Acuity PPM Evaluate – The Good and Unhealthy for 2023

Acuity PPM is a light-weight portfolio administration resolution designed to assist the choice, planning, and execution of a number of initiatives concurrently. You should utilize it to optimize and prioritize initiatives based mostly on return on funding and simply handle your group’s undertaking portfolio. Nevertheless, restricted role-based permissions and reporting capabilities imply different PPM options might be extra appropriate for some customers.

Acuity PPM In comparison with the Finest Mission Portfolio Administration Software program

We’ve reviewed the finest undertaking portfolio administration instruments and located a number of high-quality options to Acuity PPM. These Golden Eggs provide help to get an in-depth image of particular person initiatives whereas offering different distinctive or distinctive advantages.

Monday.com is a brilliant versatile and customizable device that allows you to juggle a number of initiatives concurrently with out breaking a sweat. Get began on a 14-day free trial.

Hive provides a number of collaboration options that assist with communication and transparency amongst staff members who work on a number of initiatives in several mixtures. Strive Hive totally free for 14 days.

Asana is probably the most user-friendly PPM software program however boasts a number of superior options that simplify portfolio administration. Begin a 30-day trial to expertise the premium options.

Acuity PPM: The Good and the Unhealthy

We used Acuity PPM for over two weeks as part of our analysis to know its capabilities as a undertaking portfolio administration device. This helped us achieve an in-depth understanding of each the great and dangerous elements. Let’s take a fast take a look at the place Acuity PPM rises to the problem and falls quick.

What Acuity PPM Is Good At

Acuity PPM is extremely user-friendly undertaking portfolio administration software program. It has an intuitive and easy-to-use interface designed to drive person adoption from their first login. Nevertheless, it’s additionally not missing in superior options for PM wants like reporting and useful resource administration.

Person-friendly: For many organizations, managing undertaking portfolios with out software program will be problematic, however utilizing PPM software program appears too sophisticated. Acuity PPM gives an approachable, intuitive resolution that’s straightforward for first-time customers. Sections are clearly marked in a clear, uncluttered interface that shows data in a well-recognized tab-and-pane design.

Actual-time undertaking visibility: Acuity PPM not solely offers you a single system to handle all initiatives throughout your portfolio, however you can too get an eagle-eye view of total progress and useful resource utilization. Use the software program to establish and deal with potential bottlenecks and points sooner, serving to forestall undertaking delays and price overruns. 

Mission scoring: Giant organizations will love Acuity’s enterprise-grade options, permitting the software program to deal with portfolio administration at an unbelievable scale. Prioritization can at all times be powerful the extra you’re juggling, however you may faucet into Acuity PPM’s undertaking scoring mannequin to judge the chance and reward of pending and backlogged endeavors. Plus, make the most of the software program’s work consumption options to overview and approve undertaking proposals and solely tackle the perfect initiatives. 

Useful resource administration: One in all Acuity PPM’s strongest virtues is its useful resource administration talents. With it, you may simply optimize the utilization and workloads of your individuals, gear, and supplies.

Lean on this platform’s complete useful resource planning and scheduling, together with leveling and allocation, to stability workloads, scale back useful resource conflicts, and forestall over-allocation. Consequently, you’ll turn out to be extra environment friendly over time, resulting in higher revenue on every undertaking you end.

Flexibility and scalability: One other important benefit of Acuity PPM is its customizability. Tailor the software program to satisfy your distinctive organizational, portfolio, or undertaking wants. Acuity PPM helps a variety of undertaking administration methodologies, together with hybrid, Agile, and waterfall. Plus, seamless integrations with in style instruments like Microsoft Mission and Google Sheets additional prolong Acuity PPM‘s skill to scale as much as meet broader wants.

Wealthy characteristic set: Don’t let the straightforward person interface idiot you; Acuity PPM gives enterprise-grade performance that considerably simplifies portfolio administration. For example, its roadmaps characteristic is beneficial for visualizing undertaking timing and sequencing from each a chook’s eye and a granular stage. Use it to establish dependencies and keep away from potential conflicts.

The sturdy reporting and analytics capabilities of Acuity PPM additional let you observe KPIs and make extra knowledgeable selections. And the core options for portfolio monitoring allow you to centralize all standing reviews in a single place, enhancing real-time reporting and visibility into your pipeline.

What Acuity PPM Is Missing 

Acuity PPM rises to the problem for organizations of all sizes. However like every other software program, it additionally has its personal set of disadvantages for some customers and one main barrier by way of its pricing. Let’s dive into what Acuity may enhance upon.

Time-consuming setup Regardless of Acuity PPM‘s easy and intuitive interface, getting every thing configured to work the way you need it to takes a while. Person setup is concerned, and the wealth of options means there’s plenty of frontend work by way of configuring views, assets, reviews, and extra. Be ready for prolonged onboarding to your staff members, too, as it could take time for them to rise up to hurry and use the platform successfully.

