Information Week recently published a Buyer’s Guide covering 9 SaaS Project Management Tools. According to the report, the “Information-Week 2012 Enterprise Project Management Survey of 508 business technology professionals shows 60% have formal project management offices, and nearly as many use specialized commercial/project management software. For the 40% of organizations that are, presumably, winging it rather than taking on the expense of a fully equipped PMO, SaaS project management software can provide the ability to gain greater control with a minimal up-front investment.”

You can download the report here and see how Daptiv stacks up against the competition. It rates 9 tools against six key decision areas: (1) Administration, (2) Platform, (3) Reports and dashboards, (4) Features, (5) Pricing and (6) Security.

Daptiv’s has also published a buyer’s guide which you can download here. We’ve included key industry trends we are seeing and a detailed evaluation scoring grid for tool selection.

Gartner recently updated its 2012 global IT  spend forecast. There are a number of concerns which caused them to revise their forecast downward from 4.6% to 3.7% for 2012. These included:

(1) Global Economy: Private-sector deleveraging and public-sector austerity in mature economies and lack of political leadership on fundamental sovereign debt issues

(2) Eurozone Crisis: Uncertainty in resolution of Euro debt crisis, which creates business uncertainty for business investment and consumer spending

(3) Thailand Floods: Hard disk drive supply contraints affecting consumer and enterprise server and storage markets.

Gartner also updated its enterprise software spending forecast (see slide above) and predicts a 5 year CAGR of just over 7%. The three areas Gartner sees strong growth above the average include: (1) Project and Portfolio Management, (2) Web conferencing and team collaboration, and (3) Enterprise Content Management.

We don’t think this should come as a surprise. In our recent post on 2012 predictions for PPM, we noted PMOs will evolve from being tactical, support-based organizations to become a strategic player within the enterprise. Given the tough investment and cost optimization decisions being made in the current economy, PPM is a critical business capability for success.

In addition, there is a growing trend for successful PMOs in IT to expand to an EPMO, covering business investments as well as IT strategy and planning. A Daptiv customer who has successfully made this transition is Mercy, a health care system with over 25 hospitals and 200 clinic locations, which incubated their PMO in the IT organization before creating a very successful Enterprise Project Office.

Even though the economic outlook is uncertain for the next year, we’re confident Daptiv can help our existing and prospective customers navigate the difficult choices ahead and emerge stronger as the economy improves.

I noticed a recent blog on the PMI site from Saira Karim, called ‘Use Project Management Tools in the Right Context’. Saira started her post with the following:

“Recently I came across an ad for a project management technology application. It was a picture of seven robots in a group, which symbolized humans. The slogan read, “If your team looked like this, any PPM solution would work.”

Interestingly, that’s a Daptiv ad she noticed in the PMI magazine. Saira continues:

“It made me wonder how many organizations actually believe that technology applications do the work and produce results — not humans.

How many organizations and project managers sufficiently analyze their project needs and the compatibility of new technology to their organizations’ existing set-up and processes?

Companies often buy expensive project management applications and then force teams to conform and adapt to the application rather than customize the application to the needs of the people and project.

But buying applications because other organizations use them does not by default mean you, too, will become a leader.

Like with best practices, experience has taught me that technology and tools are valuable — but only if they fill gaps and needs effectively.

Technology is important and can increase efficiency, but in the correct setting and context. Projects are planned and executed by people — therefore technology must complement and be understood by the humans who use it.

Before investing in new project management applications, you must consider things like training, costs and your team members’ willingness to use the tools. Otherwise it could amount to an expensive burden.”

Saira’s post is a great articulation of the importance of the need for tools that adapt to your organization’s business needs. Combining a flexible tool with a PPM roadmap that is improves maturity in successive steps is the key to PPM success.

Have you had experience with tool implementations that have failed (or succeeded)? What are your keys to success?