SAP PPM is a part of the SAP PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) suite from SAP. SAP PPM is the combination of SAP Resource and Portfolio Management (SAP RPM) solution and the Collaboration projects (cProjects) solution.
Organizations can use three key SAP applications to manage projects
1) With Project System (PS) component of SAP, one can efficiently monitor projects, which includes management of project costs and revenues. This covers the controlling and logistics part of project management and is generally popular in the manufacturing industry.
2) With SAP cProjects, one can efficiently manage phase based development projects. This enables project management throughout the entire product development process, supporting development, consultancy and IT projects. This provides improved structure, scheduling and visualization, operative planning and execution. It helps to collaborate with various groups, both internal and external including procurement and thus improves on resource efficiency.
3) With SAP RPM, one can manage strategic aspects of portfolio management, monitor project status which includes resource information and manage entire project portfolio. One can align resources, budgets and activities which enables regular and timely monitoring of portfolio performance, improved decision making, avoiding bottlenecks and easier resource forecasting. These solutions seamlessly integrate with one another to give optimal management tools. The effective project and portfolio management function allows one to obtain information from different project management, HR, finance and time recording systems. Hence one can monitor and coordinate all projects in the enterprise by optimal use of valuable resources.
SAP PPM has strong interfacing with other modules. Some of the modules SAP PPM interfaces with are SAP HR, SAP CO, SAP BI and SAP PS. Some of the main functionalities of SAP PPM include portfolio management, project management, capacity planning, financial planning, staffing, reporting and generating metrics.
SAP PS is very strong in the area of logistics where it is used as a comprehensive, integrated solution in project management, with many varied functions for controlling and monitoring projects. However in other industries, SAP PS is only used for cost controlling. The management of project execution is performed with other frequently unintegrated solutions. This can lead to problems as redundant data is stored because project stakeholders work in different applications. Integration gaps lead to time wastage and cause information losses making it difficult to get a clear overview of current status of individual project and overall project portfolio. As a result of the above SAP has come up with the SAP PPM solution. There is also a close linkage also to the SAP DMS (Document Management System)