Microsoft Project vs SAP Portfolio and Project Management comparison

"They now have MS project Online and they have two levels, so it's easier to access what you need and to choose specifically what you'll use. You can start at a lower level, for example, and be more cost-effective and move up if it suits you."

"The ability to break down project phases is most valuable. Being able to align the tasks and reporting with project milestones and progress is also valuable."

"The daily tracker is valuable."

"Dependencies (not typically effectively used in "Agile" techniques) allow understanding of actual project status and challenges."

"The solution is stable."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is time management."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is planning."

"Microsoft Project integrates well with the Microsoft Office family of applications. It has plugins that interact with it and you can use it with Microsoft Teams. We can use plugins to communicate with JIRA, Projectplace, and Planview. It's not widely used in the company, of course, but it's something that can interact with the official tools that we have."

"It improves productivity, cash flow management, and inventory control for clients."

"The integration portion with SAP models is valuable."

"SAP is gradually introducing more flexibility and customization options to the system, allowing users to adapt it to their specific needs."

"It is positioned at the more high end. Sometimes it's more complicated than we need."

"Tech support needs improvement."

"Planview FLEX licensing gives us a central repository where all the projects are stored so you can check the finances, resources, etc. It's quite useful to have everything connected. We don't have that for Microsoft Project. It's disconnected. The reporting capabilities could also be better, especially with finance and resources. Everybody complains about reports. That's why we need another tool."

"There are some things about it that I've always hated, and they haven't really changed them. It makes a lot of assumptions. It is also difficult to put business rules in it. You have to de-link it from the consecutive task if you don't want to do a What-If analysis, and sometimes, if you forget to do that, it changes everything. It is a pain in the neck to undo it. I would also like to see better integration with graphics. The graphics are primitive, and they need some major work. I would like to have the ability to do some small macros within the project for fuzzy logic. For example, if you're not sure how long a task takes, you can get the earliest guess. It is very time and manpower intensive to keep it up to date. You need to constantly update it. You will find that you are spending more time working on the Microsoft Project file rather than working on your project. I don't want to devote a person to just do that. That's silly. You can link it to some more modern applications so that it is dynamic when a real-time resource schedule changes, but it is not at all dynamic. It is only as dynamic as the person using it. It would be nice if we could plug it in real time for each project, subproject, or task. If something is going on, I want to see it in real time. Sometimes we have international clients, and they don't use the same calendar. They have a Thursday and Friday weekend, and we have a Saturday and Sunday weekend. I can change it in Microsoft Project, but I would like to be able to do it globally. There may be a way to do it, but I just haven't figured it out yet. I would like to be able to specify globally what weekend we want or what we want to call a weekend. We might have a project that works seven days a week. Some tasks are automated outside, like manufacturing processes. Embedding external processes is almost impossible because, in a practical sense, we don't have people who can do a lot of programming here, and also the interface of Microsoft Project is not the easiest because a lot of it is proprietary. It would be nice if we can link different tasks to external sources of inputs and outputs so that we could integrate them with a master project plan and see in real time what's going on. For example, you are manufacturing a batch of a chemical, and I have to rely on if a customer is making some type of complex chemical. Their system does not interfere with ours. We have to get the outputs from their system and enter them manually into the project to see the effect. That takes time. If you're talking about hours, you going to spend three to four hours, but there is the risk of getting it wrong or making a mistake. On tight projects, every minute counts. I would like to see some control system interfaces with Microsoft Project. A modern machine shop has a lot of computer numerical control (CNC) computers. In fact, virtually all machining is done with a CNC machine. Even 3D additive manufacturing is made with CNC. That data can go to a computer, and that computer can spit it out to a project so that you can see in real time whether you are going to finish a day ahead. If you had to finish a day ahead, you could talk to the systems' software, which can say that if I have this machine working for another hour and this one for one hour or less, I would be able to meet the schedule. It can then make those changes, but it can't do that. Everything needs to be done manually, which takes more time, and there's a risk of mistakes. It requires smarter automation and more machine learning. There is no machine learning capability in Microsoft Project. It just doesn't exist. That's why I say it is only suitable for small-sized to medium-sized companies and small projects. Most people don't have the problems that I have. I don't have them all the time, but when I have them, they're big. When you're bidding on a project that has to get done, you find yourself spending most of the time working on Microsoft Project, whereas you should be spending these hours managing the project. Thinking on a bigger scale, I would like better integration with Office, Visio, and Access. If you make a change in one, it should cascade to others and vice versa. It doesn't do that. It is not a dynamic program. I would like to see a dynamic program or at least the capability of being dynamic, that is, even if it is close to real time where it outputs to a module, and the module then talks to real-time things. The real-time data goes back into the module, and the module updates the project plan. Such dynamic capability would be nice. It may not be real time, but it is at least close. I would like to be able to link directly to the data in an Excel spreadsheet so that I don't have to keep going back and forth updating it. I don't want to have to create a dynamic link library. Whenever I change the data in Excel, it should update in Visio or PowerPoint. If I'm doing a pie chart or any kind of graphic, I don't want to constantly update my graphics. I want to link them together, and I want them updated automatically. I know it is a wishful thing. They don't make major changes every time they come out with a new version. They don't fix the issue. They just add a few features."

"I would like to see an entire baseline, like in JIRA."

"The technical support could be improved. They are okay, however, they could be much better."

"We'd like the solution to have better integration with other third-party and open-source solutions."

"When a project plan becomes huge, it is painful to arrange and structure the project in Microsoft Project. Currently, you require a separate product for managing agile projects, and people are using Jira and Rally to manage stories in agile. Primarily, on the software development side, people are kind of moving away from Microsoft Project."

"The platform's support structure needs improvement."

"The system is old, so there are several issues that arise when we fetch data from integrated systems. Sometimes the data gets stuck, and there are instances where we need to access multiple pieces of information simultaneously."

"It would be valuable if SAP integrated seamlessly with some products like Jira and Bitbucket."

"I am not involved with this."

"Microsoft Project is an expensive solution."

"You do not have to invest much in terms of configuring this solution to suit your needs."

"I rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten."

"We purchase perpetual licenses due to the high cost of subscriptions, which are about 1,000 Australian dollars."

"I believe the licensing for the solution is based on an annual fee."

"I am not aware of any additional costs apart from the standard licensing fees of the solution."

"Its price could be reduced a little."

"The product pricing varies based on whether the client is new or existing and the complexity of their business processes."