What is our primary use case?
It is a complete project planning software where you can work collaboratively with your team members.
This solution is cloud-based so we do not have to worry about installing it on the client location or at our location on-premises. Anybody can use it. We just need to give access to our team members. They log into that application, then work simultaneously. It helps in improving our overall business efficiency, team management, and stakeholder management because it provides timely reports and project data.
It is deployed centrally. The solution is used by different users across the geography. It is also used by different departments and divisions, e.g., in IT marketing and sales accounts. We have deployed it and provided credentials to particular users for it, like support for the admin users, general users, and basic users. We provided credentials according to their access and strength.
How has it helped my organization?
We have a very large team of around 150 team members who are dispersed in different geographic locations. We are working in India, but our locations are in the Asia-Pacific regions as well. We have very distributed team members. We need to manage a project, while working with the client, for timely project delivery. We need to get the status of every project milestone along with the client's timeline set in the software. We need to monitor all our tasks as well as subtasks within the application. The solution improves our daily work, day-to-day operations, and milestones. It maintains those milestones in an efficient way.
What is most valuable?
Almost all the features are valuable. You can track a project's progress: milestones, timelines, and flag any issues. You can access the solution anywhere from any part of the world. It is a real-time project monitoring software as well. So, it is very good for project planning and reporting.
The overall user interface is fantastic. It has been very easy to learn and use. Any non-technical person with some initial training can work on it from day one, which is very good. The learning material is very good and easy to learn. There is no need to spend additional money on the training.
During the pandemic, team members were deployed in very different geographic locations. This was a great choice for this situation since we just needed to provide credentials for them to start working. We could track their progress and monitor from any part of the world. This is a very good functionality that they provide.
What needs improvement?
It needs some improvement in the project planning reports, ad hoc reports, and some big file transfers are a challenge. If you were going to transfer some 10 MB or 12 MB document with your team members, then it might have some problems in uploading and sharing those files. The overall dashboard view needs some advancement in its visualizations and uploading a large file size is a challenge.
Sometimes it requires a higher Internet bandwidth. If you are working on a low Internet bandwidth, with low Internet capacity in your organization, or working from home, then it might be a challenge since it requires a good, higher Internet bandwidth.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using it for approximately two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability is perfect.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability is good. We have 100 to 200 simultaneously and 50 team members using the solution. Apart from them, scalability is not a big issue for us. Also, they provide scalability because it is cloud-based.
How are customer service and support?
Some improvement is needed in the customer support services. Sometimes, the user will face an issue and the customer support, which handles Level 1 issues, does not respond in a timely manner, then users are stuck with their queries. Their support sometimes needs 24 to 48 hours to respond back, but sometimes that user needs a faster response.
Apart from some high-level issues, their customer service team is highly responsive. If you have some basic queries or day-to-day issues, then the customer service is also very good.
Technical support is good. I would rate them as eight out of 10.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We have used Microsoft Project and the other applications along with Jira for service management, project management, and bulk management. We use these tools in parallel.
We have been using Microsoft Project on-premises because it is not available as of yet in the cloud. We have been using Jira within our different departments, but not within the overall organization.
We did a trial version of this Planview solution. We found it suitable, then we deployed it to be fully functional.
How was the initial setup?
I was involved in the initial planning and deployment of the software as well on the budgeting part. I helped the business leader to deploy this product. The initial setup is straightforward because it is a cloud-based deployment. Everything is managed by Planview. All the services and updates are managed by them. It is a managed service, so nothing that we faced was very difficult or tricky. The deployment was completely fine. We deployed it within a month.
No maintenance is required from our end because it is cloud-based. Therefore, everything is managed by them, which comes under the subscription.
There were some small tasks that were initially required for us to do and deploy:
- Product requirement gathering from the user and what they required.
- Project analysis.
- Which features to add.
- The things that we would require in any module.
What about the implementation team?
The company helped us with the implementation. Overall, the deployment and implementation are supported well by the company.
What was our ROI?
If you are using a project management tool, like Planview Projectplace, to manage your project in a defined manner, then you can manage your project, your team's tasks, sprint meetings, daily meetings, ad hoc meetings, and provide a timely status to senior stakeholders. That will always be a return on investment for any organization.
Planview Projectplace helps us provide timely updates and management of all our projects as well as flag any issues. We are notified whenever timelines are reached, which helps us to know what task and timelines are approaching. It helps us to manage the overall project, which provides us with a positive return on investment.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Pricing might be a challenge because it costs around $29 to $30 per user a month. If you have a large user base, around 100 to 200 users, then it might be costly for an organization. For organizations who do not have a comprehensive overall budget, it might be a challenge.
Thankfully, we have a separate budget for all our software and tools in the IT infrastructure budget. We have procured the Planview software in our budget because we have different budget criteria for that. We have around 50 to 100 users simultaneously using the software. While it is a bit costly, it is fine because we have the budget for it.
If an organization has the budget for deploying this kind of application, then this solution would be a great choice.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
As an overall comprehensive solution, this is one of the best solutions that we have found for medium to large enterprises. We also evaluated Microsoft Project, Jira, Asana, Zoho Projects, and Trello.
We tried other applications like Trello, Zoho, and Microsoft Project, but they are not focusing on a large userbase group. According to our requirements, this solution was better.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate this product as nine out of 10. I would highly recommend it to prospective buyers if you require this type of project management software to be SaaS. Planview is a perfect choice because it handles all your requirements in a unified way. It provides analytics, data reports, and ad hoc reports in a few clicks. It provides all the features that an organization requires.
There are a lot of project management tools. If you just Google it, you will find a lot of tools. However, if you are practically managing your project management on a day-to-day basis, your requirements are high, and you are approaching change management in a high-level manner, then this would be a great solution.
Overall, it is a very good software. It needs some improvements that I have previously mentioned. Overall, I haven't found any particular issues or problems with it. Hopefully, other prospective buyers will find it as suitable as we have according to our experiences.
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?
Google
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.