Magic Quadrant for Strategic Portfolio Management

Strategic Portfolio Management Vendor Product Comparisons 2024

Key features and pros and cons of top Strategic Portfolio Management products:

Broadcom - Leader

Pros:

Broadcom's strategy for Clarity has a noticeable digital transformation focus as the context for SPM. The product reflects optimization for customer digital business challenges and the needs of stakeholders participating in SPM use cases.
Broadcom's marketing of Clarity is distinctive, with a pragmatic concentration on people, money and the work associated with digital transformation. Broadcom uses simple terms to represent what Clarity manages and optimizes, without assuming awareness of SPM or its benefits.
Broadcom's investment in Clarity innovation and enhancement year over year demonstrates strong dedication to the offering. While Broadcom has a vast portfolio, it has remained committed to Clarity as an SPM product.

Cons:

Broadcom packages Clarity as a product within its ValueOps all-in-one digital transformation solution. This inhibits implementing Clarity to span several tools used for detailed planning and execution. The lack of modularity can result in duplication of functionality or suboptimal consolidation of tools.
Broadcom leverages its network of partners to provide customer-specific implementation, consulting and support services. Broadcom's direct support services tend to be more general, related to needs that span all customers. Prospective customers must evaluate Clarity as a technology solution and assess service partners to put it into practice.
Clarity has a strong reputation based on its performance and longevity in the broad PPM arena. However, Clarity has a lower level of recognition as an SPM offering than others in the market. Prospective customers may not discover Clarity until after early impressions of other products have formed that can bias comparisons.

Planview - Leader

Pros:

Planview's marketing extends beyond its SPM technology. It continually demonstrates thought leadership in the market. It uses on-demand and push channels to promote the benefits of SPM and suggest best practices to address common customer challenges.
Planview's focus on improving the Planview Portfolios' UI/UX has resulted in the release of Planview.Me, which enables personalization for stakeholder roles. In addition, its Roadmaps module incorporates time-based representations into many different contexts.
Planview's extensive customer base and tenure in the market have resulted in rich experience in most industries and regions. Planview applies that cumulative knowledge to benefit prospective customers by combining the most relevant best practices for each engagement.

Cons:

Prospective customers should not assume a Planview Portfolios implementation is similar to a software installation with a one-time rollout and a definitive end. A progressive approach is necessary to build and sustain SPM effectiveness and take full advantage of the depth and breadth of capabilities.
Planview has many large enterprise customers with highly complex strategies and portfolios. The value of its offering is partially derived from its ability to support that scale. Smaller potential customers should assess whether their needs align with Planview Portfolios' capabilities.
Planview has a history of advancing its offerings rapidly, which contributes to its position as a market leader. Prospective customers should highly value technology innovation for SPM. They must be prepared to regularly adapt their practices to realize the benefits of frequent and significant innovations.

Software AG - Leader

Pros:

Alfabet has a solid track record of supporting EA management and enterprise IT, independent of SPM. Alfabet aligns well with organizations that need stronger capabilities for orchestrating digital transformation at scale and want to maintain a continuous focus on achieving strategic business objectives.
Software AG offers several options to facilitate rapid implementation. Alfabet FastLane provides preconfigured options for a fixed scope of functionality and integration. Software AG offers no-cost, practice-oriented accelerators and business capability templates aligned with industry verticals that provide the foundation for organization-specific adaptation.
Software AG supports customers that require high levels of security and strict regulatory compliance in many regions. Customers in an environment subject to stringent regulatory standards can expect that Software AG is familiar with requirements of that nature.

Cons:

Software AG's incremental Alfabet UI improvement releases have not fully addressed the experience needs of business and executive stakeholders. Until UI/UX enhancements are delivered, inconsistent engagement among SPM participants may diminish effectiveness.
Non-IT leaders demand capabilities to support top-down and long-range planning, often involving speculative scenarios. Offerings with a PPM history have more refined capabilities of this nature. Alfabet's value proposition may be challenged by non-IT leaders that influence SPM buying decisions.
In comparison to other market offerings, Alfabet heavily aligns with Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) and lean portfolio management (LPM), which are adjacent to SPM. Prospective customers seeking pragmatic strategy-to-execution alignment should assess whether these frameworks are beneficial to their objectives.

EOS Software - Challenger

Pros:

EOS supports EOS ITPM with its 'zero professional service fees' approach. It provides customers with software implementation, configuration and ongoing consulting support for no additional cost. With reduced constraints on cost and time frame, customers can implement EOS ITPM in an iterative, progressive and adaptive manner.
EOS produces EOS ITPM packages aligned with specific industries and SPM practices to proliferate best practices and accelerate effectiveness. It provides these packages to customers at no additional cost.
EOS ITPM's strengths often align with the priorities of IT and enterprise architecture (EA) leaders. Its integrated IT portfolio analysis (IIPA) capabilities are comprehensive, complemented by portfolio management and strategic alignment for an IT-centric SPM approach to achieve business outcomes.

