We performed a comparison between Avolution ABACUS and Planview Portfolios based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Enterprise Architecture Management solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The most valuable feature is that it has a customizable meta-model, which is key."
"It's more than just an enterprise architecture tool as it has a lot of nice features, e.g. messaging, simulation, etc."
"If you face new challenges or issues then you can dynamically customize according to the business needs."
"Scalable and stable tool for roadmapping and modeling, with a good dashboard, end-to-end impact analysis, and portfolio management."
"The tool's implementation is straightforward as everything is readily available. For instance, setting up a portal is seamless, allowing easy publishing and access to data. However, integrating with other tools like BI, Power BI, or Grafana requires setting up pipelines between them."
"The ease of modeling and the ease of showing interconnectivity and relationships is the most valuable. It is fairly simple and out of the box. It is customizable in many ways. It is a pretty good tool."
"There are a lot of different features, but the business/decision-maker feature, visibility, and dashboards are most valuable."
"You can design using a diagram tool installed on your desktop, a key difference from other vendors."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is reporting."
"We provided whatever feedback we had to the Planview team, and they went in and built those additional features that we requested. For example, they created a great way for our users to search for a specific resource, project, program, or role. We were not using some of the features, and we wanted them to not be visible, and they helped us with that. They also brought a feature to provide visibility into when a resource was never assigned to any task. There was no visibility to this before. This feature was really very good for visibility into the resource portfolio."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"We can easily see which functions are overcapacity. Before, we did not have visibility into that."
"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 can view a project both at the top level and dig into the particularities. It's given us greater visibility into the work itself."
"The most valuable features are the catalog and the diagram."
"It doesn't have the simulation capability, which would be helpful in doing some business process analysis and improvements."
"The usability of the tool is an area with shortcomings that need improvement."
"In the future, there could be improvements in integration and enhancements."
"Having more control over page size is lacking in this product. Print utilization also needs to be improved."
"The company needs to update the UML version they are using for the product as it is quite old."
"It is vastly scalable but you can't run it on a Mac or Linux so it has limitations."
"I use reference models, which are taxonomies, in my EA work. It is a reference model/taxonomy of things with capabilities, sub capabilities, and sub-sub capabilities, so you're working it down. I haven't yet found a simple way to implement that in Abacus. It could be that it is there, but I don't know how to do it."
"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?"
"I think the capabilities are there, but it seems difficult for me to even create a report as I am not a Planview technical expert. It is not particularly intuitive. It slows us down in reporting the big picture to management."
"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."
"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."
"Its ability to create summary reports across multiple projects is very limited. In terms of the out-of-the-box reporting for summary reports, the reporting that we typically leverage is around forecasting for resources, timesheets, and actuals, and just looking at what is the capacity. There is no real summary of what work is being done and how work is being accomplished. So, what we typically do is that we get a copy of the data files from Enterprise One daily, and then we have a team that manages the data mod outside of Enterprise One. They use data from Enterprise One as well as other additional sources to provide the reporting that we share with the management. So, we leverage a lot of Enterprise One data for reporting, but we don't use the reporting capabilities within Enterprise One. So, reporting can be improved, and they could help us make more customized reporting. I know it is very configurable out of the box, but we have to leverage an outside data mod that pulls in a lot of data from Enterprise One. So, the reporting function, and being able to customize reports, is the area that could be very beneficial."
"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."
"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."
"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."
Avolution ABACUS is ranked 8th in Enterprise Architecture Management with 14 reviews while Planview Portfolios is ranked 12th in Enterprise Architecture Management with 63 reviews. Avolution ABACUS is rated 8.0, while Planview Portfolios is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Avolution ABACUS writes " An out of the box tool that creates reports on the fly that can help your client make better decisions". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Planview Portfolios writes "Helps prioritize projects, share the big picture with management, and has a great planning capacity". Avolution ABACUS is most compared with Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect, LeanIX, MEGA HOPEX, Visio and ARIS BPA, whereas Planview Portfolios is most compared with Broadcom Clarity , Planview PPM Pro, LeanIX, SAP Portfolio and Project Management and Planview ProjectPlace. See our Avolution ABACUS vs. Planview Portfolios report.
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