PPM Software: The Six Checks to Make Before You Shortlist

If you're evaluating PPM software for a council, NHS organisation or government department, this guide sets out six checks to make before you build your shortlist, covering G-Cloud contract terms, governance, reporting, Microsoft 365, information security and support after go-live.

For many portfolio offices, the last working day of the month follows the same pattern. Highlight reports arrive by email throughout the day, the last few are chased by phone, and someone in the PMO spends the evening copying RAG statuses into a board pack that goes out the next morning. By the time the pack is read, some of those statuses are already out of date.

The City of Wolverhampton Council's Projects and Programmes Team worked this way for years. Every month, they collected highlight reports for 59 projects and 32 workstreams and combined them by hand into a single dashboard for senior leaders. As the council's transformation programme grew, the team recognised that the process could not keep up, and they moved to automated reporting in Verto (read the Wolverhampton case study).

Most organisations buy PPM software to solve exactly this problem. The challenge is that the usual way of choosing a tool makes it hard to tell which product will actually solve it.

Why Feature Scoring Rarely Picks the Right Tool

Most public sector software evaluations start with a scoring spreadsheet that lists every feature the organisation might need, such as Gantt charts, resource management, risk logs and mobile access. Suppliers score themselves against each row, the evaluation team checks those scores in a demo, and the supplier with the highest weighted total is selected.

The difficulty is that every established PPM tool performs well against a feature list, because the core features have been standard across the market for many years. A feature list tells you which tool can do the most things, but it does not tell you which tool your project managers will keep using.

That matters because a PPM tool is only as reliable as the data in it, and the data depends on the people who are least invested in the system: project managers who have their own projects to run and did not ask for a new tool. If they stop updating it, your portfolio view becomes out of date and your PMO goes back to building reports by hand.

The Month-Three Test

Go-live is rarely where a PPM tool succeeds or fails. On launch day, users have just been trained, the senior sponsor is paying attention and the dashboards are new. The real test comes around three months later, when the project champion has moved on to other work and each project manager is deciding whether to update the system or go back to sending a document by email.

You cannot see month three in a demo, but you can check for the six things that decide it. We have set them out below in the order you are likely to meet them during a buying process.

1. Can You Buy It on the Right Terms?

Procurement is the first check because a problem here can delay a project by months, and it is often discovered late.

Public sector organisations have three main routes to buy PPM software:

• G-Cloud is usually the quickest, because suppliers have already been assessed on security, pricing and contract terms.
• TePAS (Technology Products and Associated Services) suits organisations whose procurement policy requires a mini-competition between framework suppliers.
• Direct procurement under the Procurement Act 2023 is possible, as long as there is a clear audit trail and evidence of value for money.

If you buy through G-Cloud, the framework is changing this autumn. G-Cloud 14 ends on 28 October 2026, and G-Cloud 15 opened to buyers on 6 August 2026 as the first version of G-Cloud run under the Procurement Act 2023. Three changes are particularly relevant to a PPM purchase:

• Buyers can now procure with or without competition, whereas most G-Cloud 14 lots allowed direct award only.
• Software contracts under G-Cloud 15 can run for up to four years, with extensions of up to two more years, compared with a maximum of 48 months under G-Cloud 14.
• Contracts do not move between frameworks, so anything awarded under G-Cloud 14 before 28 October stays on G-Cloud 14 terms (Stotles).

The longer contract term is the change to plan around. A six-year contract offers better value when the tool is right for you, and it is much harder to exit when it is not.

We recommend involving your procurement team before you book any demos. A portfolio-wide rollout that includes integrations, training and ongoing support may need a competitive process rather than an award without competition, and it is far better to know that at the start. When you review each supplier's listing, ask for the total cost of ownership over the full contract term, including configuration, training, support and any future upgrades.

2. Does It Fit Your Governance?

Public sector delivery is measured through governance, and your PPM tool needs to reflect that.

The NISTA Major Projects Annual Report 2025-26 covers 189 government major projects with a combined whole life cost of £924.2 billion. Of those, 109 projects (58%) are rated amber for delivery confidence and 34 are rated red. Those ratings are produced through stage gates, assurance reviews, benefits cases and formal approvals. Local authorities, combined authorities and NHS organisations run similar processes for their capital programmes, transformation portfolios and grant-funded work.