Cons:

EOS's commitment to zero professional service fees for EOS ITPM may constrain its ability to scale to meet demand. Prospective customers should formalize implementation time frame expectations early in the sales cycle to plan effectively in partnership with EOS.
EOS ITPM's strategy execution management (SEM) and enterprise program and portfolio management (EPPM) use-case coverage is not as broad as that of other offerings. These use cases depend on non-IT stakeholder engagement. These stakeholders' needs should be a high priority for tailoring in conjunction with implementation.
EOS promotes EOS ITPM's flexibility to adapt to customer needs through configuration. Many alternatives are possible in the design and implementation process. Prospective customers should invest time in reviewing examples from successful customer implementations to inform choices that can enhance stakeholder experience.

North Highland (UMT360) - Challenger

Pros:

North Highland's acquisition of UMT360 gives customers the option to combine their establishment of SPM technology with consulting to achieve business transformation. This option enables customers to focus on specific business outcomes while building ongoing SPM effectiveness.
NH360 SPM offers tight integration with the Microsoft 365 platform. Prospective customers invested in that ecosystem may benefit from NH360 SPM to drive strategy-to-execution alignment, complementing their existing product usage.
North Highland's NH360 SPM implementation framework, modular functionality and best practice accelerators provide flexibility to align SPM establishment with strategic priorities. Its approach is not vertically oriented, which helps it adapt to a wide range of industries.

Cons:

Growth in the number of NH360 SPM customers was limited in 2023 as North Highland completed its acquisition. As North Highland executes its strategy, the success in terms of market penetration will become evident.
Fulfilling the SPM technology needs of existing North Highland customers was an objective of the UMT360 acquisition strategy. Potential customers should assess North Highland's pace of NH360 innovations as a reflection of its commitment to offer pure-play SPM technology.
Integration dependencies between NH360 SPM and Microsoft solutions could impact the NH360 SPM roadmap as Microsoft executes its product strategy. Prospective customers should be prepared to thoughtfully sequence upgrades to ensure alignment of technologies.

Planisware - Challenger

Pros:

Planisware's strategy for Planisware Enterprise is customer-driven, which influences its product roadmap. Planisware has an established customer community that engages through an advisory board, best practice workgroups and regional annual conferences.
Planisware provides a complementary customer success manager (CSM) to support the journey to effective adoption. CSMs have a limited span of customers to enable effective response to priorities.
Planisware innovates Planisware Enterprise at a consistent pace. Initial releases often provide valuable foundational functionality that is progressively refined. Planisware combines a sense-and-respond approach with market research to target and advance innovations.

Cons:

Planisware Enterprise aligns best with organizations in which the IIPA use case is a secondary consideration within the strategic portfolio. While a subset of customers uses the product for IT and digital portfolios, Planisware's experience is built on long-standing customer relationships in physical product-driven industries.
Planisware's strong dedication to customer needs has fueled consistent growth and continual Planisware Enterprise innovation. Although Planisware Enterprise is positively evolving, its focus hasn't expanded to set direction for the overall SPM market.
Planisware's established AI-enabled capabilities are useful, but its promotion of more advanced functionality may not be fully met until subsequent releases. Prospective customers should distinguish the potential benefits of AI features currently available from benefits associated with future AI advancements.

Cora Systems - Niche Player

Pros:

Cora has experienced high customer retention and notable incremental growth following significant expansion in North America in 2022 and 2023. Its sales strategy has shown success, and it has scaled its support effectively. Although Cora is one of the market's smaller vendors, it has the momentum to continue expanding.
Cora has delivered some features in its offering targeted at customer challenges specific to their representative industries, such as labor rate and contract management. In addition, Cora establishes innovation partnerships to more directly address customer priorities.
Cora SPM extends its project portfolio management foundation to effectively integrate strategic goals and maintain outcome forecasts. It supports SPM practice effectiveness logically, with straightforward capabilities that sustain SPM stakeholder engagement.

Cons:

Cora SPM's product innovation aligns with the priorities of Cora's existing customers. Most of these customers are in vertical industries not yet impacted by the dynamics of digital business transformation. As such, Cora SPM is not yet optimized to support digital business.
The standard project management integrations for Cora SPM are primarily with products used in construction and engineering. Cora provides a RESTful API and offers a wider range of integration options through its partnership with Boomi to integrate Cora SPM with detailed project management solutions.
Many Cora SPM customers have strict regulatory demands. The inflexibility of compliance deadlines may drive its roadmap priorities and limit enhancement in other areas. The advancement of capabilities that drive SPM effectiveness may be delivered at a slower pace.

Shibumi - Niche Player

Pros:

Shibumi's strategy is to support SPM by creating a single source of truth through extensive integration spanning enterprise systems. This enables Shibumi to concentrate on strategic modeling capabilities that bridge existing technologies that are fit for purpose.
Shibumi has effectively interpreted the prevalent conditions that enterprises face, including digital business. It has responded quickly, positioning its product and SPM as the means to successfully navigate customer-relevant challenges.
Shibumi maintains a two-week product release cycle with prioritization facilitated by its Product Steering Committee. It gains critical product roadmap insight from customer engagement, including success health checks, quarterly business reviews, value delivery workshops and enhancement requests. Shibumi shares its release plans through webinars.

