5 Best Portfolio Project Management Software

So, you are in the market for a portfolio project management software.

Ideal, because in this article we have our compilation list for our top picks, and we compare the features and pricing for you. 

If you just want the best choice, we’ve added that right at the top of the article as this was what is most requested by our customers and what we see the best feedback with. So, that’ll be the “can’t go wrong” option.

Otherwise, feel free to explore all the options we’ve reviewed on the market to find something that might fit you a little better.

Enjoy the list!

The Best Portfolio Project Management Software

In the multifaceted world of project management, overseeing multiple projects simultaneously demands a specialized approach.

Portfolio Project Management (PPM) software emerges as the linchpin, allowing organizations to manage and evaluate a series of projects holistically.

These tools provide a macro view, ensuring alignment with overarching business goals while optimizing resources across projects.

1. Monday

Monday integrates client emails, collects leads with forms, and refines marketing campaigns through scrupulous analysis that greatly enhances your relationship with clients and creates more business opportunities. It’s an easy-to-use platform that simplifies organizational tasks for sales and marketing teams.

Monday Features

Here are some features that make Monday a unique CRM:

• Software development: Monday provides templates to help your technical team quickly organize tasks, find bugs and improve iterations. You can add indicators to let the team know what you are working on and analyze the resource allocation. Every project has a specific ID that can be used; to track it among other tasks. Clients will automatically be alerted once the error is solved to reduce downtime and keep customers updated.
• HR structuring: Monday lets users manage recruiting process and track employee progression through its HR tools such as Applicant Tracker, Employee Engagement, Attendance Tracker, Recruitment Tracker, and Vacation Tracker. You can boost the team spirit of your employees by creating specific goals and giving constructive feedback on their work.
• Inventory Management: Businesses can record product and asset details while setting automation to get regular updates about sales and inquiries. You can create new templates to match the company’s requirements and integrate Monday with other applications to make the tasks easier. Moreover, Monday generates a unique QR code for each product so your clients can coherently buy the inventory.
• Marketing and Creative attributes: Monday can bridge the gap between creative thinking and marketing strategies by merging them into a single platform. You can create visualizations on campaign effects, share ideas and create personalized operations to make information accessible for employees.
• Sales operations: Monday offers CRM customization to make the leads attainable and manage all opportunity stages at a single interface. You can see the combined effect of marketing and sales campaigns to make adjustments accordingly. Moreover, businesses can centralize the available data for ease of use and synchronization of operations.
• IT workspace: You can add educational content for new recruitments to learn skills faster and ensure quality work. Monday lets you set access permissions for tasks and strictly follows security protocols to prevent cyber attacks on your CRM database. You can integrate IT tools and put technical work in order on Monday.

Monday Pricing

Monday CRM offers 4 pricing options depending upon your business size and requirements.

“Individual” plan is free of cost and lets users record work-related activities. 

“Basic” plan is priced at $10/month for a single user and offers 5GB storage along with customer support.

“Standard” plan is worth $14/month for a single user and offers additional collaboration tools. 

“Pro” subscription costs $27/month for an individual and offers chart view along with time tracking.

“Enterprise” plan is made specifically for large businesses and includes quality security features. You can contact support to get a quote on the “Enterprise” package.

2. Liquidplanner

Liquidplanner supports flexible project management and provides your business with a clear overview of all ongoing tasks. It helps your teams perform at peak productivity and engage effortlessly with the collaborators to enhance the functioning of your company.

Liquidplanner Features

Here are some exclusive features of Liquidplanner:

Smart schedule bars: Liquidplanner offers smart schedule bars that determine how much time a task would take for completions based on; AI estimates and ongoing work; by your team. It allows you to efficiently manage your schedule and reassign high-priority issues to available employees for swift execution.

Priority-Driven Board views: With Liquidplanner, you can create several statuses and move tasks across them to symbolize how much effort needs to be interpolated; towards a particular issue. It helps you align your projects according to the priority and track every progress from a single board view.

