Bubble PPM Reviews & Insights

Score6.6 out of 10

18 Reviews and Ratings

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for Bubble PPM are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Business Problems Solved

Bubble Innovator is a versatile tool that offers a range of use cases to improve project management and decision-making processes. Users praise its intuitive user interface, which allows for frequent data upload with minimal effort and streamlines reporting, enabling them to focus on productive work. The customizable reporting feature of Bubble Innovator allows users across various functions to easily create reports tailored to their specific needs and the questions posed by their leaders, driving transparency and alignment across the organization. Furthermore, Bubble Innovator serves as the source of truth for key NPD information, replacing multiple disconnected tools and ad hoc reports. It enhances transparency and facilitates collaboration by making the New Product Development pipeline visible to the entire organization, promoting cross-functional alignment and focus on NPD priorities. The software also acts as a centralized location for all non-technical NPD project data, eliminating the need for multiple reporting mechanisms and SharePoint sites. Additionally, Bubble Innovator provides valuable features for portfolio management, enabling management to make prioritization decisions based on project profile data and bringing visibility to the innovation pipeline. With Bubble Innovator, cross-functional teams involved in launching new products can collaborate effectively and coordinate their efforts across supply chain, marketing, quality, R&D, and other functions. The software acts as a single source of truth for new product development, program/project descriptions, financial impact, status, and milestone progress. This enhances organizational efficiency and clarity in the NPD pipeline by eliminating multiple sources of truth and reducing demands for updates. Moreover, Bubble Innovator helps strike a clearer balance between long and short-term innovation opportunities, supporting better project prioritization and resource allocation. Overall, users have found that Bubble Innovator improves project management and delivery within their organizations while enhancing collaboration and coordination among team members across departments.

Reviews

15 Reviews

Bubble PPM is a robust system with personalized assistance that will get your teams organized for Product Development work.

Rating: 10 out of 10

March 19, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Bubble PPM is being used by a proprietary product department, to manage the portfolio of New Product Development projects, as well as product line changes as well as supporting communication, R&D, and supplier/vendor projects. The service from Bubble provides a cloud-based system to manage portfolios of product development projects, as well as personal support for implementation of the processes necessary to make full use of a Product Portfolio Management approach. The system provides for simultaneous management of individual projects, as well as the portfolios of all projects underway by our department. The project management is ideal for product development work, with a phased-gate approach to managing the progress of work, along with a complete scheduling tool, financial modeling, and strategic scoring for project prioritization, and much more. The portfolio level view allows for a complete overview of all projects, the modeled financial contribution of those projects, and the progress to completion. There is a suite of project and portfolio level dashboards and reports that are extremely useful for meetings and progress reports.

Pros

Bubble PPM allows for a "single source of truth" for the progress and details of all projects. The very flexible system allows for customized forms and fields that provides a home for all the details of a project, from ideation to post-launch review.
Bubble PPM is particularly good for managing Product Development projects. The system is built with Product Development in mind, which is a unique offering where other project management tools have been deficient. The project templates are made for the specific demands of managing many ongoing products, with provisions for managing competing priorities.
Bubble is more than a software system, there is personal help with implementing a system of governing projects where there may have been gaps before. The company began as a process management consultancy, that saw the need for a system to manage the resulting processes they developed with clients. It is hard to overstate the value of this background of the company when adapting your existing processes to the Bubble PPM system, or creating processes for the first time.
If you want your team to be conspicuously well-organized, "doing the right work", with easy reports for progress updates, forecasting, and budgeting, this system will help you.

Cons

As with all software systems there are features that are occasionally changed to improve the function of the system. Some patience and curiosity is always rewarded with any software, and this is no different.

Likelihood to Recommend

Bubble PPM is well suited for anyone who manages product related projects, especially new product development. As we've matured in our implementation of the system we found that it is great for managing all projects, but the specific strength is product development to launch.

Bubble PPM would not be as appropriate for use as a CRM tool, as the references to people are best suited to users within the organization.

Matt Quist

National Director Agronomic Solutions in Product Management at Wilbur-Ellis (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

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Great project management tool - One point of truth!

Rating: 10 out of 10

September 7, 2017

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We currently use Bubble in NPD (New Product Development) to manage all new projects in development. It is used as a project management tool for the Innovation project managers and also as the "one point of truth" for all cross-functional teams involved in the project. Under each project/SKU profile, cross-functional teams are able to see the project overview, their tasks, what stage the project is in, meeting notes, basic timelines and who is involved.

