Global innovation leaders share NPD best practices at Planisware’s Annual User Summit

June 17, 2016 (San Francisco, Ca) -- Planisware, the leading global provider of Project and Product Portfolio Management (PPM) software solutions for new product development (NPD) organizations, recently held its annual User Summit in San Francisco. The event brought together more than 200 PPM professionals spanning across more than 50 innovation-driven organizations worldwide to discuss best practices and the different ways they leverage Planisware software to optimize their project and portfolio management processes.

This year's conference kicked off with a keynote presentation delivered by Planisware CEO and co-founder Pierre Demonsant, who discussed Planisware's recent accomplishments, his vision for the future, and the product roadmap. Baptiste Henriquez, Director of Cloud Solutions, demonstrated Activetab, a patented Planisware tool that enables customers to define their own finance, resource, and risk estimation models in Excel, and easily integrate them into Planisware, where the organization benefits from centralized data, a consistent data model, and a collaborative multi-user environment. Pierre Hulin, Director of Client Solutions, demonstrated new enhancements to Planisware's V6 software, including new strategic roadmapping capabilities, an updated UI for Agile Project Management, a Product Management module designed for low-mid level complexity product development projects and Planisware Tour, a built-in module that provides customers self-guided training tours directly within the live system.

The recent release of Planisware Tour as an addition to our suite of e-learning tools supports our commitment to supporting customer success,” said Demonsant. “We continue to focus our efforts to improve the user experience, support system adoption and strengthen our SaaS offering in order to shorten time-to-value and ultimately increase the ROI of implementing our PPM solution for our customers.

The two-day program also included presentations by industry thought leaders Dr. Richard Bayney, president of Project & Portfolio Value Creation, and Stephen Toton, former executive of several Fortune 500 organizations and current president of S&T Innovations; 12 interactive group sessions, nine software-focused workshops; a panel discussion on utilizing Planisware for organizational decision-making; and several networking activities. Several customers presented PPM business process and software implementation case studies, with featured presentations that included:

• Zebra Technologies - In late 2014, the Enterprise Visibility & Mobility product development organization with Zebra Technologies was tasked to define and implement a PPM within an aggressive timeline. With a clear strategy, strong executive sponsorship, and effective IT & Business collaboration, Zebra was able to deploy the program successfully to 1400 users across 50 global sites on time, on budget, and to specification. This case study discussed the keys to success and lessons learned gained as they standardized project, resource, financial and phase-gate management processes and enabled them in a global PPM platform using Planisware.

• Jazz Pharmaceuticals - In 2015, Jazz Pharmaceuticals enjoyed rapid company growth. However, a growing staff nearing 1000 employees worldwide, including almost 250 employees within R&D, was putting pressure on their ability to efficiently manage budgets, timelines, and resources. This case study presented the rapid, best-practice approach taken to implement Planisware software to enable project planning, algorithm-based resource forecasting, project and study level reporting, and real-time portfolio level scenario planning for the R&D organization within months.

• Saudi Aramco - Global NPD organizations become significantly more efficient when all R&D processes worldwide are integrated into a single system that enables the company to quickly and easily adapt to market and global changes. This case study presented Saudi Aramco's comprehensive innovation management solution enabled by Planisware software. The Planisware system scope includes front-end innovation and IP management tools used by researchers; collaboration tools accessible to all system users; project, program, and portfolio management tools used by division heads and project teams; invoicing, contract, and purchasing tools used by contracting teams and finance; and dashboards and reporting tools for management.    

“Planisware's annual user summit unites industry thought leaders and PPM subject matter experts representing innovation-driven businesses from around the world to discuss experiences and proven practices for optimizing innovation portfolios and maximizing R&D efficiency,” said Demonsant. “It provides our customers, partners and other affiliates with the unique opportunity to gain insights from each other's PPM experiences and discover new Planisware features to support and enhance their new product development and innovation management efforts.”

Planisware PPM software solutions are utilized by over 300 organizations globally, including 33% of the world's top 100 R&D spenders. Planisware was designated as a leader in portfolio management for the business technology agenda by Forrester Research in “The Forrester Wave™: Portfolio Management Tools For The BT Agenda, Q1 2015.”