Best Enterprise Project Management Software in 2024

Enterprise project management software go beyond traditional project management by supporting complex projects, workflow automations, resource management, and more.

In this list, you’ll find the best enterprise tools with their key features, benefits, downsides, and user reviews to help you make an informed decision.

Productive is an enterprise project management software solution designed to support professional services workflows.

It provides a comprehensive solution for managing end-to-end business operations, from managing your sales leads, all the way to invoicing your projects.

Productive includes features for:

Let’s explore these features in more detail:

Productive’s Sales CRM module supports the customization of your pipeline stages, handling client communications, and managing overall sales collaboration and performance.

You can handle every deal like it’s an individual task: assign sales reps, leave comments in the tasks, and update their statuses.

The Sales CRM also includes:

Productive’s Resource Planning module provides a high-level overview into your employees availability and current workload across projects.

Within the resource plan, you can monitor both your utilization per day, and forecasted utilization to make better decisions across your project portfolio.

With Reporting, you can also create a utilization report to visualize utilization across different metrics (skill, seniority, department, etc.).

This also includes Time Off Management, which includes the full workflows of requesting and approving various types of time off.

Finally, you can manage your team’s billable vs non-billable hours with the Time Tracking features.

It includes different methods of handling time entries, including a timer, manual entry, and automatic tracking.

With the Project Management feature, you can get a more granular overview of your project teams and their progress.

This feature also supports team collaboration, as well as real-time collaboration with clients with the Client Portal.

Productive offers a range of project views, so you can customize how your tasklists look for each individual project. This includes: Gantt, Kanban, List, Calendar, Workload, and more.

Can create subtasks, to-dos, dependencies, and milestones to break up tasks into even smaller chunks and link them across different projects.

With Automations, you can also create no-code automated sequences to speed up repetitive tasks – for example, a task status is updated, a notification is sent to the right Slack channel.

Another great feature for enterprise organizations is the Permission Builder, which lets you build customized permission sets to control who can see and do what across the platform.

Productive’s Budgeting feature supports real-time monitoring of budget burn and profit margins.

Budgeting includes:

Forecasting is a feature that combines your Budgeting and Resource Planning to deliver insights into your future financial metrics.

Based on your employee scheduling, Productive predicts your future budget burn, profit margin, and revenue to support informed decision-making.

Productive has customizable reporting, with 50+ agency focused templates and the ability to create your own reports from scratch.

Customization options include: custom fields and formulas, different currencies, grouping and filtering options, and a range of visualizations (Line, Column, Donut, Area, etc).

Some examples of reports that you can create in Productive include: billable and forecasted utilization, profitability by client, project progress, uninvoiced amounts, and more.

To share your reports, you can create custom dashboards and add specific reports with widgets. You can also automate report sending to Slack or email with Productive’s Pulse.

Additional Features Include: Docs, Productive AI

Productive is SOC2, GDPR and CCPA compliant. Find out more in Productive’s Trust Center.

Productive offers seamless integrations with HR, accounting, and collaboration tools.

Integrations include Slack, Google Calendar, and Outlook for scheduling and updates; Xero and QuickBooks for accounting; BambooHR, Breathe, Humaans.io for HRM; Memtime for time tracking; and more.

You can also try out Productive with a 14-day free trial.

Wrike can be a good project portfolio management software as it includes features for end-to-end business workflows, but users say that the reporting features are limited.

Key features:

Pros: Wrike is a solid comprehensive project management tool, which makes it a good pick for managing a wide variety of projects.

Cons: Wrike’s budgeting and billing features are available only in the most advanced pricing plan. Additionally, some user reviews state that the reporting features are limited.

Source: Capterra

Smartsheet is an enterprise management software solution for a wide range of industries, but there are some limits to its sheets-based management.

Key features:

Pros: Smartsheet is fairly customizable, and it can be a good choice for project managers who are Excel or Google Sheets-savvy.