Cons:

Shibumi's growth in the SPM market may be constrained by its ability to scale implementation services and customer success support. While Shibumi has invested effectively to support its expansion, prospective customers should define key implementation schedule objectives at the outset to maintain expectations.
Shibumi's offering covers EPPM with a focus on enterprise-level, outcome-oriented portfolio analysis. Its product doesn't extend as deeply into delivery management as offerings with PPM product origins. Prospective customers should assess stakeholders' detailed planning and execution analysis needs to properly integrate and align technologies with practices.
Shibumi does not yet concentrate on the IIPA use case as a primary market opportunity. However, a small number of customers achieve IIPA with Shibumi's flexible integration to cross-reference information managed with EA technology to support portfolio decisions.

Uppwise - Niche Player

Pros:

Uppwise SPM is a more flexible and adaptable option for managing portfolios in various industries with less complexity than other offerings in terms of product breadth. Uppwise is a smaller company, but it maintains a consistent innovation pace, with a clear understanding of its target customers.
Uppwise SPM's product strategy is modular and aligned with logical SPM practices. This enables customers to focus the adoption of SPM on their strategic priorities. In addition, customers on the path to SPM maturity can ensure they sustain practices before introducing additional modules.
Uppwise SPM's marketing uses consistent messaging promoting SPM's practical benefits. Uppwise SPM emphasizes transformation, strategic alignment and value creation, highlighting the technology needs of its prospects and customers. Its logical and consistent UX reflects that perspective.

Cons:

Uppwise continues to expand its presence in EMEA. Significant opportunities exist in the market that align well with Uppwise's offering. These opportunities may not be as prevalent if Uppwise is slow to expand into other regions.
Uppwise SPM's packaged interfaces are limited, which may complicate integration with enterprise systems and detail-level planning and execution solutions. Prospective customers should assess Uppwise SPM's integration capabilities to ensure that current trusted information can be maintained for all stakeholders.
Uppwise SPM's customers do not currently prioritize the IIPA use case as a core component of SPM effectiveness. Potential customers with digital business ambitions should consider whether Uppwise SPM's concentration on the EPPM and SEM use cases will support ongoing needs.

Wellspring (Sopheon) - Niche Player

Pros:

Sopheon markets Accolade within its InnovationOps framework. Its offering is optimized for product life cycles, scenarios and strategic challenges related to physical products. It also supports digital products, though less comprehensively. Accolade's product management and innovation specialization differentiates it from other offerings.
Sopheon's acquisition of Prodex has enabled Sopheon to provide more cohesive customer success support for Accolade in Asia/Pacific. It has also enabled Sopheon to scale growth in the region more effectively by enabling greater access to Sopheon's depth of expertise in other regions.
Sopheon has strong customer retention, which reflects its long-standing dedication to customer success in their respective industries. Wellspring's acquisition positions Sopheon to expand into additional verticals within a larger existing customer base.

Cons:

Sopheon's acquisition by Wellspring will logically result in integration of offerings and direction. Updates may be released at any time. Prospective customers should monitor and assess how the combination of strengths impacts Accolade.
Sopheon's innovation and product management dedication does not strongly align with the digital business concentration of this SPM research. Accolade's value is attributed to its specialization. Accolade aligns with organizations that prioritize product-innovation-driven outcomes over IT portfolio analysis.
The Accolade UI/UX does not yet reflect modern conventions for look and feel. Although functional, it contrasts with an innovative spirit by appearing dated. Some stakeholders that influence buying decisions may require convincing to overcome impressions of the experience.

FAQs

Q: Which vendors are Leaders in 2024?

A: Broadcom, Planview, Software AG

Q: What does "Leader" mean in MQ terms?

A: Leaders continually refine their market understanding to effectively adapt their offerings to customers' current needs and anticipate future priorities. Leaders recognize customers' digital investments are essential to realizing business outcomes. SPM market leaders also effectively support customers' pursuit of greater strategic execution effectiveness in the climate of continuous disruption and uncertainty. Leaders in this market value and promote the unique and complementary nature of the primary SPM use cases (SEM, EPPM and IIPA). They build on existing strengths and regularly deliver enhancements to increase customer effectiveness in the context of these use cases. SPM market Leaders maintain a balanced SPM technology roadmap, incorporating bold innovations, continuous improvement and customer-driven needs. In addition to their products, market leaders promote SPM practices, digital innovation, adaptability and agility to both educate and feed customer interests. They have robust marketing, sales and operations potency to customer acquisition, implementation, and success across a broad geographies and industries, which drives SPM recognition and overall market growth.

Q: How do I interpret a Gartner Magic Quadrant?

A: https://www.gartner.com/en/research/methodologies/magic-quadrants-research

Report:

Top Vendor Products for Strategic Portfolio Management in 2024

Strategic Portfolio Management Vendor Product Comparisons 2024

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FAQs

Q: Which vendors are Leaders in 2024?

Q: What does "Leader" mean in MQ terms?

Q: How do I interpret a Gartner Magic Quadrant?

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