Your tool also needs to support the frameworks your organisation is held to, such as GovS 002, the Programme and Project Data Standard, the Teal Book, PRINCE2, MSP and HM Treasury's Green Book and its Five Case Model.

General work management tools can be configured to support this kind of governance, but someone in your organisation has to design that configuration, build it, maintain it and eventually hand it over to a colleague, and each of those steps adds cost and risk.

This check affects month three because, if the tool does not match your governance, project managers end up maintaining two records: the tool and the documents your board actually reads. When time is short, the tool is usually the first to be dropped.

3. Will It Remove Manual Reporting?

At Wolverhampton, 59 projects and 32 workstreams meant 91 separate reports every month. The council already had the data it needed, but bringing that data together took a large amount of staff time.

Before you see any demos, we recommend estimating how much time your organisation spends on reporting today. For example, if 60 project managers each spend half a day a month on reporting, that adds up to 30 working days every month, which is more than one full-time role, before your PMO has collated or checked anything. Your figures will be different, but the estimate gives you a clear baseline to measure each supplier against.

When you speak to suppliers, ask for three things: the typical reduction in manual reporting, how long that reduction takes to appear, and a customer you can speak to about it. It is also worth asking which AI features are live today with current customers, and treating anything on a roadmap as a future promise rather than a capability.

When updating the tool produces the report automatically, project managers have a clear reason to keep it up to date. When updating the tool is extra work on top of writing a report, most project managers will eventually stop.

4. Should You Build It in Microsoft 365?

Most public sector organisations consider this option, and it is a reasonable question to ask. You already pay for Microsoft 365, Planner is included, and many IT teams have experience with Power Apps.

• If you only need to track tasks within individual teams, Planner is likely to be enough, and you may not need dedicated PPM software yet.
• If you have strong Power Platform skills in-house and your processes are very different from other organisations, a Power Apps solution can work well, because it is built exactly to your design.

The costs of a custom build tend to appear later. A Power Apps PPM solution can depend on premium connectors, Dataverse capacity, Power BI licences and specialist knowledge that is often held by one or two people. A custom build can perform well at month three and still run into difficulty at month thirty, when the person who built it moves on. We have set out these trade-offs in our Verto and Power Apps comparison.

If portfolio governance is the main requirement, dedicated PPM software is usually the better choice. Whichever option you consider, ask whether users will need additional Microsoft licences or other tools to access the full functionality.

If you are moving away from Microsoft Project Online, which Microsoft retired on 30 September 2026, or from another tool, ask each supplier how your existing data will be moved. A credible supplier should be able to import data from CSV files, XML exports or through an API, and all work in flight should be visible in the new platform from day one.

5. Will Information Governance Approve It?

Portfolio data is often more sensitive than it first appears. It can include budgets, commercial positions, risks that have not yet been made public and, in the NHS, plans that affect patient services. We recommend involving your information governance team at the start of the process rather than at the end.

Ask each supplier where your data will be stored, which certifications they hold and at what level, when each was last independently audited, and whether penetration test results are available. If the platform includes AI, ask where that processing takes place and whether your data is used to train AI models. A certification described as in progress should not be treated as held.

6. Who Will Support It After Go-Live?

PPM tools usually lose momentum gradually after launch, as the original champion takes on a new role, configuration requests build up, and project managers return to spreadsheets because the old way feels easier.

Health Innovation North West Coast grew from 15 to 64 staff in 18 months and needed to manage 25 programmes and 70 to 80 projects under one consistent approach, with many users who were not trained project managers (read the case study).

The platform also needs to work for everyone in your organisation. Public sector bodies must meet the Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations 2018, so ask each supplier for its accessibility statement and evidence of WCAG compliance.

We recommend asking every supplier five questions:

1. When will our first workflows be live?
2. What training is included?
3. Who will make configuration changes after launch, and how quickly?
4. What does the support model look like at 12, 24 and 36 months?
5. What happens when our internal system owner leaves?

A Scorecard for Your Shortlist

You can use the table below alongside, or in place of, the feature rows in your evaluation spreadsheet.

Three Steps to Take This Week

1. Estimate your reporting time. Work out how much time your organisation spends on manual reporting each month, so you have a baseline to measure suppliers against.
2. Meet your procurement team. Agree your route to market, whether you need a competitive process, and how long the contract should run.
3. Find your latest board pack. Use it as the script for every supplier demo.