. You can deep link to objects but it won't show the object in the context of the frame.

For how long have I used the solution?

3 years

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We didn't have any issues with stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We didn't have any issues with scalability

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

7 out of 10

Technical Support:

7 out of 10

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Troux has an easily extensible meta model and UI which other tools don't have.

What about the implementation team?

We implemented it through a Vendor and they were excellent.

What was our ROI?

Not sure since I don't deal with the contract.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Not sure since I don't deal with the contract

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I didn't personally but other options exist for EA repositories like Mega, Enterprise Elements, Adaptive

What other advice do I have?

EA portfolio management is only as good as the data and people driving it. If the data is bad then a tool can't fix the issues or address the business needs. If there is no buy in from stakeholders a repository won't be of much use.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
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Updated: May 2023
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Planview Portfolios Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.