Cons: Smartsheet is similar to relational databases in some ways, such as its user interface, but some users report that it lacks the true flexibility of solutions such as Airtable or its alternatives.

Source: Reddit

Microsoft Project is a fairly powerful enterprise project management system, but it might not be the best solution for all types of workflows.

Key features:

Pros: Users mention enjoying that the presentation and functionalities of Microsoft Projects are consistent with other Microsoft Office apps. 

Cons: Microsoft Project is a robust platform, but it’s best used for specific types of projects. Its user-interface might feel unintuitive to teams used to creative project software.

Source: Reddit

Asana is one of the most popular project management apps, but might not be robust enough for those looking for a true all-in-one solution.

Key features:

Pros: Asana is step up in complexity and customizability for teams used to simple project management platforms, for example, Trello or Basecamp.

Cons: Asana is a less robust option than some software similar to Asana on this list; its lack of budgeting and billing features are its biggest downside for enterprise teams.

Zoho offers a variety of modules for enterprise teams, but its main downside is that not all of its modules work together or share the same workflows.

Key features:

Pros: Zoho Projects is a solid project management software, and can be built on by implementing additional modules.

Cons: Although Zoho offers multiple modules that can cover the end-to-end needs of business professionals, users comment that not all of them have a seamless integration.

Teamwork can be a good option for comprehensive project management, but its downside is a lack of integration between its project management and CRM platform.

Key features:

Pros: Users report that Teamwork is relatively easy to use, and can be a great choice for supporting collaboration and productivity.

Cons: Teamwork lacks some specific features that would make it a more suitable enterprise project management tool; for example, its CRM module is not built into the platform, which can make it more expensive than integrated Teamwork project manager alternatives.

Jira is a well-known software solution for development teams, but it’s often not the most popular for any other type of workflow, especially not creative ones.

Key features:

Pros: It can be a great enterprise management pick for agile development teams.

Cons: Jira doesn’t have resource management or budgeting features, so it’s not the best outside of project management functionalities. Its interface can also be unpopular among teams which are not development-focused:

Source: Reddit

You can check out our comparison between Jira, Trello, and Asana to learn more.

ClickUp is known as a customizable solution for managing project tasks, but similarly to Asana, budgeting is not its best feature.

Key features:

Pros: ClickUp is often praised for having customization features that accommodate various types of workflows and fields.

Cons: On the other hand, ClickUp is not the best for managing business profitability. Additionally, it’s frequently reported to have issues with performance and bugs.

Check out our comparison between ClickUp and Monday.com vs Asana vs Trello.

Adobe Workfront can be a solid option for creative teams, but might not be flexible enough for managing complex projects.

Key features:

Pros: Workfront integrates with the Adobe Creative Cloud, which can be a useful features for designers and creatives.

Cons: Users report that Workfront might not be the best for managing hybrid (waterfall/agile projects). Additionally, some have issues with its flexibility and steeper learning curve.

Learn more in our review of software similar to Workfront.

Planview AdaptiveWork, previously known as Clarizen, is a project portfolio management software, but can be difficult and expensive to implement.

Key features:

Pros: Planview has some fairly robust features for strategic planning and general business management.

Cons: Planview is generally reviewed as not easy to use, and many users have issues with its user interface and project management functionalities.

Nifty can be a good project management solution, but lacks advanced features for all-in-one business management.

Key features:

Pros: Nifty is another solid project management system with all the essential features for tracking workflows and collaborating. It also has a free version with all core project management features enabled, but capped storage space and projects.

Cons: It doesn’t offer resource planning, budgeting, and advanced reporting and forecasting features.

While Celoxis might not be as heavy as Planview or Workfront, users still find it difficult to use and onboard to.

Key features:

Pros: Celoxis provides businesses with more advanced financial management features, which can make it a good cost control software option.

Cons: Despite some users reporting it as a middle-of-the-road solution when it comes to its complexity, the most frequent downsides on Capterra and G2 still include its outdated user interface and steep learning curve.

