Oracle Aims to Evolve Project Management

One of the fundamental problems with project management software in general is that tracking projects is one thing and actually managing them is another. According to Mike Sicilia, senior vice president and general manager for Oracle Primavera, as project management software continues to evolve, the one thing we should expect to see is a lot more in the way of advanced analytics actually being embedded inside the project management application as part of an effort to turn all the information stored in a project management application into actionable intelligence.

In fact, Sicilia says Oracle sees its Primavera project management application evolving into a hub where the lines between the Skire asset management application that Oracle recently acquired and Primavera start to blur.

Most organizations today manage their business around a project management application. But those project management applications tend be silos of information where a lot of the same data that already exists in other applications gets re-entered by project managers. Sicilia says that going forward Oracle wants to not only tightly integrate Skire with Primavera, but also the full range of Oracle ERP applications and master data management tools.

As part of that effort, Sicilia says Oracle will also make Primavera more accessible to a broader range of users via lighter-weight HTML5 user interfaces. While most organizations run their business today around project management applications, one of the challenges organizations face is that the only people who understand what’s really happening within a project management application are specially trained project managers. If project management applications are to become something everyone in the organization uses, Sicilia says they need to be more accessible.

Ultimately, what Sicilia is getting at is that the way business is managed needs to get a lot more sophisticated. Every organization to one degree or another depends on a project management application. But almost none of those applications are seamlessly integrated with other business applications, or are tied to any measurable set of goals for the business or, for that matter, particularly easy to use. Hopefully, by this time next year this will no longer be the case.