Pros

Great at being able to manipulate projects and filter certain projects into a report. This is great for when we have different meetings for different channels e.g. food service vs speciality.
Easy to use - our cross-functional teams use this and they are able to find what they need without a lot of training.
The development team are understanding of our needs and happy to adapt the program for us.

Cons

Parent-child functionality. However we are currently working with Bubble to develop this and find a solution to our needs.
Limited timeline capability.
Sometimes the speed is slow - however I think this is related to our internet connection.

Likelihood to Recommend

Bubble is great for having all project information in one place! It makes managing a lot of SKUs easy and is great for pulling reports which become the agenda of our project meetings.

Laura Sew Hoy

Innovation Project Manager in Product Management at Tate & Lyle Sugars (501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

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Bubble Innovator - Intuitive portfolio project management

Rating: 9 out of 10

May 30, 2017

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Bubble Innovator was implemented to provide a single source of truth that would support fact-based decision-making, consistency of project delivery and would be accessible to all who needed it. Now used across 4 departments within our business we use Bubble Innovator to provide a better understanding of potential projects and help strike a clearer balance between long and short-term innovation opportunities, enabling team members to work on more projects with greater efficiency, and at the same time, provide better visibility of the measurable benefits being delivered.

Pros

Simplistic, smart view of entire portfolio, with easy filtering for quick searches
Readily accessible one-page summaries for projects, detailing specific data relevant to our needs
Ability to rapidly run a variety of specific reports

Cons

Ability to export graphs / cut & paste graphs to presentations
Agile-stage-gate
Ability to run graphical reports
Quicker ability to assess financial metrics for improved management and forecasting

Likelihood to Recommend

Great view of entire portfolio - allowing teams to operate a balanced portfolio. Ease of use. Quick access to one-page reports.

Resource model more restrictive - if looking to use >3 role levels.

Verified User

Project Manager in Research & Development (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

Bubble Innovator Overview

Rating: 10 out of 10

January 11, 2017

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Bubble Innovator is used across the business but primarily by those cross functional teams that are all part of launching new products - supply chain, marketing, quality, R&D etc.

Pros

Gives us one point of truth for both the projects and reporting.
Allows accountability for team members.
Is very easy to use.

Cons

Parent child relationship between projects.
Dependencies between gates and timings.

Likelihood to Recommend

Bubble Innovator is well suited wherever you need to have one point of truth/consistency where there are multiple inputs from multiple teams. Due to the accountability factor it means that the project has a shared responsibility as opposed to just with the project manager.

Verified User

Manager in Research & Development (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

6 years of experience

Just what you need, without a bunch of stuff that you don't

Rating: 10 out of 10

December 10, 2015

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Bubble Innovator is being used across the organization to track and manage our portfolio of R&D projects. It is the source of truth for projects in our stage gate review process, providing information to decision makers at all levels on project selection and execution.

Pros

Bubble customize what data are required very quickly, so that we only look at what we need.
Extremely responsive! Issues or requests for changes are handled typically within a day.
Based on their experience from various industries, the Bubble team contribute valuable insights into what and how information gets reviewed.

Cons

Only thing I can think of is almost piddly, that is having to scroll on a screen within the web browser - so that you have to scroll the screen then scroll the browser screen to get to the bottom of a chart.

Likelihood to Recommend

Well suited for any new application, any customization (whether changes within the existing framework, expansion to cover new capabilities and scope, or development of a different framework), and any size organization.

Todd Render

Director, Research in Research & Development at Johnson & Johnson (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

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Amazing Portfolio Management Tool - will make your job a lot easier!!!

Rating: 10 out of 10

December 10, 2015

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We implemented Bubble Innovator within our R&D/Marketing Department for 2 main reasons, Portfolio Management and Gate approvals. We implemented the system in the past year and everyone in R&D and Marketing is working in this system. The system has addressed the issue of many different Excel spreadsheets of our portfolio, not organized correctly, not enough information on the spreadsheets; one central location is the biggest benefit. We also incorporated the Gate Process for approval of all our projects and this allows us to report to upper management in a consistent manner.

Pros

The team that implemented Bubble Innovator into our business was tremendous. They worked with us closely and listened to our needs in incorporating changes quickly. The support we received was professional, timely and throughout the years of implementation we built a great working relationship with the team. They spent the time to work with us and also trained our entire department/business on this new system.
Change Management/Support - Bubble Innovator support team is responsive when asking for updates/upgrades to any report or additions/deletions that are required.

