Daptiv takes on-demand project portfolio management to the professional services sector

Stephen Withers
Monday, 21 March 2011 23:05

Business IT - Technology

Daptiv has been in the on-demand project portfolio management business since 1997. Its clients have primarily been in the IT sector (and in Australia include Virgin Blue, the University of Sydney, and Corrective Services NSW), but the company is now making a concerted push into a wider market with an offering tailored for professional services firms.

Founded by a former Microsoft employee and recently acquired by a private equity firm, Daptiv claims to be the market leader in on-demand project portfolio management (PPM) software. (For those who haven't come across the term before, PPM is basically about managing multiple projects in order to meet various objectives such as risk and profitability; aligning with high-level business strategies; and balancing the project pipeline with the available resources.)

Daptiv was acquired last year by private equity firm Parallax as a route to a more global business footprint. The company was most active in the US, but it did have distributors in other markets, including Brisbane-based Bluenova which it acquired last December and is now the company's Asia Pacific division.

"We've been very successful in this market," Charl Morkel, director of Daptiv's Asia Pacific operations (and former CEO of Bluenova) told iTWire. The company's customer list includes organisations in the financial services, education and government sectors. Daptiv's software is most often used in IT, but also for strategic program delivery and research projects.

A number of professional services firms were using Daptiv for internal and external projects, so the company has now launched Daptiv for Professional Services Automation (PSA).



"This really is a business critical system [for professional services firms]," said Ian Knox, Daptiv's vice president of marketing. While they are usually good at sales and billing, they do not have good integrated tools for running projects, he explained. With multiple services, projects and consultants, they need something to tie everything together.

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