In enterprises, few things — not even the much-loved coffee machine — are permanent and unchanging year after year. Over time priorities shift, customers onboard and disengage, employees come and go (hopefully more of the former and less of the latter!), and once-promising technologies are replaced by something far better. And one of most vivid illustrations of this technological evolution is demonstrated by enterprises that upgrade their portfolio and project management (PPM) solution from CA/Clarity to Planview AdaptiveWork.
Here are three core reasons why leading enterprises have elevated from CA/Clarity to Planview AdaptiveWork, and gone from facing daily struggles and setbacks, to enjoying massive collaborative work management improvements and ongoing performance excellence:
Reason #1: Superior Customer Support
Understandably, enterprises do not want to be treated by their PPM solution vendor as a generic case instead of a unique customer. Even more, they do not want to be “rolled up into a portfolio of mission critical technology businesses.” That paradigm may electrify investors reading a press release, but it does not impress customers. On the contrary, it offends them — and rightly so.
At Planview AdaptiveWork, have never viewed our customers as merely part of our portfolio. Rather, we see them how they actually are: unique and dynamic organizations that need to establish a world-class PPM infrastructure across their integrated teams, and address key challenges such as limited visibility, lack of productivity and missed deadlines.
And at the same time, we know that our customers depend on us to help them drive business transformation every step of the way — not as superficial vendors who stand on the side, but as true partners who lean forward and make a positive difference with every interaction. In fact, our Customer Success team is widely considered to be the best of the best. We receive 5x fewer negative reviews per 100 tickets than the industry average, and our unparalleled 99.1% customer satisfaction rating earned the 2017 “Support Department of Year” Gold Stevie® Award.
Takeaway: Enterprises switch from CA/Clarity to Planview AdaptiveWork because delivering superior customer support, and viewing each touch point as an opportunity to add value and demonstrate true partnership, is not just a promise we make. It is a commitment we keep, without compromise.
Reason #2: Specialized Focus
Diversity is a strength, whether the topic is an investment portfolio or a workforce. However, when it comes to a crafting and supporting a PPM solution that is worthy of the world’s biggest enterprises — where running hundreds or thousands of concurrent projects is the norm and not the exception — specialization is not just important, but it is essential.
At Planview AdaptiveWork, we do not “dabble” in PPM solutions, and hope that sales offset declining revenues in other product lines such as software mainframes. Since day one, our singular and total focus has been consistent and clear: build, support and innovate the world’s best PPM solution to help enterprises master work management and unleash ACE — adaptability, collaboration and efficiency — across their environment and throughout their teams:
- Adaptability: Planview AdaptiveWork is built from the ground-up for total customization. Instead of forcing our customers to conform to inefficient workflows and accept unfamiliar — or sometimes just plain incoherent — business rules, we enable enterprises with configurable workflows, flexible UIs, personalized dashboards, dynamic reports and more, so they can work the way that they need to operate, which of course is the way that they work best! In addition to solidifying operations and supporting enterprise-wide standards, Clarizen’s class-leading adaptability helps our customers adjust their strategy and quickly respond to changing market conditions.
- Collaborative: Planview AdaptiveWork delivers a suite of robust, yet easy-to-use communication tools that drive productive interactions across teams, departments, and internal/external stakeholders, to ensure that everyone associated with a project or program is effectively connected and consistently aligned. Instead of retreating into silos, Planview AdaptiveWork enables teams to share their invaluable knowledge capital, so they advance work forward towards timely completion and shared success.
- Efficiency: Repeatable, manually-intensive tasks are not just tedious and time-consuming for team members — they are also ripe for errors, which leads to flawed decisions, angry customers and costly re-work. Planview AdaptiveWork has changed the PPM solution game with a potent workflow engine that automates virtually any business process. As a result, team members spend more time on key priorities, and data reliability across the ecosystem goes from dubious to dependable.
Takeaway: Enterprises switch from CA/Clarity to Planview AdaptiveWork because our specialized focus helps enterprises unleash ACE — adaptability, collaboration and efficiency — across their environment and throughout their teams, and transform these mission-critical elements from an elusive aspiration, into a sustained competitive advantage.
Reason #3: Upgrading is a Path Well — and Wisely — Travelled
There are many scenarios where being first is an advantage, such as running a marathon or getting an innovative product to market. However, when it comes to a major decision like replacing a PPM solution, even the most risk-tolerant enterprises prudently exercise a degree of caution by, as the old saying goes, looking before they leap.