Cons

One improvement is all the reports need to be able to be placed into a PowerPoint easily, currently you have to take a picture and add [it]. This system is amazing and has helped me with my position of reporting and managing over 50 new projects.

Likelihood to Recommend

Bubble Innovator is suited for any business that does not have a centrally located portfolio management tool. It serves as one point of truth for the company, anyone can go in and run reports, look at the updates on any project, timelines, finance, etc.

Katherine Umberger

Group Manager - Trauma Project Management in Research & Development at Depuy Synthes (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

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R&D Portfolio Management with Bubble Innovator

Rating: 10 out of 10

December 10, 2015

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

My company uses Bubble Innovator as the main tool for portfolio tracking, reporting and analysis for entire Orthopedics R&D. It brings tremendous viability to the innovation pipeline and provides up to date information on where we are with each of the program. The further cuts it provides into state of projects, risks, financials and overall platform level projections are fantastic.

Pros

The User Interface is sleek,very user friendly and imaginative. There is a lot that can be customized by user level and interest. The data insights and visuals it provides are unparalleled. I have seen another similar system and the first thing that strikes me Innovator is so modern - 2015.
The support the team provides is excellent. The team has great talent with deep insights and experience into NPD. The team understands the challenges of working with a big company. They are great to work with and a very resourceful partner. During our partnership they went well beyond just system installation but improved native processes such as stage gates and leadership reports.
The system is highly flexible- one can create a variety of reports, views, analysis. It allows various restrictions if needed. It can create special views providing insights for management consumption which are very different to day-to-day tracking of portfolio. Very importantly the data can be uploaded into the system using one's own Excel files such as business cases.

Cons

There are stand alone analytical tools. Innovator will be even better if it fortifies its analytic capabilities

Likelihood to Recommend

It is particularly well suited for complex R&D organizations with multiple platforms and levels of R&D

Rushi Potdar MD MBA

Senior Manager , Global R&D Portfolio, Strategy and Business Operations in Research & Development at Johnson & Johnson (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

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Everyone Seems to Like Bubble INNOVATOR for Stage Gate and Portfolio Decision Making

Rating: 9 out of 10

November 24, 2015

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Bubble Innovator is being used across my whole organization as a tool for both stage gate and portfolio decision making. It has greatly improved the efficiency of data gathering and presentation in moving from spreadsheets and PowerPoint decks to the single Bubble Innovator tool.

Pros

Bubble Innovator seems to be one of those software packages that is liked by anyone who uses it. It kind of sells itself just by showing it to someone. It seems to be very intuitive and simple to use even for an occasional user.
Bubble Innovator shows the project progress through the stage gGate process very clearly which is great for upper management but it also guides project managers through that same process which means that things don't easily get omitted by accident/forgetfulness.
Bubble Innovator seems to be well received by upper management due to the simple way it presents the whole portfolio of products along with key metrics/data that is really helping to simplify portfolio decision making.

Cons

Bubble INNOVATOR is relatively new and so there is an ongoing list of development activity. Resource planning is an example where new functionality would be welcomed.
I am honestly not aware of any other weaknesses. Bubble INNOVATOR seems to be one of those systems that generally meets with great reviews from users and especially new users at all levels. I guess just the desire for it to do more and more.

Likelihood to Recommend

It would be difficult to comment specifically as it would depend precisely what the prospective new company would like it to do. In the area of stage gate and portfolio decision making, it has been a revolution for my company based on the prior methods we used which relied upon spreadsheets and PowerPoint decks, and were very labor intensive. So clearly I believe that it is well suited to this area of use. I think Bubble Innovator seems to be a relatively low cost option too.

Richard Farrar

Engineering Director in Research & Development at DePuy Orthopaedics (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

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Bubble Innovator - Simple straightforward portfolio management

Rating: 10 out of 10

November 23, 2015

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Bubble Innovator is being used across our organizations as a single "source of truth" for new product development, program/project descriptions, financial impact, status and stage gate milestone progress. It is further being adapted to be used for the same purpose for research programs and clinical studies.
The Bubble Innovator product solves the problem of multiple sources of truth floating through your organization regarding the status of any program/project at any point in time. It also reduces the multiple demands from different quarters of an "update" since you can point everyone to Bubble Innovator as that "single source of truth" for the new product development (NPD) pipeline.

Pros

The Bubble Innovator team is particularly good at listening and seeking to understand your specific requirements and needs to make sure the outcome of the product meets those needs.
The Bubble Innovator product is fast, efficient and available and accessible from anywhere.
The Bubble Innovator product gives you layered levels of logic associated with your programs so you can decide what rolls up with what or not as desired to suit the business needs.

