Avolution ABACUS vs Planview Portfolios comparison

Avolution and Planview are both solutions in the Enterprise Architecture Management category. Avolution is ranked #9 with an average rating of 8.0, while Planview is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.5. Avolution holds a 3.8% mindshare in AM, compared to Planview’s 0.9% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of Avolution users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of Planview users who would recommend it.

Avolution ABACUS

Read 15 Avolution ABACUS reviews

2,071 Views
968 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

Planview Portfolios

Read 63 Planview Portfolios reviews

350 Views
206 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Avolution ABACUS

Planview Portfolios

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024

Planview Portfolios and Avolution ABACUS are contenders in the project management and enterprise architecture categories, respectively. Planview Portfolios has an edge with its robust integration capabilities and strategic focus, although both products have unique strengths.

Features: Planview Portfolios includes robust capabilities for resource planning, strategy execution, and portfolio management, with seamless integration with tools like Power BI for flexible configuration and reporting. It boasts impressive project management and resource utilization bridging strategy and execution. In contrast, Avolution ABACUS offers a highly customizable meta-model and advanced modeling capabilities, making it ideal for complex reports and impact analysis. Its key strength lies in 3D modeling, providing significant flexibility in designing enterprise architectures.

Room for Improvement: Planview Portfolios needs refinements in user configuration, agile integration, and reporting speed, along with improvements to enhance workflow flexibility and customized modules. Users express difficulties with financial components and support responsiveness. Avolution ABACUS requires better integration, improved analytical reporting, and enhanced support for regional markets. It could also benefit from increased automation in data updates and better dashboards and simulation capabilities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Planview Portfolios supports public, private, and on-premises deployments, offering flexibility and scalability suited to various organizational needs. The variability in customer service highlights issues with ticket resolution times and staff turnover, though technical support is generally positive. Avolution ABACUS focuses primarily on private and on-premises environments, providing consistent technical support, albeit with less emphasis on cloud deployments. Its customer service is often praised for responsiveness and expertise.

Pricing and ROI: Planview Portfolios is considered expensive, with licensing models like FLEX and enterprise licenses that offer cost efficiencies in larger deployments. Users perceive ROI through enhanced resource utilization and strategic portfolio management, despite difficulty quantifying exact figures. Avolution ABACUS presents competitive pricing, appealing to enterprises focused on detailed modeling without a vast user base. Its ROI is more qualitative, with gains in visibility and architecture planning, though less quantifiable than Planview's enterprise-level claims.

To learn more, read our detailed Avolution ABACUS vs. Planview Portfolios Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Avolution ABACUS vs. Planview Portfolios

March 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Avolution ABACUS

Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management

9th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Planview Portfolios

Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management

14th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Project Portfolio Management (8th)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Enterprise Architecture Management category, the mindshare of Avolution ABACUS is 3.8%, down from 4.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Planview Portfolios is 0.9%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Enterprise Architecture Management

Featured Reviews

JoseCamacho

Freelancer at a consultancy with 1-10 employees

Supports evaluating architecture through corporate objectives

I conducted an evaluation of enterprise architecture at the European Court in Luxembourg, reviewing and analyzing existing implementations to identify potential improvements and providing recommendations I conduct evaluations to identify potential improvements and make recommendations, forming a…

Read full review

Mark Hillman

Global Head of Portfolio Management at a wholesaler/distributor with 1,001-5,000 employees

User-friendly interface, but the reporting could be improved

The reporting is poor and requires improvement. The tiles and exception-based activities in the application are sufficient to get by. However, when it comes to producing executive reports, MI reports, or any other type of reporting, we must exit Planview and work offline. We have been working with them to improve on that, as well as using some of the Power BI capabilities that have been available for a while, but it's still more difficult than it should be. In the next release, I would like to be able to use the data in the tool to gain insight much more easily.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"It is a very stable solution...The initial setup of Avolution ABACUS is very easy."

"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."