Automatic Resource Leveling: Liquidplanner offers automation that manages your workload and resource allocation by running quality analysis on the available data. It enables you to reduce the dependency on a particular team and empowers your business to reach its potential.

Ranged Estimates: Liquidplanner runs multiple checks on the data and provides you with the best possible scenario to pursue a project. It captures uncertainty in your business plan and provides insight to improve your business’s functioning.

Target Finish Driven Alerts: Liquidplanner allows your team to set target dates for every project submission and provides regular alerts so you can cope with the deadlines. It points out schedule risk every time a task is nearing its tendering and enables you to stay on top of every issue.

Data Customization: With Liquidplanner, you can segment and customize the data by introducing your own factors to tasks and resources. It enriches your view of the ongoing projects by providing thorough analysis and dependable insights.

Advanced Access Control: With advanced access control, you can choose what information your employees see, depending on their stature and profile. It ensures your teams are not overloaded with pointless data and only see the required details.

Work Views: Within Liquidplanner, you can switch between several views like Kanban Boards and Timesheet. Its highly personalizable interface ensures you don’t face any complications while switching between different perspectives.

Liquidplanner Pricing

Liquidplanner offers 4 Pricing options for users depending upon their unique requirements.

The “Free” plan comes at absolutely no cost and offers entry-level features like predictive scheduling, smart schedule bars, ranged estimation and integrated time tracking.

The “Essentials” plan is priced at $15/user/month upon annual billing and allows you to add unlimited users plus create up to 5000 Tasks.

The “Professional” plan is priced at $25/user/month and offers Timesheet review and custom workspace dashboards. It boosts up the max task creation capacity to 50000.

The “Ultimate” plan is priced at $35/user/month and allows you to use Liquidplanner at its maximum capabilities.

3. Wrike

Wrike provides an optimized solution to businesses for project management requirements. Its greatest strength is its scalable platform that grows with your business requirements. With Wrike, you can enable a collaboration platform and maintain 360⁰ visibility into all operations.

Wrike Features

Here are some exclusive features of Wrike:

Reports: Wrike offers quality reporting tools that allow you to analyze your work and stay on top of everything. It provides a high-level overview of all your current projects and enables you to identify bottlenecks and drill down to deeper task levels in order to take timely action. Wrike also provides retrospective information on your completed projects and tasks.

Wrike Calendars: Wrike Calendars helps you; keep track of what you need to work on and when. With Wrike, you can create smart calendars based on your folders or projects and filter them through several criteria. You can also create; a classic calendar and be in full control of its content.

Custom Workflows: Wrike allows you; to create unique workflows and enables your team to work in a way they find most comfortable. You can create custom statuses within each workflow to; get a reflection of what stage your tasks are in. With Wrike, it’s much simpler to report on assignments and specify; who should be an assignee once a project has reached a particular status.

Custom Field creation: For a scaling business, you have to; track all sorts of data. With Wrike, you can create custom fields in your projects and tasks and populate them with the required information. You can design specific fields for the project’s budget, marketing campaigns and sales operations, making financial management a lot easier. Moreover, Wrike automatically runs calculations for the numeric data.

Request Forms: Wrike allows Request form creation for businesses dealing with tickets or requests. It enables you; to effortlessly capture all information from a client. Once done, Wrike automatically triggers a task or project based on the available information. You can predefine this information, like assignees or locations and share it with your colleagues while also making them available externally.

User Groups: You can create user groups within Wrike based on company departments, subteams, office locations or cross-departmental teams. This way, it’s extremely simple to share something with a specific group, and you can remain in touch with every project team.

Wrike Pricing

Wrike offers 5 Pricing options plus 2 Additional subscriptions for marketing and services delivery teams.

The “Free” plan comes at zero cost and offers basic task management capabilities along with a live activity stream. It is best for new users looking to get acquainted with Wrike.

The “Professional” plan is priced at $9.8/user/month and offers interactive Gantt charts plus shareable dashboards.

