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Oracle Primavera P6 EPPM Review

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Oracle Primavera P6 is an enterprise-grade project portfolio management tool geared toward construction and engineering projects. This software is designed to improve project planning and scheduling, reduce bottlenecks, and improve efficiencies. Oracle Primavera P6 also helps identify risks and reduce costs across your entire portfolio of projects. Continue reading our in-depth review to see if Oracle Primavera P6 is right for you. 

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Oracle Primavera P6 EPPM Compared to the Best Project Portfolio Management Software

Oracle Primavera P6 made our list of the best project portfolio management tools for its ability to accommodate heavy, enterprise-grade use cases. If you’re looking for something simpler to manage less intensive portfolios, consider one of our Golden Eggs:

Monday.com is a highly flexible and customizable project management solution that can scale up to handle a growing portfolio. Sign up now to try Monday.com for free for 14 days

Hive shines for remote teams because of built-in collaboration features like team chat, tagging, commenting, and file sharing. Start your 14-day free trial today

Asana is user-friendly PPM software that’s user-friendly enough to get up and running right away, yet powerful enough to make your team’s work on projects more efficient. Get started with Asana for free

Oracle Primavera P6 EPPM: The Good and the Bad

To truly understand if Oracle Primavera P6 is right for you and your business, it’s important to know where the product excels and falls short. Our research team spent hours reading and making sense of verified user reviews across multiple review platforms on the web. Based on this research, we’ve narrowed down and identified the top pros and cons of Oracle Primavera P6, which we’ll cover in greater detail below. 

What Oracle Primavera P6 EPPM Is Good At

Oracle Primavera P6 has powerful scheduling features and resource management capabilities. It’s also great for large, enterprise-grade projects and has some of the best training materials on the market.

Built for massive projects: One significant benefit of Oracle Primavera P6 is its ability to handle lots of intense projects simultaneously. Lots of user reviews we examined came from organizations with over 1,000, 5,000, and even 10,000 employees. While employee count isn’t directly tied to the tool itself, it’s a good indication of the type of jobs that it can handle and simplify. 

Several reviewers said they used Primavera P6 for multi-million dollar projects, and everything went smoothly. Some even mentioned that they upgraded to Primavera P6 because other PPM solutions they were using couldn’t handle the size and scale of their company’s project portfolio. 

Extensive training resources: It’s no secret that Primavera P6 is a somewhat complex tool. But you’ll have access to over 20 different training tools, including learning paths and courses, to help you master the software. Many users referred to these training resources in their reviews, saying that the training was crucial to helping them get the most out of the software. Modules are available for all types of users, including managers, analysts, and implementers. 

While taking online courses and constant upskilling may not initially seem beneficial, the sentiment in the reviews was overwhelmingly positive when discussing it. Other project portfolio management tools on the market are also complex but don’t offer nearly the same level of assistance in helping users master the platform.

Strategic objectives: Primavera P6 delivers real business value when it comes to project planning efficiencies. You can use the software to identify your goals across the entire portfolio and measure those objectives. You can present project progress to team members and stakeholders in many different ways, and your key objectives can be measured the entire way. 

The great part about this tool is that you can also adjust your goals and business initiatives if things change during a project. You just need to reconfigure the scoring criteria and different weight factors. You can also set up different scenarios to stay ahead of the curve and anticipate changes across your portfolio before they happen. 

Powerful scheduling: Primavera P6 is arguably the most robust enterprise-grade scheduling tool within the project portfolio management category. You can use it to plan, schedule, and manage large-scale initiatives and individual projects alike. The software makes it easy to schedule multiple projects simultaneously and coordinate scheduling costs. 

Set up different levels of access to the schedules, including team member access, so project teams can get status updates without seeing the same screens or data as managers. Many users report that this tool helped bring more visibility into complex project schedules, which ultimately helped them reduce costs and wasted time. 

Resource management: You can use Primavera P6 to maintain control over your resources throughout all projects in your portfolio. It allows you to manage resources based on roles and demand, so you have greater control over capacity management. You can also use the resource management features to clearly communicate the required resource needs throughout any project lifecycle, so everyone knows what you’ll need and when you’ll need it.

You can even play around with what-if scenario analysis in the software. This will help keep you prepared if something comes up and your resources need to be allocated to another. These different resource planning tools can be viewed on different graphs and dashboards, making it easier to digest, understand, and present to key stakeholders and decision-makers. 

What Oracle Primavera P6 EPPM Is Lacking

Primavera P6 is an expensive tool designed for experienced portfolio managers. It also doesn’t have the same flexible workflow options as similar solutions on the market. 

Not kind to beginners: While Oracle brands Primavera P6 as “easy to use,” many users disagree. It’s definitely more complex than other project portfolio management tools on the market. So, if it’s your first time using an enterprise-grade solution for project portfolio management, you’ll likely find Oracle Primavera P6 to have a steep learning curve.

