Planview Portfolios vs. Solver vs. Vena

Planview Portfolios is well suited to provide a single, central, view of the truth. There is clear expansion capabilities to integrate it as a true Enterprise toolset with existing organisation wide (not just delivery) - you can pick and choose what you need to implement and that list gets longer. The ability to quickly gain an understanding of resources within the overall portfolio and some really clever tools regarding capacity and demand modelling. I think the only challenge we have encountered is modelling our Business as Usual activity to a level of detail - this is due to other tools being very embedded not just in the organisation but across a lot of industries.

Incentivized

We have multiple departments where they use different sources and application to reports. Solver provided us with this solution in forms of Web portal reporting, which can be accessed across the Whole company, which reduces the number of reports significantly and uniformity. One reporting application through a single source. Our budgeting process is unique last year we had many account executives shuffled, which made very complex for us to reassign accounts and budget for their sales. with complex Budgeting templates, it was not easy anyway. We had to rework our template through 4 revisions

Incentivized

Although I’m having some growing pains with the workforce, it is still much better than maintaining a huge Excel workbook to calculate the workforce, so it lets me answer management questions much faster than I can with my Excel workbook.

Incentivized

• Manage large portfolios with thousands of projects.
• Roll up financials across strategic hierarchy for projects around the world.
• Manage access in multiple ways so we can set up each user/role with just the right permissions.
• Support a variety of reporting and analytics methods.

Incentivized

• Ability to combine different information into one report.
• Report building is similar to excel, which makes for easier use.
• Current information is always pulled.

Incentivized

• Bringing all of our financial processes together in one place
• Helps Operations and Finance to see what is happening in real time at each site.
• It makes the budgeting process very easy for Operations to input and Finance to go in and check alongside at the same time.

Incentivized

• Capturing lower-level detailed expenditures within a project so that financial screens can show the details of the roll-up.
• Reporting flexibility so that end users can create their own quick ad hoc reports for analysis.
• Capturing matrixed skills on resources to ensure staffing is adequate and better align demand to supply.

Incentivized

• Real-time data for reporting is not available when you get it from the warehouse.
• Not compatible with Google Chrome.
• Lack of version and source control for reports on the Web portal.

Incentivized

• Create an bottom-line functionality.
• Have another license between power user and contributor that allows building reports that aren't ad hoc, but don't have all the admin rights of a power user.
• Have a session on best in class Workforce Planning prior to implementation.

Incentivized

We have been a Planview customer since 1999 and have seen it grow and mature as a tool. We have looked at other tools and have found that PV continues to meet our needs and is easy for our resources to use. They work to stay up on the project management industry and the direction it is going, keep on on current technology so that we can work more effectively, provide excellent customer support and have great pricing for what they offer. We can purchase only the modules we need versus buying a tool where we would only use a portion of the functionality.

Vena has become an integral part of finance and our daily process. Without it we would take longer to prepare results and decisions will be delayed. Vena has given the whole organization more visibility of results and budgets so that all departments participate more actively in managing their budgets rather than it being the sole responsibility of finance.

Incentivized

Perfect tool for planning resource time management. Giving flexibility with ease in uptodate . Team collabration . Team aligment. Top management aligment. Close the project with feed back . Team aligment. Expert contribution in task . Task management easy for project manager . Nice tool to have for project manager. Cost contol & project management is very easy with Planview

Incentivized

I would rate Vena's overall usability as an 8 out of 10. Vena offers a user-friendly interface, especially for those familiar with Excel, making it relatively easy to use. Most features are intuitive. However, some advanced functionalities may require more training or time to master, so it's not a perfect score. Overall, Vena provides a solid user experience that supports efficient financial planning.

Incentivized

We are long time Planview users and its availability is only limited to our internal SLAs for nightly backups. I have never experienced any unexpected or prolonged software downtime from Planview itself.

Vena is seemingly always available. They plan maintenance windows well in advance and always off hours (typically over a weekend) and communicate clearly throughout maintenance about what will be affected. Over 5 years of using the product, I can only remember one time when the platform was unavailable (I believe due to an underlying server hosting issue from their provider), and they resolved the issue and had everything up and running again within 8 hours.

