Planview Portfolios vs Sparx Pro Cloud Server comparison

Planview and Sparx Systems are both solutions in the Enterprise Architecture Management category. Planview is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.5, while Sparx Systems is ranked #15 with an average rating of 9.0. Planview holds a 1.0% mindshare in AM, compared to Sparx Systems’s 0.4% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of Planview users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Sparx Systems users who would recommend it.

Planview Portfolios

Read 63 Planview Portfolios reviews

353 Views
202 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Sparx Pro Cloud Server

Read 3 Sparx Pro Cloud Server reviews

247 Views
141 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Planview Portfolios

Sparx Pro Cloud Server

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024

Planview Portfolios and Sparx Pro Cloud Server are competing products in project management and enterprise architecture. Data comparisons indicate higher satisfaction with Sparx Pro Cloud Server's flexibility, suggesting it is a superior choice despite users favoring Planview Portfolios for its strategic alignment.

Features: Planview Portfolios offers robust strategic planning tools, scenario planning, and analytics to align resources with business goals. It focuses on portfolio management to provide strategic direction. Sparx Pro Cloud Server excels in integration with enterprise tools, supports model-based architecture, and offers visual representation of complex systems.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Planview Portfolios supports cloud-based deployment with efficient customer service for faster implementation. Sparx Pro Cloud Server also offers cloud solutions with seamless integration into existing enterprise architectures, enhanced by a comprehensive support system.

Pricing and ROI: Planview Portfolios often involves higher setup costs due to its strategic management features, though it provides significant ROI through enhanced alignment. Sparx Pro Cloud Server presents cost advantages with flexibility and scalability, offering greater ROI for companies focused on technical architecture.

To learn more, read our detailed Planview Portfolios vs. Sparx Pro Cloud Server Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Planview Portfolios vs. Sparx Pro Cloud Server

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

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)

Sparx Pro Cloud Server

Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management

15th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Enterprise Architecture Management category, the mindshare of Planview Portfolios is 1.0%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sparx Pro Cloud Server is 0.4%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Enterprise Architecture Management

Featured Reviews

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.

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Pawel-Gawronski

Enterprise Architect at BEC

A cloud SaaS solution for collaboration with customer support

There could be improvement in connecting to and securing this connection. Spark is not up to date on its Insight dashboard compared to competitors, but this impacts the digital experience. It is important for the team to continue working on this tool without disruption. So maybe this is an area for improvement to have a better Insight.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has helped improve governance, mostly. People want to know where their money's going. Projects sponsors need to know what we're spending money on and what our burn rate is. Planview can give that to you straightaway."

"Enterprise One has enabled us to eliminate Excel. We don't track financials anymore in an Excel format, which the company was doing before. Even now, being a new portfolio manager four months in, I'm able to just pick up my project. I'm able to see where I am right now. That improvised it to be more automated. The only missing part is the integration between tools. I'm not able to see my full schedule, but I know what are my important milestones are like watching the financials and all that stuff."

"Enterprise One provides a variety of types of resource assignments for assigning work to people. It's very easy and straightforward to configure these assignments. Planview allows us to see the entire workforce. We can see where our skill sets of people are, what they're working on, and allows us to make informed business decisions based on priority."

"Its ability to create summary reports across multiple projects is one of the best features. They have very good data warehousing. You can put that out. You can tell that data warehousing from Planview Enterprise One is excellent."

"Our reporting is much better. There is much more visibility on projects, schedules, tasks, and in our milestones. Now, we have a consistent way of reporting out to the committees and getting all of our schedules and milestones."

"Another good thing is that we can create custom reports, which is great. If I created a custom report, a tile that tells me how many people have logged in today. We currently have a little under 2000 users, and that's only users, we actually have integrations, that we created a custom form that sends hours directly to Planview. They're not using Planview directly, but they're sending their hours to Planview through an API."

"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."

"Its view into resource capacity and availability absolutely help us manage work. We can't plan out projects for delivery until we know if we have resources available to deliver them. That's been really critical. We look at our projects and see what availability of resources we have. That helps us to determine when we can start new work."

More Planview Portfolios pros

"The solution's most valuable feature is ArchiMate which I use daily."

"We have found the technical support to be helpful."

