Setting up enterprise systems can be difficult. For 55% of companies, integrating data has been cited as the most significant hurdle in their data management efforts, along with additional costs from distributing data across the firm. Despite these complications, over 60% of companies still prefer to handle system integrations themselves. It’s time to avoid these costs. Discover our 6 Powerful Reasons to Hire Experts to Implement Your Product Data Management (PDM) and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions.

1. Implementation is what they know best

Implementation specialists regularly install, implement, and configure product data management (PDM) solutions as well as product lifecycle management (PLM) solutions. Implementation is what they do best! By leveraging the collective experience from a team of implementation specialists, you can ensure that your systems will be properly designed, setup and configured to meet your organizations unique business workflow.

2. 2. You will avoid the creation of an unstable system

Leaning on PLM Integration specialists will help your organization understand the organization’s dilemma, review its actual needs and define a company-wide PLM strategy. Think about the reason you decided to implement these systems in the first place. Odds are your company was attempting to change processes, boost productivity, simplify management and many other things.

There are many cases where companies attempt to configure things on their own, only to end up with an unstable system that is hard to connect. And what good is your new system if your organization is unable to use it?

3. 

4. 3. You will reduce your operating costs

A highly experienced staff that specifically focuses on your system’s needs allows your team to avoid wasted time on “the learning curve.” This frees your team to focus on the specialties for which they were hired.

Beyond productivity, implementation support ensures your engineering data is secure, stable, and available; no matter what department is using it. With a properly implemented system, you can be sure your organization will get the most out of your investment, and save time and money.

4. 

5. 4. Implementation specialists are familiar with difficult tasks and situations

Implementation teams are trained to handle advanced tasks, no matter the situation. For instance, In the case of a corporate split or a corporate merger, implementation teams are well trained to handle data splitting or data combinations. By using an implementation specialist your organization will greatly accelerate the time and value of your system investment while providing an environment for swift adoption of your new technology. These experts have experience implementing systems right the first time, for companies of all sizes.

5. 

6. 5. Implementation specialists can support a variety of products

There are many technical challenges such as customization and data migration that make implementing PLM and PDM solutions complex. Implementation specialists recognize the choices your organization has when it comes to implementing different styles of PDM and PLM solutions. They understand that the out-of-the-box functionalities of your system do not always meet all of your organization’s unique business needs and requirements. By hiring an implementation specialist, you can ensure your system is properly customized and designed to fit your organization’s needs.

6. 

7. 6. A successful implementation will motivate system adoption

After implementation comes adoption. This includes training and usability of your system. A trained implementation specialist will help you shift from a traditional technology-centered implementation effort to an end-user centered approach that promotes user acceptance and in turn an accelerated adoption of new processes and technology. This will help your company achieve desired business objectives faster, with less disruption to your organization.

Everything else aside, if you are at the decision stage contemplating whether you should hire an expert to implement your PLM/PDM solution or not, the answer should be a “no-brainer.”

A team of implementation specialists will leverage their technical knowledge, industry expertise, and experience to design and implement a cost-effective system that meets your organization’s unique needs.

We want you to get the most out of your PLM/PDM enterprise solution. Let us know how we can help.

Communicating product data across an organization has become more complex than ever. Here are 9 reasons it’s time to connect your enterprise systems.

With different departments gathering product data form a variety of systems including Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Systems, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems, Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), and Quality Management Systems (QMS) and more, how do we know our organizations are making the most out of all the information we’re collecting?

Just think about it for a second. Our systems and departments speak different languages, while a company likely aims for a single goal. This is why it can pay to connect your systems and provide company-wide access to business and product knowledge

With an estimated 90% of the world’s data created in the last two years alone (Conner, n.d.), it’s no wonder that companies have trouble utilizing it all.  The IDC estimates that just 0.5% of the data we companies produce is ever used. It’s time to change that.

1. Increased Usability

Data experts believe that if Fortune 1,000 companies increased the amount of data they used by just 10%, they could realize over $65 million in additional net income (Marr, 2015). These numbers are huge. Hopefully, they help you understand why I’m writing this blog and pleading my case.

The truth is – our systems are currently too complex for many roles within our organizations to navigate, find, and transfer the right information. This leaves our separate departments accountable for communicating different product data.

So how do we make our product data more usable? By democratizing our product data from all existing sources into one single system.

2. Better Access to Data

The most important reason your product data shouldn’t (internally) be kept a secret is because product data is your company’s most valuable asset. Not everyone who needs access to specific product information hosted in your PLM system is from your engineering department, so why force them through the same vigorous Product Lifecycle system training?

