For project management offices (PMOs), picking the right platform to master their workflow productivity and performance often boils down to the same dilemma: Planview vs. Cascade.

Choosing the wrong project management software or reporting platform to manage your portfolio can be an expensive mistake. 

In this article, we’ll explore both platforms, compare their differences and similarities, and ultimately, give you all the information you need to make the right choice for your team, business goals, and company vision.

We cover: 

• Planview and Cascade: What’s the difference? 
• Planview vs Cascade: Background
• Planview vs Cascade: How to get maximum value from your portfolio
• 5 reasons to choose Cascade over Planview (based on customer reviews)
• Is Cascade the right choice for you?

Planview and Cascade: What’s the difference?

Both Cascade and Planview can serve as powerful alternatives to traditional project management tools, so if you are looking into better insights into what’s happening across your portfolio, then you’re in the right place. 

To start, here’s a comparison table:

There are some similarities and obvious differences between Cascade and Enterprise One when it comes to capabilities, benefits, and businesses each of us serve. 

In order to help you decide which is the best match for you, stay with us as we do an in-depth comparison throughout the article:

Planview vs Cascade: Background 

Planview Enterprise One

Founded in 1989, Planview is one of the oldest players in work management and project portfolio management. Planview Enterprise One was launched in 1997 as web-based resource management and project portfolio management tool. 

Today, Enterprise offers much more than just a standard PPM solution; it is part of a comprehensive suite of enterprise solutions focusing on agile and lean methodologies. 

It also offers a wide variety of features, including timesheets, capacity planning, resource allocation, forecasting, financial planning, kanban boards, and time tracking.

Screenshot of Planview’s Gantt and assignment profile view

Planview’s fans appreciate its enterprise-focused approach that provides a complete enterprise project management solution, but there are also voices that complain about its complexity and usability. 

Cascade Strategy 

Cascade launched in 2014 with a mission to close the strategy execution gap and democratize strategy. 

Today, Cascade is a cloud-based strategy execution platform with a laser focus on progress and speed, along with a commitment to top-notch customer service. This all-in-one platform combines the most powerful elements of project portfolio management, KPI tracking, reporting, work automation, and strategic planning. 

Whereas many companies fail to turn strategy into tangible outcomes, Cascade helps PMO leaders deliver business results by giving them a top-level view of what’s happening across their project portfolio.

Here’s a sneak peek into Cascade’s interactive dashboards where portfolio managers can use powerful filters and visualization to prepare executive reports.

Comparing Cascade and Planview, there are many differences in how both platforms evolved over time. Planview has been expanding its focus on the enterprise market and work management solutions, while Cascade was doubling down on strategy execution. 

Here at Cascade, we are 100% focused on building a powerful strategy execution platform that helps teams of all sizes (including smaller teams at fast-growing companies or medium enterprises) hit the company’s strategic goals. 

Planview vs Cascade: How to get maximum value from your portfolio

PPM software aims to bring everything (and everyone) together under one roof—that means no more wading through a well of dusty old spreadsheets and forgotten PowerPoint presentations to gather the information you need.

Below are three focus areas where Planview Enterprise One and Cascade can make life easier for PMO leaders and portfolio managers and drive a better return on investment (ROI) across your entire project portfolio.

Get valuable insights to guide business decisions

When you're overseeing multiple projects, it's easy to get lost in the details. If you don’t have a bird's-eye view of what’s happening across your portfolio, you can waste a lot of time and money. 

Planview and Cascade can help you take charge of your entire project portfolio. These platforms offer PMOs a high-level view of what's happening across all projects through powerful reporting capabilities.

Cascade’s strategy execution platform has powerful dashboards that help you gather data and make jaw-dropping presentations to your leadership team. With these dashboards, you can get a clear understanding of:

• Portfolio performance to view the progress and status of all projects across different teams and departments.
  
  
• Financial performance to see if every project is within budget. You can create custom fields to pull data from other systems (like budget, spend, etc.)
  
  
• Capacity to determine if you are using your resources effectively or if there are areas you can reduce wastage.

You can focus on this high-level overview or take advantage of drill-down capabilities to dive into details of projects happening across different teams. 