Incentivized

There are occasions when the system is a bit sluggish. However, it may not always be on the Planview side. We are investing in better tools to monitor our network performance, which will help us diagnose issues more effectively in the future.

Incentivized

The performance is dependent on how much data and calculations are involved and how complex the security settings are. A simple template or report loads in seconds. A complex template or report can take a while. If there are many users with complex security settings, that will be a factor in the load time.

Incentivized

Going through proper channels of support is fine for minor to moderate issues. However, lately the critical issues that arise have been frequent and the standard support cases do not always seem to relay just how critical these issues are and we have to utilize our customer rep to help escalate. Fortunate to have that escalation method.

Incentivized

They are very quick to respond when you submit a ticket and typically fix issues quickly as well. I only didn't give this a 10 because there is still an open issue with our Salesforce connection that we've been waiting on now for a few months.

Incentivized

This is the best way to learn and buy-in. The in person effect gives students both a hands on approach but an instruction to be there to customize assistance and understanding. In person also builds greater buy in with your future team on creators. However if your audience is better at on line learning this is another good option.

Incentivized

Generally good. Sometimes, users are a bit overwhelmed, and it takes multiple sessions for them to get the hang of it.

Incentivized

The training was structured as a group training to learn the basics of creating a data model and mapping a template. While we had nearly 10 participants, I was the only actual implementer so we probably didn't actually need the training and could have just learned the initial skills from the implementation consultant. Two years later, when we hired a new team member, they completed several modules in Vena Academy (a self paced learning course) which allowed them to get up to speed on the basics with just a bit of supplemental guidance from me as our existing admin.

Incentivized

Always have a pre-implementation meeting or conference call with Planview to ensure all are on the same page, disclosure of all and any customization (including reports) and plan for support after implementation of a specified amount of time with the assigned implementation resource. And document everything

The Vena consultant had great knowledge of both the Vena solution and Excel and Excel functions. He was able to help suggest ways to build our templates that met our requirements using Excel functions we had not previously considered using. And we have been able to use the Excel information he provided in other ways outside of Vena. He was very patient and flexible as we learned the Vena tool and created templates

We are currently using Planview AgilePlace. Also we use Tasktop Hub for integrating with other applications within the organization. We would like to use ProjectPlace which is integrated with Planview Portfolios in the future.

Incentivized

Since more employees other than accounting employees will be using BI360, it is more user friendly than other report builders.

Incentivized

At the time, we loved that Vena was the only FP&A solution that truly provided MS Excel as the end-user UI, as well as native integration with Certinia (formerly FinancialForce). They also had really powerful controls and permissions, both for users and down to the row level, which allowed us to carefully grant all staff access to their financial data.

Incentivized

Did not help purchase product.

Incentivized

We are constantly growing and expanding. It is challenging to accommodate different user needs, but the system does provide means of doing that as we desire.

Incentivized

Vena solutios is a software that provides robust tools that help different departments in their statistics and we can visualize a lot of promising and visually attractive data. Vena Solutions' level of scalability is high and sustainable over time thanks to the fabulous technical support that is ready to help us at all times

Incentivized

some resources were great, but too much on their plates to be available

Incentivized

• The positive impact is the ability to manage our projects enterprise wide.
• Managing and reporting on projects and programs via portfolios makes it easy to identify troubled projects/programs that need immediate attention.
• The negative is that pushing too much change too quickly is hard for us. We need to get our users focused on the basics of PM before we can adopt everything else. We need to introduce change to different companies based on their maturity level. Too much change too quickly is not always beneficial. We need to focus on core competencies.

Incentivized

• BI360 has made getting information to management much easier.
• BI360 makes compiling information to make reports much easier.
• Since BI360 is capable of so many reports, our company uses it for more than financial purposes.

Incentivized

• Automated monthly financial statements saves us 3 hours a month.
• Moving reporting away from IT has begun to save hours of IT involvement, which will only grow as we shift more reports to Vena. This frees up IT to work on more important IT initiatives.
• Using budget templates saved hours of copy and paste time when gathering inputs from each department.

Incentivized