Source: Reddit

Monday.com offers modules for work management, CRM, development, and service operations, but integrating these apps can be more time-consuming than investing in a fully integrated solution.

Key features:

Pros: Users usually enjoy Monday for its ability to build a wide variety of custom workflows.

Cons: If you want to have an integrated CRM and work management, Monday offers separate modules for these features. Additionally, Monday’s financial management and billing are not up to par.

Birdview offers two solutions: a project management and PSA software system. It can be a solid enterprise project management solution, but there’s a lack of native integrations.

Key features:

Pros: Birdview has a fairly simple and easy to use interface, and it can be useful for managing project timelines and schedules.

Cons: Users have some issues with certain features missing in Birdview, and limited collaboration functionalities. Birdview also doesn’t offer many ready-to-use integrations, with the most notable ones being Google Workspace apps.

Source: Capterra

There are similarities between enterprise and standard project management software, but they are focused on supporting different business needs.

Standard project management software is usually designed for small to mid-sized teams. Its basic features usually include:

They’re usually suitable for simpler projects that don’t need an extensive amount of strategic planning and scheduling or financial oversight.

On the other hand, enterprise project management software is designed for mid-sized to larger organizations that are managing multiple projects at the same time.

It’s main features include:

Additionally, these tools usually offer more flexibility to account for different types of projects. They should also include a wider range of integrations with third-party software solutions.

Enterprise project management software is suitable for large-scale businesses and organizations that manage complex, multi-departmental projects requiring extensive coordination and data.

This software is often used by industries like construction, healthcare, finance, and IT, where projects span across regions or even countries and involve a large number of stakeholders.

It’s also suitable for professional services industries, especially businesses that have multiple clients and want to have in-depth insights into project profit across different projects.

Another significant benefit includes strategic capacity planning, which goes beyond simple task planning and collaboration by providing visibility over all available resources.

So, even fast-growing mid-sized companies that are experiencing or expecting an increase in project volume or complexity might consider investing in enterprise project management tools.

The features of enterprise project management software can vary across different industries, but there are some basic functionalities to consider:

The main benefits of using enterprise project management software include:

Overall, the benefits of an enterprise solution are increased efficiency, enhanced project visibility, and the ability to scale operations while reducing costs and manual errors.

When choosing enterprise project management tools, consider several key factors to ensure it aligns with your organization’s goals and workflows.
First, evaluate your company’s needs based on project size, complexity, and the number of users.

Assess integration capabilities to ensure the software can connect with existing systems like CRM, ERP, and communication tools.

Customization is another critical factor; enterprise software should offer flexibility to adjust workflows and dashboards to meet specific project demands.

Another important factor are the reporting tools. They should provide detailed and integrated insights into finances, resources, and project progress.

Additionally, prioritize security features, as enterprise software often manages sensitive data.

Finally, Evaluate the provider’s customer support services. Enterprise software can be more complex than traditional project management tools, but customer support can make this process a lot easier.

Lastly, consider user feedback and industry reviews. If a free trial is available, this can be a great way to gauge usability and overall functionality before making a decision.

In this article, we’ve explored the best software for supporting projects and business operations.

Here’s a quick summary:

With Productive, you’ll get a scalable software solution with a modern interface, and a range of integrated features from CRM to project billing.
One of its best features is its real-time reporting, which provides insights into current and future profit, revenue, and project budgets.

Book a demo with Productive today to learn more.

Makerstreet is a collective of agencies with over 300 employees working across four offices in the Netherlands and Spain.

The collective was looking for a tool that would serve as a single source of truth for all of their companies, especially as they’re collaborating on certain projects.

Productive served as a user-friendly solution for both employees and the management team.

One of the biggest benefits that Productive brought to Makerstreet is the connection between scheduling and forecasting.

This helped automate workflows, but also ensures that resource planning is more accurate overall, as it’s the basis behind their financial forecast.

Learn more about how Productive facilitates cross-functional collaboration.