Cons

Bubble Innovator is still working out the best logic to be used for collections of projects that are part of a program. It is not a project management software platform but must still manage/show dependencies appropriately.
Sometimes it is difficult to capture the right information for the right report. Note that a company's constantly changing needs for reports becomes Bubble Innovator's nightmare to keep abreast of. Bubble Innovator has introduced a custom report generator for their customers so you have more personal control over creating the reports you want.

Likelihood to Recommend

Do you need a portfolio management solution that provides a single source of truth for all your project related information? Choose Bubble Innovator.
Do you have difficultly organizing cross functional alignment on the funded versus unfunded programs? Choose Bubble Innovator.
Do you have trouble communicating consistently with your markets the future availability of your NPD pipeline of products? Choose Bubble Innovator.
Does senior management constantly want updates on the status and progress of your programs for which you end up in a constant PowerPoint loop creating? Choose Bubble Innovator.
Do you need a project management solution to manage your projects? This is not Bubble Innovator.

Verified User

Vice-President in Research & Development (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

10 years of experience

More than just software: a collaboration that streamlines productivity and alignment

Rating: 10 out of 10

November 20, 2015

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Bubble Innovator is our "single source of truth" for stage gate and portfolio management reporting. It is central to our PMO function and is used for regular monthly reporting of metrics, issue escalation & resolution, and portfolio optimization. Bubble Innovator has provided a level of transparency across the organization that was previously impossible to achieve. There are some key elements of the product that enabled this: highly intuitive user interface allows frequent data upload with minimal effort; visually appealing and simple automated reports drive transparency and alignment across the organization, while streamlining reporting (people can now spend time doing productive work, and less time trying to match an ever-evolving format for reports); and the new addition of highly customized reporting, so that users across many functions (upstream, downstream, pipeline, operations, regulatory, etc) can very easily create the reports that are best suited to their needs, and the questions their leaders are asking.

Pros

I already mentioned the simple user interface for data upload, and the equally intuitive customized reporting. Leadership and "supporting" functions for product development get tremendous value from this because they don't need to hunt down answers anymore. Everything from pipeline planning to operational planning can be built on the same foundation of objective data, rather than many different sources interpreted through many different lenses.
But the greatest value I think Bubble Innovator delivers is not really the product itself. It's the sense of partnership and responsiveness from the Bubble Innovation team. The Bubble Innovation team becomes a part of your team. They are valued consultants with helpful input on best practices for stage gate management, portfolio analytics, and report visualization. I have continually been impressed with the responsiveness and effort that their team brings to the table. When we have challenges and need to customize our data or analytics or reporting, they are right there beside us, finding the best solution, sharing prototypes in a test environment, and implementing as fast as possible.

Cons

The biggest issue we've had in the past is customized reporting. But this has now been addressed with a new module dedicated to enabling any user to build the report to exactly meet their needs and address the questions being asked by their leaders. There is always room for improvement here, and the leadership demands for alternative views are frequently evolving, but with the customized reporting ability we can deal with this evolution far better than ever before, and beyond the capabilities of any competitive product I've seen.
Detailed resource & capacity planning is not the strength of this tool. Compiling and packaging data to drive highly constructive conversations during stage gate reviews, pipeline reviews, and portfolio optimization discussions is. With that said, the Bubble Innovation team rose to the challenge of creating a high-level resource & capacity planning tool that now gives us reasonable ability to plan for forward-looking functional resource gaps in the context of a prioritized project list. It won't address detailed capabilities/competencies at the individual employee level.
For senior level reporting, we tend to speak in PowerPoint. While it is pretty effortless to create Excel and pdf output from Bubble Innovator, it would be nice to be able to export reports/data/charts/content to PowerPoint.

Likelihood to Recommend

No stage gate or portfolio reporting solution can overcome poor input data. The organization has to be willing to commit to consistent and rigorous updates of the information, or the reporting becomes useless. From what I've seen of competitive systems, Bubble Innovator is the easiest to use in this regard, so the excuse of not having good data because it's painful to upload or cumbersome to retrieve goes away. And the ease with which you can produce customized reports allows you to immediately find the gaps and weak points in your data, and take action to address them. That's not to say that every report and function in Bubble Innovator is perfect. But the close collaboration and responsiveness of the Bubble Innovation team has made it relatively easy to triage, prioritize, and implement improvements along the way.

Matt Parsons

Director of Portfolio and Stage Gate in Research & Development at J&J Medical Devices (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

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