In one or another, you will be able to provide data-driven insights to your C-suite team or get a real-time view into what's getting done or what's not getting done. That’s the way to make better decisions faster. 

While Enterprise One offers similar reporting features, we’ve spotted that users often complain about a limited reporting system that lacks flexibility and looks outdated. 

Drive strategic alignment

As 90% of strategies fall flat on their face, it’s vital to get a platform that is built for strategy execution. PPM software is all about giving companies clear visibility their portfolio, with the view to improving cross-functional alignment, so you can pinpoint where things are going wrong.

Both Cascade and Planview give you a powerful strategic planning tool to help you create roadmaps and align departments on shared goals and key performance indicators (KPIs). 

While both platforms offer a top-level view across your entire portfolio, Cascade helps you go beyond the planning phase with these key features: 

• A planner where you can choose a customizable framework to build a portfolio, program, or project plans. 
  
  
• Customizable strategy maps that provide clarity on how all programs, projects, tasks, and team members interconnect. Every employee knows their role and how daily efforts contribute to the business goals.
  
  
• Strategic contribution: Visualize how different projects and strategic initiatives contribute to portfolio success. 
  
  
• Workspaces where teams can work together on more complex projects. 
  
  
• Real-time performance insights across all KPIs, so team leaders and key stakeholders can quickly gauge performance on any project. 

Manage everything in one place

What’s more time-consuming and frustrating than getting lost in spreadsheets?

When you’re looking for a new PPM tool, you need to evaluate whether it helps you to minimize the effort and time you spent on gathering data from multiple sources and organizing them into compelling presentations. 

Planview has a solid list of integrations to third-party agile tools, such as Jira, Azure DevOps, and Microsoft Teams. 

Cascade has eight native integrations that are easy to set up within minutes—but that’s not everything. 

You can use Zapier to access over 1000 integrations, so it's easy to connect Cascade to all your favorite apps, such as:

• Project management tools like Jira, Trello, Asana, Smartsheet, and ClickUp.
  
  
• Financial tools like SAP, Salesforce, PowerBI, and Xero.
  
  
• Collaboration tools like Slack and Microsft Teams.

When it comes to integrations, support matters. On the Planview website, it’s not easy to find data and technical documentation about integrations. By comparison, Cascade offers extensive up-to-date documentation with detailed screenshots on how to connect any system with our Open API. 

In addition to the self-help guides, our customer support team also provides technical support to help you connect your in-house systems and other products.

5 reasons to choose Cascade over Planview

We already covered some differences between Cascade Strategy and Enterprise One. But now let’s take a look at why our customers choose Cascade:

1. Cascade helps you to rise above the details 

When you use Cascade, you will be able to monitor your entire portfolio in one place and provide real-time data for better strategic decisions. 

Here’s how Greer H. describes what she likes best about Cascade:

“It's the only tool in our organization that provides a birds-eye view of our complete change portfolio and how what we are investing in is balanced across our strategic plan.” 

2. Cascade is easy to use

PPM software should be effortless to set up, onboard, and use. After all, its purpose is to make life easier for portfolio managers and their teams. 

While some users of Planview Enterprise have found that’s not the case, Cascade’s speed and usability are at the core of what makes Cascade leaders in its category: 

• “It's very simple and intuitive to use. The setup was a breeze.”
  
  
• "I got my plan going in no time at all. The UX/UI is really slick, and the setup is really quite self-explanatory."
  
  
• “Easy and clean user interface. Very logical to follow how everything can be mapped out.”
  
  
• “Easy to use platform that meets a variety of project management needs. Tracking progress is simple with dashboards and snapshots that are simple to set up (especially in comparison to Excel) and easy to tailor to meet one's needs.”

Source: G2 reviews 

At Cascade, we understand the challenge of creating an easy-to-use platform that users love. Our platform provides portfolio and works management capabilities that are easy for even casual project managers to set up without experience. No intensive training is needed; you can just get started immediately by using pre-built templates. 

