There are four basic areas you should consider when choosing a portfolio management software solution. The first is cost, as every company needs to find something that fits into its overall budget. When considering cost, look at the monthly costs as well as any third-party costs, such as integrations with other software, which may be necessary to have an efficient system.
With that said, you also want to make sure you’re investing in a system that can keep up with your daily workflows. Efficiency is the second thing to consider when choosing a PPM. Choose a system that helps keep your people efficient in task management. The ability to create tasks and track them through a project timeline helps you make sense of complicated projects with a lot of moving parts. Having the right management features is crucial in a service of this kind.
Flexibility is another thing to consider. Things change quickly in many company operations. Your project portfolio management software should give you plenty of options for customizing workflows, tasks, and other options. This way, you have a solution that morphs into what your company needs to organize projects rather than something you need to change systems to fit into.
Software integrations can fill a lot of gaps in your system when it comes to flexibility. Many leading providers offer the ability to connect data with other types of business apps, from customer relationship management (CRM) systems to cloud storage systems and beyond. These integrations can automate a lot of tedious work on your end by automatically connecting information from these other platforms and bring that data into your project management solution.
For example, you could bring in customer information from a CRM like Salesforce into your project portfolio management solution and attach that customer to a task for an agent using Wrike. When they close a sale with that client, they could use that integration to update customer info in their platform and have it automatically update within the Salesforce app while saving them the trouble of having to log into that platform. These small conveniences can add up to save a lot of time and effort for you and your staff.
Finally, find a PPM that makes the whole process visible with transparency to all stakeholders.
Parties should be able to see the whole slate of projects, where each is at and review which take priority on the list. With that said, having a robust set of permissions options can help you maintain project security. While some workers on your team may need full edit access of task items, there could be scenarios where you’re dealing with sensitive information and want to block out unrelated parties from the project. You should also be able to toggle view-edit access for users depending on their involvement in the project.