"The most valuable feature is that it has a customizable meta-model, which is key."

"If you face new challenges or issues then you can dynamically customize according to the business needs."

"You can design using a diagram tool installed on your desktop, a key difference from other vendors."

"Avolution ABACUS allows for flexible enterprise architecture analysis."

"There are a lot of different features, but the business/decision-maker feature, visibility, and dashboards are most valuable."

"The technical support is very good. They are responsive and the answers they provide are detailed."

More Avolution ABACUS pros

"Our transparency is increasing a lot. It is helping us to get people together. There are no dark rooms anymore. In some areas or concepts, we want to add more light to every single concept. That's the big impact that the tool is having. It allows conversations between people."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is reporting."

"Whenever we have issues, there is always someone ready to help us. Their people are knowledgeable and responsive. They get to tickets quickly. Just three or four weeks ago, we were having issues with getting data into Planview. We submitted a ticket and the turnaround was probably 45 minutes to get a response."

"We've brought our portfolio altogether. We have had multiple ways of reporting out what our portfolio is, whether it's in Excel, Word, or in different places. We brought all of our projects together in one place. That has worked out well for us. We've been able to manage the work on Gantt charts and our resources better. The big thing for us on research and development is around managing people's time, on which projects they are working on, and how much effort does it take to launch our projects."

"The integration stuff from tool to tool, like Projectplace to Planview, to manage projects is the most valuable feature. It keeps all our tasks up-to-date. It closely follows up with everything, which is really cool."

"It gives us the vast ability to churn out-of-the-box reports and have an overview about approach rates and resource utilization."

"We use time reporting. We convert time reporting into financial costs and do contractor and capacity planning for our resources. We track our work. So, that's the module we use extensively. As a matter of fact, we have upwards of 300 open projects at this given moment. It is pretty close to 300 open activities that are working."

"The financial planning capabilities are very useful. We have integration for an SAP system, and so we load financial data from SAP into Planview for prior months. And then we use the forecasting capabilities to get a complete picture of the cost of a specific project. The financial management is very useful."

More Planview Portfolios pros

Cons

"The tool doesn't have any intelligence built in. We have to design the dashboards ourselves, which is a challenge because we have to depend on the vendor for customizations."

"Having more control over page size is lacking in this product. Print utilization also needs to be improved."

"Avolution ABACUS has the drawback of needing data filtering at the development level, unlike some tools that offer filtering at deployment. Two areas where Avolution ABACUS could be improved are regional support and flexibility in model selection. Sometimes, it's challenging to access support or updates in certain regions, which can slow down progress. Additionally, it would be beneficial if the tool allowed more flexibility in selecting multiple models within a single unit."

"It doesn't have the simulation capability, which would be helpful in doing some business process analysis and improvements."

"It is vastly scalable but you can't run it on a Mac or Linux so it has limitations."

"While Avolution ABACUS is flexible, it can be complex to work with as it requires knowledge of specific configurations to customize the product."

"In the future, there could be improvements in integration and enhancements."

"The most valuable features are the catalog and the diagram."

More Avolution ABACUS cons

"I would like a bit more flexibility, as far as the configuration, and have additional capabilities to configure, making it more flexible for our use."

"Its support to legacy paying customers is something PlanView is not handling well. We were unable to implement due to lack of professional support by PlanView. "

"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."

"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."

"Even though Enterprise One is easy and user-friendly, it could provide better training like a demo. Providing more tutorials or sessions would really help."

"Recently, we have gotten on a newer version. We're currently on version 15. Some of the things that we've been running into roadblocks on, it looks like the solutions will be coming out in versions 17 or 18. So, we have to upgrade before somethings can get completed."

"The solution needs to be better at accepting new ideas for upcoming releases."

"The scheduling's kind of clunky in terms of its ability for us to see what stage work is at. They could have done better with that. It can be difficult to use."

More Planview Portfolios cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost of Avolution ABACUS is reasonable, given the features they offer in comparison to other tools."