3. Cascade drives strategy execution across the organization

Cascade helps PMOs and leaders create plans that unite everyone under a shared vision. With Cascade, you can assign key metrics and measure progress against strategic objectives to ensure you constantly deliver value aligned with the company strategy. 

Here’s what our clients love about Cascade: 

“Cascade provides the focus our team needs to execute our strategic plan. It's proven to make decisions easier to say no to if it does not align with our vision or objectives.”

“We were desperate for a platform that helped us bring our strategy together, share it, track progress, drive accountability and move away from bloody spreadsheets. For us, Cascade has provided the perfect solution.”

In another review, a G2 reviewer says that “the entire organization is rowing in the same direction”:

In the long run, Cascade's strategy focus and functionality help portfolio managers and PMO leaders earn more trust from leadership and gain their support for future plans. You won't just keep them up-to-date with project portfolio health—you can drive the company to succeed with strategy, innovation, and growth. 

4. Cascade focuses on customer success

Imagine your company gets a new PPM platform. In the first week, your team has a lot of questions and hit several roadblocks. When you call customer support, you find out that the vendor will bill you whenever you want help.

Unfortunately, Planview users don't need to imagine this scenario—it costs extra for customer support. Yikes.

Here at Cascade, we want to help you extract the most value from all the features and tools we offer. With no hidden fees and unpleasant surprises. 

Once you get on Cascade Enterprise plan, you’ll get access to a panel of Strategy Execution Principals and Customer Success Managers to help you unlock the most value from our platform.

It’s the full strategy consultant experience without the price tag.

Here’s what our clients say about Cascade support team: 

"When I did have questions, the knowledge base and/or customer success staff were able to resolve my questions/issue in minutes."

“The customer service. The customer success rep we were assigned has been excellent to partner with. He is responsive, constantly available, and generous with his time.”

“The customer support has been outstanding working with me to build our strategy using custom features, which is important when bringing in a new business tool."

Source: G2

5. Cascade scales with your business

Planview Enterprise One is part of a wide range of Planview’s products. Each product is not an all-in-one solution and as you grow, you usually need to add more capabilities to meet your needs—and each comes with a price tag.

There is no official pricing disclosure on Planview’s website, but based on user reviews, Enterprise One is one of the costliest portfolio management solutions in the market. 

To make matters worse, as your tech stack bloats with Planview products, your employees will have to deal with more context switching and more noise in their day-to-day work. 

Cascade offers an all-in-one platform that scales with your organization. When you grow, you don’t need to add on extra tools. It’s a single solution with no hidden fees. 

• Cascade has a free forever plan so you try it out before fully committing to a new tool.
  
  
• Small-to-medium teams can get Cascade premium plan from $24 USD / user per month (start with a minimum of 5 users)
  
  
• Large enterprises get a tailored quote based on their organization's needs. 

As you scale, so does Cascade. Our focus on continuous improvement helps organizations get more value from data and do more with technology. With our platform and guidance, your company can reimagine how it does strategy. 

What Cascade customers say:

“Cascade takes continuous improvement seriously as the tools are mature, aligned to our needs, with sufficient customization for our specific usage if we ever need that.”

“There's nothing I don't like about Cascade. I've been using the system for about 5 years now, and like that there are regular updates and new features added ... almost as if you have anticipated what I might need next!”

Is Cascade the right choice for you?

When considering different PPM software, it's easy to feel overwhelmed with all the advanced functionality and fancy features. You need to carefully evaluate your software requirements vs the organization's needs and capabilities. 

If you're working at a larger enterprise with deep pockets to take budget risks, Planview may seem like a good idea. However, its cluttered user interface and the bundled product offer can cause confusion and hamper your strategy efforts.

For smaller enterprises and mid-market organizations who are just looking for a simple PPM tool, Enterprise One might be overkill. 

On the other hand, Cascade is a perfect solution for teams of all sizes that need a fast and reliable portfolio management tool without getting lost in unwanted features. 

Our platform bridges the gap between realities today and transformation in the future, only at lower prices and with innovative solutions that are easier to plan, use, and adapt.

Are you ready to unite your team and maximize their impact with the #1 strategy execution platform? Book a free Cascade demo today.