Head over to http://www.youtube.com/user/iplanware to check out product tours and feature demonstrations.
Portfolio management, portfolio management and more portfolio management. Release 3.5 of iPlanWare PPM introduces some killer features to help organisations select the right projects to run, align their projects with strategic objectives and prioritise their project portfolio. So combined with the other features in iPlanWare such as resource forecasting, project management, resource management, timesheets and project accounting – iPlanWare offers the number 1 online solution for end to end project portfolio management.
Here are some of the highlights:
- Project scorecards
- Project prioritisation and selection
- Portfolio status dashboards
- Project requests (online business case / project mandate)
- Approval of project requests online
A good way to get an understanding of the PPM features in iPlanWare is to check out the video below or watch the iPlanWare videos on the iPlanWare YouTube Channel. You can also find more videos on our website.
As I have mentioned in a previous post, most software vendors either take a SaaS or an on premises approach to software deployment. Very rarely do they offer both and I have never understood the sense in this. Here is another commentator exploring this further by looking at iPlanWare, SurarCRM and Wavemaker in particular. The often given reason is that trying to coexist the two approaches causes issues with software releases, marketing etc.
We have been offering iPlanWare PPM (project and portfolio management software) as a SaaS and on premises solution since 2001 and have regularly shipped 3-4 big releases each year since. Get your processes right and you can offer both – and secure a huge competitive advantage as well.
My advice to a start up thinking about going pure SaaS is don’t – you will be cutting out a huge segment of the market. At least 30% of the organisations we engage with would not consider a SaaS solution. More to the point, the ones who would not consider a SaaS solution are typically larger organisations with bigger budgets. At least another 20% will consider SaaS, but the sale will be a lot tougher due to legal issues, contracts and the customer not being familiar with the procurement / buying process for SaaS.
I agree, some software products only make sense as a SaaS solution. But for most business applications that is not the case. So there you have it – pure SaaS can mean 50% lost sales. Yes things will change, SaaS and cloud will become the norm – but we are a little way from that yet.
The March 2010 release of iPlanWare PPM introduces an alternative way for organisations to schedule resources. Most PPM tools use a Gantt or task based tool for scheduling. While this is great for work that needs a timeline based schedule, it is just not flexible enough for resource centric scheduling. For example scheduling tech support staff onto break fix, engineers onto jobs or consultants onto client engagements.
Unless your PPM tools represents all the work your organisation is doing, its resource / capacity forecasts will not be accurate. The Resource Planner in iPlanWare 3.4 plugs this gap and means that team leads and managers can quickly schedule people onto work that doesn’t naturally fit a Gantt / timeline based way of working.
iPlanWare Resource Planner
In addition to the resource planner, R3.4 introduces a project binder concept which provides a single area to review a project’s finances, schedule and budgets. Other smaller enhancements include support for change requests, improved dashboard filtering, a host of resource management extracts and new options for status reporting. You can download the release notes here.
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