Cons

"Being the IT development manager who implements the upgrades for Planview, I would love to see more thorough testing of expenditures and more thorough testing in general. When we do an upgrade, we have to do quite a bit of testing because we can affect the bottom line."

"We are not very happy with the customer service. This is one of our main pain points. It doesn't cover the entirety of customer service, as there are reps who are really great and we've had good experiences. Many times, we've had people give us attitude, there was a delay in the response, or just a lack of interest. This got to the point where if there was a problem, we would rather try to solve it ourselves then call customer support."

"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."

"It is not an end-user-friendly product, and that's really the biggest thing. The hardest or the biggest hurdle I've ever had to face was adoption. I did the installation of the HP product in 2011. The company used it from 2011 to 2015, and the adoption was very high. When I was given the Planview product, adoption was very low. It wasn't as extensively used. We actually had people who wanted to go back to HP PPM because the interface of Planview was so broken, and it still is to some degree. So, it is not user-friendly. It doesn't flow the way a project manager thinks. What we did with HP PPM was a lot more manual programming. It wasn't as nice in terms of the interface, and it wasn't as pretty, but you could design it and build it so that everything flows with the way you worked, but Planview doesn't quite do that. There are a lot of screens. You have to jump back and forth. There are so many different places you have to go to just to do some basic tasks. That's the biggest thing that has really hindered adoption."

"Its reporting needs to be improved. My main complaint when it comes to Planview is that it is good to maintain all the data but to actually use the information that is in it, you actually have to use a different tool. We use Power BI. So, we pull all the information, and then we use a Power BI dashboard to stage or look at the information."

"The number one thing that needs improvement is the UI. It should be easy for a casual project manager. It should provide customizable screens that can be a choice for project managers to choose as a professional level, medium level, and a very easy level."

"One big issue we have been having during our annual planning is that only the creator of a portfolio can edit it. This means that only the creator of a portfolio can edit which projects are included or excluded in it."

"The resource area needs improvement. The improvements that have been made recently in the later versions have been good improvements, but I think there are some more improvements needed there."

More Planview Portfolios cons

"The solution should allow easier access with enhanced customization options for web page DHTML."

"The user-friendliness could be even better."

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"The cost of other pieces and integrating them in needs improvement."

"We have portfolio managers, resource managers, project managers, and time reporting licenses. These are the licenses that we have."

"With the costs, they were very understanding. Knowing that we were an existing customer, they were very much willing to work with us to make sure that we were able to transition to Enterprise One from PPM Pro."

"In the time that I've used it, we've doubled up the amount of dollars on our intended projects."

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

"We are on the Flex licenses."

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

More Planview Portfolios pricing and cost advice

"The solution's Ultimate Plan costs $399 per year."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Manufacturing Company

15%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

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...

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

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

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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...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sparx Pro Cloud Server?

We're paying 15 dollars per user per month for large teams, which is more expensive than the competition, but it has more features, such as cloud VPN and testing. There is no other cost apart from ...

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What needs improvement with Sparx Pro Cloud Server?

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What is your primary use case for Sparx Pro Cloud Server?

Firstly, we use this solution to enable collaboration among our international teams. Our applications are in the cloud, and most issues are on AWS. We have a central place to store and work on our ...

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SAP Portfolio and Project Management vs Planview Portfolios

Compared 10% of the time

Planview PPM Pro vs Planview Portfolios

Compared 9% of the time

Jira vs Planview Portfolios

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More Planview Portfolios Competitors

No data available

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Planview Portfolios

March 2025

Download Planview Portfolios product report

Buyer's Guide

Enterprise Architecture Management

March 2025

Download Sparx Pro Cloud Server product report

Also Known As

Planview Enterprise One, Troux

No data available

Overview

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

Share, review and inform

Pro Cloud Server opens your entire enterprise to your modeling efforts, enabling stakeholders to have secure access for discussion and review. WebEA, hosted on Pro Cloud Server, complements Enterprise Architect by providing a real-time view of project content, anywhere, anytime....

Sparx Systems

Sample Customers

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

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Planview Portfolios vs. Sparx Pro Cloud Server

March 2025

Free Report: Planview Portfolios vs. Sparx Pro Cloud Server

Find out what your peers are saying about Planview Portfolios vs. Sparx Pro Cloud Server and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.

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