"It is competitive. It is not chump change. I am just using the studio version. I am not using the full enterprise version, which would probably cost me three times more for single-use, but it gives a lot more capability and analysis. It is server-based as well, and it is reasonably priced compared to a lot of the other tools. There are other tools that have other sorts of capabilities, but in order to use them, you'd really have to have like 50 users for the price to become justifiable."

"My company makes annual payments toward the licensing costs of the solution. Considering the product's capabilities, its prices are very reasonable."

"The pricing is quite good compared to the competition and it is part of the reason we chose the product."

"The solution's pricing is not an issue."

"This solution is expensive for some people's budgets and they need to offer a Lite version at a cheaper price"

"To get a fairly extensive license for Enterprise Architects from Spark is approximately US $400.00, maybe less, but with Avolution Abacus it was approximately US $2000.00 per year, and that includes maintenance with the Abacus tool."

"There is a subscription for this solution. We are on an annual subscription because you sometimes receive special offers the longer you subscribe."

More Avolution ABACUS pricing and cost advice

"Our licensing costs are about a quarter of a million dollars per year."

"We are on the Flex licenses."

"The licensing part is a bit costly in comparison with the other available PPM tools."

"We recently did a new bundle for all of Enterprise One. It includes some of the newer pieces, like Projectplace and LeanKit. It bundled our CTM in with it as well. I think the total came out to be about $900,000 a year. This is for unlimited licenses."

"I think all in we are at $33,000 a year and that includes Projectplace and Planview. We used to have the integration to JIRA, but we don't pay for that anymore."

"Our licensing fees are approximately $50,000 USD annually."

"I don't think we have necessarily purchased everything that I would have liked to have seen."

"I don't know about the actual pricing. I have not come across any costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."

More Planview Portfolios pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

19%

Government

14%

Computer Software Company

Educational Organization

Financial Services Firm

16%

Manufacturing Company

15%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Avolution ABACUS?

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 wit...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Avolution ABACUS?

It's pricey compared to Essential, Deltek, or Essential Cloud. However, its diagramming capabilities and metamodel design make it worth it. But it's not for large user bases. It has modules for app...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Avolution ABACUS?

While Avolution ABACUS is flexible, it can be complex to work with as it requires knowledge of specific configurations to customize the product. It would be beneficial to have seminars or other met...

See all answers

What do you like most about Planview Portfolios?

Planview Management integrates seamlessly with other tools and systems used within the organization, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, customer relationship management (CRM) syst...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Planview Portfolios?

Planview Portfolios is not too expensive. You get what you paid for.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Planview Portfolios?

Enhancements are needed in: Advanced reporting and analytics: While Planview Management provides robust reporting and analytics capabilities, further enhancements could include more advanced data v...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 24% of the time

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Compared 18% of the time

LeanIX vs Avolution ABACUS

Compared 18% of the time

Visio vs Avolution ABACUS

Compared 10% of the time

BiZZdesign HoriZZon vs Avolution ABACUS

Compared 10% of the time

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Broadcom Clarity vs Planview Portfolios

Compared 14% of the time

LeanIX vs Planview Portfolios

Compared 10% of the time

Planview PPM Pro vs Planview Portfolios

Compared 10% of the time

SAP Portfolio and Project Management vs Planview Portfolios

Compared 9% of the time

Planview ProjectPlace vs Planview Portfolios

Compared 8% of the time

More Planview Portfolios Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Avolution ABACUS

March 2025

Download Avolution ABACUS product report

Buyer's Guide

Planview Portfolios

March 2025

Download Planview Portfolios product report

Also Known As

No data available

Planview Enterprise One, Troux

Overview

ABACUS is the enterprise architecture tool designed to have the quickest time-to-value. You can use it to build and maintain rich visual models from existing company data. ABACUS comes with standard industry frameworks as well as advanced analytic tools and best-in-class roadmapping and reporting functionality.