The “Business” plan is priced at $24.8/user/month and allows users to create custom fields or workflows according to their requirements.

The “Enterprise” and “Pinnacle plans are only available for businesses with 5+ users and offers all features of Wrike.They are suitable for established organizations. You can contact the sales team to get a price quotation.

The additional plans for; marketing and service delivery teams can also be availed: within Wrike. You can customize the subscription and get a price quotation by contacting the sales team.

4. Mavenlink

Mavenlink offers a cloud-based project management platform for professional businesses to improve organizational clarity and deal with the workload. It helps your service teams to understand the project expectations and distribute tasks to employees while adhering to the company’s latest requirements.

Mavenlink Features

Here are some exclusive features of Mavenlink:

Resource Management: Mavenlink offers advanced resource management tools that help you plan your project journey till the final stage. It addresses the entire resource management cycle by providing a collaborative platform for your employees. With Mavenlink, you can enable unparalleled resource visibility and gain the ability to identify changes.

Dynamic Resource Optimization: Mavenlink offers professional organizations the transformative ability to enable predictive outcomes and optimize resource planning for a limitless scaling experience. With Mavenlink, you get real-time responsiveness designed; to continuously improve your operations. It allows you to; easily recognize changes in demand and supply while exploring impacts on your revenue and margins.

Project Workspace: Mavenlink’s project workspace is highly efficient and effective, unlike its competitors. You can view the upcoming tasks and ensure all submissions are made on time to avoid any conflicts. It offers you the ability to easily improvise and adapt to the client’s requirements and deliver the best services.

Business Intelligence: Mavenlink understands that the projects are core to; every business’s success and optimizes every step in the lifecycle around your clients. It automatically enables the selling phase once the services are demanded; by a client and updates the upcoming procedures regularly. Mavenlink helps you estimate, gather and align the right resources on the right projects, helping you stay efficient.

Integrations and Workflows: Mavenlink offers M-Bridge that helps you integrate all necessary tools for your organization’s ample development. It can be easily connected; to a CRM like Salesforce. So you can create a single working platform for your client and project management. Additionally, it equips you to configure workflows to suit your needs and create custom rules.

Operations Management: Mavenlink allows users; to robustly collaborate on projects and get a full perspective on every detail. So they can make the right decisions. You can improve execution by creating a scenario for every project and giving your team a blueprint for approaching the task.

Mavenlink Pricing

Mavenlink offers custom pricing options based on your business industry and tool requirements. To get a pricing quote, fill up your niche market, mention the size of your company and the location of headquarters. Once done, Mavenlink’s sales team will reach out to you with the best-customized plan on the provided contact details.

5. Clarizen

Clarizen is the only enterprise-grade solution in the market that ties social engagement with powerful project management. It provides a streamlined navigation panel and enables One-click access to your modules. With Clarizen, you can plan out initiatives and expedite the project execution with maximum efficiency.

Clarizen Features

Here are some exclusive features of Clarizen:

Reports and Dashboards: Clarizen’s reports and dashboards provide complete visibility to all internal and external stakeholders. The robust reports and dashboard module is fully integrated with Clarizen’s work graphs, ensuring a true 360⁰ view. It provides a comprehensive reporting platform that includes the ability; to pivot data in multiple ways.

Digital Proofing: Clarizen’s Digital Proofing integration simplifies and organizes the review and approval process. With digital proofing, you can create and manage proofs; for various file types. Any stakeholder, whether a Clarizen user or not, can contribute to the review and approval process. With Clarizen, you can use proofing decisions; to continue the work process automatically.

Advanced Customer Management: Clarizen opens the lines of communication and participation between teams. With Clarizen, you can add customers into your environment. You can initiate project discussions or automate the invoicing process. Clarizen assists you in developing a customer-centric approach and provides them full visibility into the ongoing processes.

Custom Actions: Clarizen provides a fully configurable platform so you can utilize it to fulfil your specific requirements. With custom actions, you gain full flexibility in Clarizen. You can create One-click actions to trigger entire workflows. You can customize project lifecycles and introduce custom dynamic forms.