Insufficient role-based permissions: Whereas it will probably accommodate giant organizations, Acuity PPM ought to work on making its person permission and function settings extra sturdy. It ought to enable undertaking homeowners and managers to limit permissions at each undertaking part as wanted, so solely the best units of eyes can see non-public particulars associated to a undertaking, reminiscent of financials. That is notably essential for organizations coping with extremely delicate or categorized initiatives or extremely regulated industries.

Dashboard customization: At the moment, Acuity PPM doesn’t have a really customizable dashboard. This isn’t a critical drawback, because the default design is considerate and information-rich. However if you wish to preserve observe of particular KPIs or metrics, it’s possible you’ll discover it inconvenient. Additionally, the truth that different undertaking portfolio administration software program provides customizable dashboards doesn’t work in Acuity PPM’s favor.

Excessive price ticket: Acuity PPM largely has Fortune 500 firms as its customers, and its costly pricing serves as additional proof. We’ll get into pricing specifics in a bit, however along with a fairly excessive base value, you’ll must buy add-ons and different extra modules if you wish to customise the software program to satisfy actually particular necessities. That is additionally unique of the price of coaching and assist, which is why organizations with restricted budgets could not have the ability to absolutely benefit from Acuity PPM’s capabilities.

Acuity PPM Choices and Pricing

Apart from its light-weight PPM software program, Acuity PPM additionally provides a PPM Maturity Calculator. Let’s dive into what the principle software program prices and the way a lot you’ll must pay to make use of the calculator.

Acuity PPM

Acuity PPM’s portfolio and undertaking administration software program could provide you with some sticker shock at first. Pricing begins at $599 per thirty days for the PPM Starter plan, however that’s a company-wide price. You’re not paying per person, so in case you run a big staff, this month-to-month price could also be akin to (or maybe higher than) paying for 50 or extra seats on another platform.

The Starter plan bundles collectively important portfolio monitoring, undertaking and portfolio timelines, standing reviews, challenge logs, threat logs, and useful resource planning capabilities. 

Subsequent up is Acuity PPM Necessities, which is $999 per thirty days. This plan provides undertaking scoring, work consumption administration, and risk-versus-value evaluation. Should you want useful resource capability and staff utilization options, you’ll wish to step as much as Acuity PPM Plus, beginning at $1,300 per thirty days.

There’s additionally a custom-priced Enterprise tier that unlocks higher safety, bespoke coaching, and software program integrations. 

It’s price noting two large issues that may have an effect on your pricing and perhaps result in you paying lower than the costs listed above. First, Acuity will work along with your staff to construct a plan based mostly on solely the characteristic modules you want to use. That may let you combine and match from a few of the packages we simply mentioned and never must pay the total plan value.

Acuity additionally has a tiered low cost system for firms that decide to a 12-month, 24-month, or 36-month settlement. These agreements present an extra 10%, 15%, and 20% low cost. That may go a good distance on the higher-priced plans which might be upwards of $1,000 per thirty days. 

Acuity PPM Portfolio Administration Maturity Evaluation Calculator

Use Acuity PPM’s portfolio administration maturity evaluation calculator to judge your staff’s present stage of maturity in the important thing areas of portfolio administration. 

Primarily based in your enter, it assigns you a rating calculated utilizing six sub-categories: 

• Portfolio governance
• Portfolio definition
• Portfolio optimization
• Mission and portfolio efficiency administration
• Useful resource administration
• Portfolio knowledge and evaluation. 

You should utilize this rating to raised perceive the assorted elements of portfolio administration. The precise parts inside every sub-category will provide help to establish every undertaking’s strengths and weaknesses. The corresponding drop-down with maturity standards is nice for assessing staff efficiency towards business requirements. 

You’ll be able to develop an enchancment plan and observe progress over time utilizing these insights.

Whereas you will get your portfolio administration maturity evaluation rating totally free, Acuity PPM additionally gives a {custom} report for $99. This report will embody extra detailed data and a PowerPoint model of the model’s maturity mannequin, which will be helpful for monitoring your present PPM maturity.

Acuity PPM in Abstract

Acuity PPM is designed to assist the choice, planning, and execution of many initiatives without delay. Sporting a user-friendly and intuitive interface whereas giving enterprise-grade management over initiatives, it’s an important device for stopping undertaking delays and price overruns at scale. 

Acuity PPM’s versatile, scalable, and sturdy useful resource administration talents are commendable. Nevertheless, its costly price ticket and some different limitations could make different PPM software program options a greater match based mostly in your wants. Monday.com and Asana, for instance, are equally user-friendly at a a lot better value level for small groups, whereas Hive is exceptionally fitted to managing a dispersed staff of distant undertaking employees.

Or, simply study extra about the complete class at giant and all of the software program choices in it. Study extra to make an knowledgeable choice by studying our publish itemizing our high picks for undertaking portfolio administration.