Enterprises that prudently conduct their due diligence and research will discover that upgrading to Planview AdaptiveWork is a path well — and wisely — traveled by several leading enterprises, such as Cisco Capital. Here is a snapshot of their Clarity to Planview AdaptiveWork success story:
The Challenge:
To enable profitable growth for their parent company Cisco Systems Inc., Cisco Capital needed to overcome multiple challenges that were rooted in their PPM software at the time, Clarity. These challenges included:
- A legacy of achieving inconsistent results.
- Limited visibility of overall project health and status at both the individual and aggregate portfolio levels.
- An inability to effectively manage cross-functional collaboration at a high level.
- Difficultly managing multiple work streams.
- Static, outdated project reports that were manually intensive to create, and still failed to drive informed decision-making.
- Little to no flexibility for creating customized views when an executive asked for one.
Requirements:
Cisco Capital’s PMO, as well as its associated departments and divisions, recognized that it needed a new PPM solution that would overcome all of these challenges, and fit how the organization wanted to manage projects and programs in a collaborative way. Key requirements for the new solution included:
- Ease-of-use.
- Capable of supporting the organization’s Strategic Execution Framework process.
- Suitable for multiple project types, as well as global and multi-phase programs.
- Real-time visibility and integrated views.
- Integrated roadmap at all three levels: portfolio, program and project.
- Enhance productivity
- Enable better decision-making at the executive level.
- Secure and reliable.
- Rapid implementation.
- Low cost.
Solution:
Cisco Capital conducted a comprehensive exploration of various cloud-based solutions, and also examined tools used by its parent company Cisco Systems Inc.
After evaluating Planview AdaptiveWork, Cisco Capital’s team realized that it was the ideal PPM solution to deliver a much-needed new framework for planning and execution, and at the same time, it would seamlessly align with the collaborative manner in which the organization wanted to manage projects and programs.
In addition, with the ability to provide centralized project views and cross-functional work streams, Planview AdaptiveWork would provide internal visibility to the PMO group and external visibility to Cisco Systems — which was critical for building a foundation of transparency and consistency across the enterprise. Plus, Planview AdaptiveWork offered out-of-the-box project management capabilities, the flexibility to customize the solution without major IT involvement, and represented a low total cost of ownership. Comments Cisco Capital’s Senior Manager Aimee Shaw: “We saw very quickly that Planview AdaptiveWork had all of the robust capabilities we were looking for in an enterprise level solution, and it was highly configurable to how we wanted to run our projects.”
Results:
Supported by a dedicated Planview AdaptiveWork Success Manager, Cisco Capital began its implementation process by defining configuration requirements and establishing processes and templates. Rapid adoption was facilitated by Planview AdaptiveWork’s ease-of-use and library of accessible, intuitive learning tools and resources.
Planview AdaptiveWork is now functioning as Cisco Capital’s single source of truth for project and program information. Results to date include:
- 99% Reduction in time spent creating project roadmaps- from 4-6 hours to only 1-2 minutes.
- Generating accurate and relevant real-time insights vs. static, outdated snapshots.
- Significantly improved collaboration across cross-functioning distributed teams.
- Improved executive visibility, as well as visibility regarding resource capacity and workload, both internally and outside the PMO.
- Increased confidence and support for projects via transparency for predictable results.
- Improved flexibility to select particular projects for an individual executive sponsor, or for the entire portfolio.
- More accountability with respect to off-track projects.
- Can now dynamically zoom in on project details down to a granular level.
- Can conduct integrated planning for global, complex programs.
- Can automatically embed views to internal Wiki site, which reduced duplication.
Takeaway: Upgrading from CA/Clarity to Planview AdaptiveWork is smart, safe and successful — but you do not have to take our word for it. Just ask Cisco Capital or any of the many other leading enterprises (such as Western Digital) that have overcome their challenges with Planview AdaptiveWork, and unleashed a new level of productivity, performance, success and results. As reported by Gartner Peer Insights, nearly 8 in 10 reviewers recommend Planview AdaptiveWork, while less than 50% recommend CA/Clarity. It really does not get any clearer than that!
The Bottom Line
Enterprises that have implemented CA/Clarity, and who are fully satisfied with their investment, are fine maintaining the status quo. As the saying goes, “don’t fix what isn’t broke.”
However, enterprises that are not getting the improvements and results that they were promised and rightfully expected are invited to take Planview AdaptiveWork for a 30-day fully-fledged free trial. It is the perfect — and zero risk — way to discover how Planview AdaptiveWork will help their teams do more with less, and their organization see clearly: now, and into their long-term successful future.