With Avolution ABACUS You Can:

Strategize and analyze your organizational architecture with ease using data-driven diagrams
Enjoy connected data, models, and metrics across your whole enterprise
Work directly and securely in your browser, which is ideal for global teams and remote working

Avolution ABACUS Features:

Modeling and roadmapping: ABACUS offers a fully provisioned modeling environment for enterprise and IT architecture, strategic planning, and digital business management.
Digital collaboration: Avolution ABACUS includes a feature that allows you to set up dashboards so you can tell data stories using business-friendly visualizations.
Portfolio management: Anyone can update their own data, which, in turn, reduces the workload of the enterprise architecture team.
Data-driven architecture: ABACUS’s data-driven architecture gives you the opportunity to design and automate key calculations using out-of-the-box or simple no-code algorithms.
Collaborative data management: Using this feature, you can save time with single sign-on (SSO) and AD Integrations; You can embed directly in MS Teams, Confluence, or other workplace social software.
Dynamic data visualizations: ABACUS’s graph view allows you to navigate through systems in a dynamic environment, as opposed to static diagram views.

Avolution ABACUS Benefits:

Time efficient: Models and roadmaps automatically stay up-to-date, saving your organization a lot of time so you can focus on other priorities instead.
Centralized location: With Avolution ABACUS, you can connect all data in one place, keeping everything both consistent and accurate.
Full flexibility: ABACUS gives you full flexibility to adapt and configure your own metamodels with ease.
Complete visibility: Your whole enterprise can have visibility of the architecture through the use of digital collaboration and visually clear dashboards.
Machine learning: With Avolution ABACUS, you can employ machine learning to speed data management and analysis.
Spot dependencies: ABACUS helps your organization spot dependencies and impacts that might trip up your projects.
Fully customizable: Avolution ABACUS is fully customizable; Select, configure, or adapt your repository and metamodel. You can also automate metrics and analytics specific to your business.

Reviews from Real Users:

Andre W., Enterprise Architect at Enterprise Architecture Perspectives, says, "The most valuable feature is that it has a customizable meta-model, which is key.”

The Lead Enterprise Domain Architects at a financial services firm feels that "The product is easy to use and well-structured for the integrations we need it to make.”

"There are plenty of features available, such as the ability to test applications for issues and a user-friendly dashboard,” says Suresh T., Enterprise Digital Solution Architect at a tech services company.

Avolution

Planview Portfolios offers a comprehensive platform for managing IT, project and resource management, along with strategic planning. The tool focuses on optimizing resource allocation and financial analysis, supporting global operations.

Organizations use Planview Portfolios to streamline project tracking from inception to completion, enhancing strategic alignment with corporate objectives. The tool integrates with platforms like JIRA to provide seamless workflows and supports critical business processes, including budgeting and capacity planning. Teams benefit from customized configurations and robust reporting, further supporting effective decision-making. Despite its strengths, improvements are sought in navigation, documentation, and integration capabilities.

What are the key features?

Customizable interface: Allows personalization to meet specific needs.
Comprehensive resource and financial management: Enables detailed tracking and analysis.
Robust reporting: Provides extensive data insights.
Integration with Power BI: Enhances data access for stakeholders.
Resource and capacity planning: Optimizes workforce allocation.

What benefits should users expect?

Improved strategic alignment: Supports better decision-making.
Increased operational efficiency: Streamlines project management.
Enhanced resource optimization: Ensures optimal use of workforce.
Better financial insights: Allows precise budget tracking.

In industries like IT and project management, Planview Portfolios supports complex portfolio handling, ensuring visibility across global operations. Companies in these sectors leverage its strategic planning tools for strategic alignment and resource management, integrating with existing systems for improved process efficiency.

Planview

Sample Customers

Barclays

UPS, NatWest, Ingram Micro, Canadian Tire, Viessmann, Volvo, NASCO, UNESCO

Buyer's Guide

Avolution ABACUS vs. Planview Portfolios

March 2025

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