Leveraging PLM to Become An On-Demand Business
Successful companies are able to harness
innovation to drive growth and maintain their competitive advantage
through PLM. Find out why.
What if a company could be better than its competition at turning raw ideas and innovative ideas into marketable products? What kind of edge would that give it in the marketplace? What incremental growth could it achieve? In fact, according to a survey of more than 800 CEOs and board directors, the world's most innovative companies generate twice as many ideas, develop three times as many into products and enjoy twice the success rate for new products as their average competitors. This could be you.
Successful companies are able to harness innovation to drive growth, maintain a competitive advantage and be the best in their class. These companies break out of their business process silos and unleash the power of their information to make better product decisions earlier in the development process, and become more effective and efficient. Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is a set of capabilities that enables an enterprise to effectively and efficiently innovate and manage its products and related services throughout the entire business lifecycle; from conception through recycling or disposal.
As defined, an on-demand business is an enterprise whose business processes"integrated end-to-end across the company and with key partners, suppliers and customers"can respond with flexibility and speed to any customer demand, market opportunity or external threat.
To achieve this, PLM helps companies realize many of the benefits of becoming an on-demand business, including:
Product development can be a daunting task due to complexities involved in integrating numerous partners, suppliers and processes. Often, an environment is created where product development happens more by accident than by design.
Recently, several PLM vendors who are partnered with IBM have introduced new Web-based, on-demand PLM services to help companies improve the efficiency of their product lifecycle processes and to help them realize lower up-front investments and infrastructure costs. According to John Moore,vice president of ARC Advisory (Dedham, MA), a leading IT analyst firm the benefits for PLM on demand are particularly strong for small- and medium-sized businesses.
In his report, On-Demand PLM: Is It Ready for Prime Time?, Moore lists several benefits of this model, including low up-front costs, minimal internal IT support requirements, near-instantaneous deployment giving fast time to value, and easier collaboration. He also points out that because users are always using the latest version of the software, errors resulting from development bugs are minimized.
Another leading analyst, Marc Halpern of Gartner Group (Stamford, CT), had this to say in his report New PLM "On Demand" Service Can Transform PLM Markets: "The on-demand business model will increase in presence and momentum the potential savings in software, deployment and maintenance costs are too compelling to not consider. This will be particularly true for small and medium businesses that want the benefits of PLM functionality but do not have the infrastructure to support it." This is more than just market or vendor hype; customers are seeing the value today. Lam Research Corp. (Fremont, CA), a leading supplier of semiconductor fabrication equipment, was an early adopter of PLM on demand and they chose it to help improve efficiency in product lifecycle processes. Lam will use PLM on demand to facilitate a standardization of design practices and enable collaboration throughout the company's value chain, helping increase product quality, improve market responsiveness and lower cost of production. The semiconductor will tap into the service on an as-needed basis, paying only for the resources used. The service allows Lam to eliminate up-front capital expenditures and reduce deployment time compared to a traditional implementation, where it would install the infrastructure and manage the application in-house. This is particularly effective for the semiconductor industry, which is familiar with the peaks and valleys common in the high-tech industry.
On-demand is a business model, vision and a journey that companies are leading. Technology will be critical to reaching this vision. Leveraging PLM solutions "on-demand Web-based services, for example" will help improve product development processes. Companies, both small and large, across all industries will gain the flexibility to respond to market demands or external threats with cat-like reflexes. Is on-demand part of your vision? How far along are you or how will you start? Are you leveraging PLM technologies? These decisions and the pace of your changes may be the difference between your innovative products in the hands of a customer versus your competitors.
For more information contact Kurt Kovacic, global marketing manager, IBM Product Lifecycle Management, at (212) 745-4732.
Successful companies are able to harness innovation to drive growth, maintain a competitive advantage and be the best in their class. These companies break out of their business process silos and unleash the power of their information to make better product decisions earlier in the development process, and become more effective and efficient. Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is a set of capabilities that enables an enterprise to effectively and efficiently innovate and manage its products and related services throughout the entire business lifecycle; from conception through recycling or disposal.
As defined, an on-demand business is an enterprise whose business processes"integrated end-to-end across the company and with key partners, suppliers and customers"can respond with flexibility and speed to any customer demand, market opportunity or external threat.
To achieve this, PLM helps companies realize many of the benefits of becoming an on-demand business, including:
- Consistently going to market with the right product at the right time and being a leader in innovation with new products that meet, and even anticipate, the desires and demands of customers, while reducing risk and product development time.
- Ensuring the ability to grow profitably by delivering products and related services collaboratively developed in a lean, fast-reacting, digital design and modeling environment, while maximizing the return on assets and minimizing costs.
- Becoming more agile and flexible by focusing on core strengths, distributing product development to partners if fast-changing market conditions or time frames demand it.
Product development can be a daunting task due to complexities involved in integrating numerous partners, suppliers and processes. Often, an environment is created where product development happens more by accident than by design.
Engaging Collaboration
Creating a product development process that is flexible and integrated across the entire virtual enterprise, including core business processes, can enable collaboration with suppliers and customers. This can improve innovation and get the right product to market at the right time by responding to analysis and feedback along the product lifecycle based on the correct, real-time information.Recently, several PLM vendors who are partnered with IBM have introduced new Web-based, on-demand PLM services to help companies improve the efficiency of their product lifecycle processes and to help them realize lower up-front investments and infrastructure costs. According to John Moore,vice president of ARC Advisory (Dedham, MA), a leading IT analyst firm the benefits for PLM on demand are particularly strong for small- and medium-sized businesses.
In his report, On-Demand PLM: Is It Ready for Prime Time?, Moore lists several benefits of this model, including low up-front costs, minimal internal IT support requirements, near-instantaneous deployment giving fast time to value, and easier collaboration. He also points out that because users are always using the latest version of the software, errors resulting from development bugs are minimized.
Another leading analyst, Marc Halpern of Gartner Group (Stamford, CT), had this to say in his report New PLM "On Demand" Service Can Transform PLM Markets: "The on-demand business model will increase in presence and momentum the potential savings in software, deployment and maintenance costs are too compelling to not consider. This will be particularly true for small and medium businesses that want the benefits of PLM functionality but do not have the infrastructure to support it." This is more than just market or vendor hype; customers are seeing the value today. Lam Research Corp. (Fremont, CA), a leading supplier of semiconductor fabrication equipment, was an early adopter of PLM on demand and they chose it to help improve efficiency in product lifecycle processes. Lam will use PLM on demand to facilitate a standardization of design practices and enable collaboration throughout the company's value chain, helping increase product quality, improve market responsiveness and lower cost of production. The semiconductor will tap into the service on an as-needed basis, paying only for the resources used. The service allows Lam to eliminate up-front capital expenditures and reduce deployment time compared to a traditional implementation, where it would install the infrastructure and manage the application in-house. This is particularly effective for the semiconductor industry, which is familiar with the peaks and valleys common in the high-tech industry.
On-demand is a business model, vision and a journey that companies are leading. Technology will be critical to reaching this vision. Leveraging PLM solutions "on-demand Web-based services, for example" will help improve product development processes. Companies, both small and large, across all industries will gain the flexibility to respond to market demands or external threats with cat-like reflexes. Is on-demand part of your vision? How far along are you or how will you start? Are you leveraging PLM technologies? These decisions and the pace of your changes may be the difference between your innovative products in the hands of a customer versus your competitors.
For more information contact Kurt Kovacic, global marketing manager, IBM Product Lifecycle Management, at (212) 745-4732.