In order to effectively use data, departments must have ready access to it.

After all, the solution to this problem must make rich product information easy to accessible for a broad set of roles. By creating an organized system that connects all of your product data, your organization’s information is easily assessable to users beyond those who have created it. Just think of the possibilities if you connected your data from multiple systems and delivered it to all departments through individualized, role-based views.

3. Complete Data

Imagine an entire enterprise with access to real data, at the right time, when it’s needed. By connecting your product lifecycle management systems with your other enterprise systems, every stakeholder within your organization can leverage product data from multiple systems. They can make accurate decisions based on the latest, most accurate information from EBoM, MBoM, SBoM, ERP, MRP, and QMS data.

4. Better Insights

Better data + better visibility = better insights. Your teams are demanding more at lightning speeds from your PLM processes and solutions. This is another reason why your organization might consider integration technologies and custom front-end solutions.

An enterprise with insights into how current products and processes can be optimized can drastically improve overall productivity. Providing your team with access to up-to-date, accurate product data will allow your organization to have better insight into areas for continuous improvement.

5. Better Decisions

Ready access to information is especially important to any company involved with product development.

Users without access to information often make assumptions and resort to workarounds. This opens the door to  poor decisions and errors, quality problems, and waste. Decisions made from out-of-date, inaccurate data threaten product quality and delay time to market.

By providing everyone in your organization with broad visibility into your organization will drive better, more accurate decisions. This will improve your quality, reduce waste, scrap, rework, and meeting your time-to-market goals. The analytics resulting from connected systems help users across your organization make accurate decisions throughout your entire development process.

6. Better Products

Who doesn’t want to create better products faster? Providing your organization with universal access to data will allow your company to drastically accelerate product development. How so? By connecting disparate systems, you will have access to real-time data allowing you to achieve better product decisions. Because your decisions and actions are now driven by up-to-date information, you will achieve a higher product quality.

7. Increased Productivity

Why waste time manually reading, entering and analyzing data, when it could be automatically collected, filtered, and combined? By linking enterprise systems into one simple interface, any user within your organization can access contextual, up-to-date, real-time product information anytime they need. I guarantee your productivity will grow when your organization is able to plan earlier with manufacturing, order materials sooner with purchasing all while your engineering team is spending less time pulling reports.

8. Increased Collaboration

Using a system that provides role-based access for stakeholders provides every role with the ability to quickly understand the status of a part number, inventory, and the part or assembly’s role in the “big picture.” This will not only help mobilize and inform the work of teams throughout the organization, but it will also help maximize the success of your product development. Giving your team the ability to extend and connect your PLM data into the rest of your enterprise will rapidly increase your overall organization collaboration.

9.  Real Results

The ultimate benefit your organization will achieve by connecting your systems comes from your ability to get to real results faster. It makes the “to” in “Quote-to-Cash” just a little bit faster. What does that mean? Data gives your organization confidence to quickly deliver value. Good decisions, accurate manufacturing, knowledgeable service groups, self-sufficient marketing and sales teams. This all adds up to faster time to market, faster time to revenue — real results.

So.. what now? It’s time to connect your enterprise systems. 

I know what you’re probably thinking, ‘this sounds great, but it’s not that easy to connect and provide role-based access to enterprise systems.’

And you’re right. It would take a tool that connects all of your enterprise systems, right? I’m glad you’ve stuck it out for the long haul because this is what I need to tell you. There IS a solution. It’s called Windchill Navigate. What is it? It is a single role-based app that you can easily access from your smartphone, tablet, or computer where you can literally see all of your product data in one place no matter what department you’re from. Mind blown? We knew we needed to get our hands on it the moment we found out this solution that everyone has been looking for. This is why PTC has trusted us to be a valued solutions provider for their product Windchill Navigate. Learn more about it in our video “Windchill Navigate: Unlocking Product Data for Everyone.”

For over 20 years I worked in the manufacturing industry as a designer, CAD or IT manager. One issue I have seen and experienced many times is the difficulty of getting upper management to understand the need and benefit of getting the latest CAD, PLM systems, or any other IT systems. In each role there was always the need for new software to keep my teams and systems as productive as possible. In this blog I will, at a very high-level, outline how I was able to get upper management to buy in on projects I felt were needed.

Very early in my career I was a CAD administrator. At the time we needed new CAD software. I was able to talk to upper management very often. I would try to explain and tell them the need. I would verbally walk through the benefits and even give them demos of the software. But… they would not want to pull the trigger on buying the latest software. I could theorize with them until I was blue in the face. It just didn’t matter.