With that said, the assumption might be that anyone using Primavera P6 already has some experience using similar tools, and the software likely wouldn’t be able to achieve its robust functions without this degree of complexity. It’s also worth noting that you may need to constantly sharpen your toolset and skills as you’re using this solution, something the training materials we mentioned earlier can help with. 

Cost and price structure: Oracle Primavera P6 doesn’t have the most straightforward pricing on the market, and pricing isn’t transparent on the website. You’ll need to reach out to the Oracle sales team to get started. Licenses start at over $3,000, and some licenses only support a single seat, while others can support up to five users depending on the role. 

It’s also confusing for interested buyers because people can purchase the product from third parties outside of Oracle. Some of these providers offer different discounts than others, making it difficult to find out what the true cost of the software will be for your business, especially when you’re just shopping around. It’s not quite as straightforward as similar solutions offering simple monthly rates per user. 

Rigid workflows: The workflow capabilities of Primavera P6 aren’t quite as versatile and extensive as some other tools. It’s really designed for projects that require linear flows. The software still allows you to manage change, but it just quite doesn’t match the workflow options of other tools on the market.

The software is designed for construction and engineering projects and the linear workflow modules seem to accommodate most use cases in those industries. But if you’re trying to use Primavera P6 for another type of project, it may not be quite what you’re looking for. That’s why it’s in your best interest to try the product first and consult a sales rep before moving forward. This will be one of the best ways to see if Primavera P6 can truly accommodate your needs. 

Oracle Primavera P6 EPPM Options and Pricing

Oracle Primavera P6 is an enterprise-grade portfolio management product within Oracle’s Primavera Cloud suite. It’s also one of many Oracle products designed specifically for construction and engineering. The software can be purchased as a perpetual license, but you’ll need to contact the Oracle sales team for more information and specific pricing. Fortunately, you can also try an interactive demo here

To see how Oracle Primavera P6 works in action, we’ll take a closer look at some real-life use cases below. These case studies will give you a better understanding of what can be accomplished with Primavera P6.

Oracle Primavera P6 for Standardizing Planning

Bombardier Transportation is one of the largest rail equipment manufacturing companies in the world. They use Primavera P6 as a single tool that can be used for all projects across the entire organization. 

A screenshot of Oracle's Primavera P6 EPPM project management web page.

For example, they provide cross-rail trains throughout the United Kingdom and underground upgrades to the rail system. Even though both of these projects are in the same region, they’re still very different. Primavera P6 lets them plan both of these projects the same way. Project teams and decision-makers can see an updated plan in real-time, regardless of location. 

In addition to the standardized planning capabilities, Bombardier uses Primavera P6 to integrate data from multiple sources to better understand projects. For example, they take employee data from HR and interface it with time-tracking information into time-booking for projects. 

Oracle Primavera P6 for Managing an International Nuclear Fusion Project

ITER is an organization with a mission to develop clean and sustainable energy. They’re currently using Primavera P6 to manage a massive project that contains over 10 million parts and 35 different countries in the supply chain. More than 2,300 workers are involved in this project, which will take ten years to complete. 

A screenshot of Oracle's Primavera P6 project management dashboard tracking multiple projects.

ITER is managing over 250 individual projects. The organization is constantly using Primavera P6 to check each project’s progress against the original plan. For such a large scope, there are many changes to manage, which Primavera P6 can handle. 

For example, the project managers can look ahead at upcoming weather events across different countries where the project is being worked on. Then they can estimate how those weather events will impede the project’s progress and how they can adjust schedules and resources around conditions that are out of their control. 

Oracle Primavera P6 for Managing Change Orders and Costs

Assystem is an engineering consulting company with over 4,000 employees throughout Europe and the Middle East. Managing change is the biggest challenge they face with infrastructure projects, as economics, regulations, and high-tech costs are constantly changing. 

They needed a way to better control costs and meet deadlines, so they turned to Primavera P6.

A screenshot of Oracle's Primavera P6 EPPM demonstrating project management for Haitang Corporate Park.

They’re using Primavera P6 to control project costs and scheduling within a single source of truth. Assystem also uses the tool to help provide benchmarks for themselves against the market. 

The company relies on Primavera P6 to help speed up the approval process on change orders, which frequently happens when working on different projects. Primavera P6 gives them greater visibility into the work being completed on each project and the cost breakdown. 

Oracle Primavera P6 EPPM in Summary

Oracle Primavera P6 is arguably the best enterprise-grade project management tool for construction and engineering firms available today. Its scheduling features and resource management tools really shine above other solutions in this category. It’s ideal for large-scale projects and comes with all of the training resources you need to succeed. 

But if Oracle Primavera P6 isn’t right for you, you may want to consider using an alternative option from our list of the best project portfolio management solutions. We recommend Monday.com for most projects due to its gentle learning curve, flexibility, and customization options. 

You may instead want to try Hive if you’re looking for a PPM tool built for keeping remote project teams working seamlessly through collaboration. You can also check out Asana if you want a project portfolio management solution that requires zero training to get started but still can handle advanced needs like automations with aplomb. 


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