Resource Utilization: With Clarizen’s resource utilization, you can ensure the ROI of your deployed resources. Additionally, it displays the actual utilization and related KPIs of your resource pool. Resource utilization ensures that everyone in your organization; is working and contributing to the projects.

Conditional formatting: Clarizen’s conditional formatting allow exception driven management of your work. It enables you to highlight important KPIs and focus your stakeholder’s attention on crucial areas. Conditional formatting assists you in easily configuring dashboards with logical rules.

Clarizen Pricing

Clarizen does not have pricing details for its project management products on the official website. It may be because they don’t sell bundled subscriptions and instead allow users to customize the ideal plan by handpicking the necessary tools.

Why use a Portfolio Project Management tool at all?

Portfolio Project Management tools are pivotal for organizations juggling multiple projects. They offer a consolidated view of all ongoing projects, enabling leaders to assess performance, allocate resources, and identify potential risks at a portfolio level.

This holistic perspective ensures that individual projects align with the broader organizational strategy, maximizing ROI and ensuring cohesive progress.

Moreover, PPM tools streamline decision-making. By providing insights into the health, performance, and interdependencies of projects, they allow managers to make informed decisions.

Whether it’s prioritizing projects, reallocating resources, or identifying potential bottlenecks, PPM tools offer the clarity needed for strategic planning.

Why should companies opt for a Portfolio Project Management tool?

In today’s competitive business landscape, organizations often find themselves managing a plethora of projects concurrently.

These projects, while distinct, are interconnected in terms of resources, objectives, and outcomes. Portfolio Project Management tools are designed to address this intricate web of projects.

Firstly, PPM tools offer a centralized dashboard. This dashboard provides a snapshot of all ongoing projects, their status, milestones, and potential risks.

Such a consolidated view is invaluable for senior management and stakeholders, ensuring transparency and facilitating strategic decision-making.

Secondly, resource optimization is a core strength of PPM tools. They allow managers to view resource allocation across the portfolio, ensuring that manpower, finances, and other resources are utilized efficiently.

This bird’s-eye view ensures that no project is over-resourced while another is starved, maintaining a balance and optimizing outcomes.

Furthermore, PPM tools excel in risk management. By analyzing the interdependencies between projects, they can forecast potential risks and offer mitigation strategies.

This proactive approach ensures that risks are addressed before they escalate, safeguarding the portfolio’s health and ensuring timely delivery.

Lastly, these tools foster alignment with organizational objectives. By evaluating projects at a portfolio level, organizations can ensure that each project aligns with their strategic goals.

This alignment is crucial for maximizing ROI, ensuring that resources and efforts are directed towards projects that offer the most value.

Portfolio Project Management Software, A Summary

The complexities of managing multiple projects simultaneously necessitate a tool that offers both depth and breadth in its approach. Portfolio Project Management software provides this holistic perspective, ensuring that organizations can navigate the intricacies of multiple projects with ease and efficiency.

Among the vast array of PPM tools available, Monday stands out as a premier choice. Its intuitive interface, combined with robust portfolio management features, makes it an indispensable asset for organizations.

For those seeking to elevate their portfolio management capabilities and align projects seamlessly with business objectives, Monday offers a compelling and comprehensive solution.

What Project Management Software would you recommend?

In short, It’s Monday.com.

It’s a platform that simplifies communication across teams and helps hit goals faster, with team management software that maximizes productivity and empowers everyone to work smarter together. You can’t go wrong with Monday.com.

“🚀Try Monday.com For Free, It’s my favorite Project Management Software to use and recommend.” -Scott Max

Monday.com is a user-friendly project management platform that offers powerful tools to streamline complex workflows for larger companies, ensuring efficient operations and delivering impressive project outcomes. Monday.com has you covered for your: Team Projects, Service, Sales, CMS, Operations, and Marketing needs.

For more details, read our Monday.com Review.