Then, a mentor of mine recommended I put everything to numbers, such as creating a ROI and roadmap of what was required to implement the new software. So, I did. First, I did time studies against what we were doing today. I did this by getting input from various different users. This was basically recording how long it took them to do the most common tasks. I would always take multiple samples and then take the average. Then, using a trial install of the new version of software I was able to get comparisons for each use case tested against current software. I put the time savings to cost savings based on hourly rate averages. I also related it to increased engineering department output capabilities. For instance, our department could produce four projects a year. With the time improvements we can now produce five.

The next time I spoke with my manager, I simply put a one page short summary of total potential time and cost savings in front of him. Which in this case, immediately got his attention. He of course wanted to know how I came up with those numbers. I had to be ready to back my numbers up. I did this by giving him a more detailed page and walked him through my findings at a high-level. I also had a page outlining the general implementation roadmap with a timeline summary. Only three total pages, not a short novel. He could no longer just dismiss or put off the need. I received approval to proceed with my plan in less than a month after presenting my numbers to my manager. In this case my manager was one of the company owners, but having hard numbers and a tentative plan got the ball rolling.

One thing to note from the above example, by doing what I outlined above, it elevated my standing at my company. They were impressed at my willingness to push for, justify, and plan for something I believed in. Not just asking them to take on the burden of something I felt was a good idea.

This scenario was repeated throughout my career. I could bring in vendors to demo their product, put quote after quote in front of management. Meeting after meeting with vendors and upper management, I could not get management to agree until I took the time to document the true benefits in time and money (roadmap and ROI).

If you have product or process improvements you feel will benefit your company, you need to show your management that you truly believe in it. You need to do the needed research and documentation to show the benefit and how you recommend proceeding. You cannot just go and tell management there are problems. You must present a solution for the problem you are identifying. If you do this extra work, it will not only help get your request approved, but will also help how you are viewed by your management.

Look, I know what I am outlining is no small task. It can be time consuming, very time consuming in some cases. That’s why many times this never gets done and needed improvement projects never happen. There is just not enough time for internal staff to do the needed research, and get their day-to-day tasks done as well. That is why you need to partner with a company dedicated to help with product development improvements at your company, such as EAC. We don’t want to just sell you software, we want to help you and your company improve the way you design, manufacture, connect to, and service your products. We do this with our proven people, products and processes. If you and your company improve and succeed, we improve and succeed. We will do as much of the work as we can to help you get the needed numbers and roadmaps put together. There is always going to be some time needed from internal people. However, we try to keep this as minimal as possible.

In summary, if you can see areas where your processes or systems could be improved you need to put it to numbers. You need an ROI and a roadmap to take to upper management. It may seem frustrating at times, but you need to understand where management is coming from. They also have people they answer to. They can’t go to a board, or an owner, or their manager with just a demo and a quote. Not only is that not the information they are concerned with, but you typically don’t get that type of time with them. They need quick and real information to justify the need. You must be willing and ready to get this for them. Just remember, EAC is here to help you do this. Please reach out to us.

We perform Product Development System Assessments (PDSA) for our customers. I’m frequently surprised by how many product development organizations still use email as their primary medium for the communication of information. Attached to these emails are test reports, marketing information, requirements, etc. Documentation that is critical to the performance of their product development!

I recently read a British study stating 38% of a knowledge worker’s time is spent looking for information. I can’t really believe that. We’ve run into organizations where it is that high, but not as a standard or average. But event if you discount that and cut it in half, that is about 20% of the time that knowledge workers spend just hunting for information. And this time spent hunting, this loss of efficiency, is invisible because it just gets buried with everything else inside the charges to project time within specific projects.

The other issue we have with email is that it’s open loop. It has no feedback. If the timing of the sending of some information is wrong, then the recipient will have to search through their inbox for the information after the fact and often times will ask for it to be resent rather than hunt for it. Also, you have various revisions distributed across the organization sitting on various hard drives – some of them current and some of them out of date.

When Bowen & Spears, famous researchers, talked about the need for a direct link between internal suppliers and internal customers, I think they talked about that connection as more personal, more collaborative, and closed loop. For your information flow, if you’re still using an open loop system, find a collaborative tool — PLM for instance. Help your researchers and knowledge workers take the pain out of their information flow.

Contact us to learn more about how Systems Thinking and the application of our Product Development Operating System can help your organization become more efficient, productive, innovative, and competitive.

Follow Bill at http://www.twitter.com/systhinking