Planview Inc has readied a version of its project portfolio management software that draws on the full power of the financial management suite it acquired two years ago with the takeover of Business Engine.
Its forthcoming Enterprise 10 edition has a level of integrated financial management never before seen in portfolio management software, Patrick Tickle, Executive VP at Planview told us.
“The system has been completely redesigned from the back-end out and the front-end in, and drives the next level of maturity in the financial management of projects. Cross-currency and cost code features, and the way it can integrate with Excel will be seen as being a big deal in financial offices.”
He explained that the company had worked to infuse into its flagship PPM suite all of the intellectual property that came to it with the Business Engine acquisition.
In its time the Business Engine Network (BEN) product was one of the strongest of the best-of-breed systems available for financial tracking, budgeting and chargeback. The system was used to bring a sense of cost transparency to internal projects in a way that increased financial control and minimised project cost surprises.
It was also seen as invaluable in creating a single, integrated repository for all project-related information.
As well as some finessed financial controls, Tickle said that Enterprise 10 will also offer a way of linking PPM office tasks directly to market leading application lifecycle management software.
Version 10 integrates with IBM Rational’s Clearquest line, he noted. “This move addresses the high degree of affinity that exists between project portfolio management and application lifecycle management.”
Planview has had 46 customer sites put Version 10 through its paces, and Tickle rates that the breadth and depth of feature enhancements in the release make it the most important in the company’s 20 year history
Analytics and reporting have been improved with upgrades to Planview Enterprise Insight, in an effort to sharpen the quality and help speed of business-critical decisions.
The company said that having one integrated financial system built on a single data model and which is fully integrated with both relational reporting and OLAP should make for robust and consistent financial reporting.
The addition of a Product Portfolio Management module also allows PPM principles to be applied to the management of product development.
Product development ideas, work, and resources can be tracked, so that the financial management capabilities of the portfolio management software can be tied directly to the product catalogue.
Among the market leaders in the project portfolio management software tools sector, Planview and Primavera are perhaps the best known, HP offers its PPM Center, CA has Clarity, and there is Compuware’s Changepoint. Version 1 of Planview Enterprise becomes available in Q1 2009, the company has confirmed.
