The only comment I would make is it is also important to engage the IT function in the process as well. Whether the hosted or not, PLM needs to integrate with internal infrastructure as well as applications. IT is the keeper of the keys and it is easier if everyone is on the same team.

Tom

As a consultant, I would pitch PLM to engineering and production management first as a way to solve their inevitable problems surrounding revision control and documentation management. They will understand and help pitch it to management.

Steve

Thanks Steve for you optimal contribution – all clear to me

You were curious about how the need for PLM was identified and how the decision was made so here goes….I’m a hardware engineer with over 25 years experience taking a very diverse group of products from concept to production. Any time that I have taken a product to production, the need for PLM and document control has proven to be invaluable so I was the one pushing for this product. Our parent company had already implemented SAP for our group for MRP functions but PLM was neglected.

Unfortunately, the guys writing the checks did not have this background so it was an uphill battle to get PLM. We literally had to stumble a couple times (missed deliveries due to poor revision control) for the need for PLM to become apparent to management. Those missed deadlines and cost overruns were the ‘Ah-ha’ moment that made them realize what PLM could do for our company. Once they realized that, it was only a couple weeks before we had selected Arena and began implementation.

You are not alone in realizing that selling PLM to the uninitiated is a difficult task. Arena has realized this and recently come up with a lot of practical materials for helping to sell PLM to people from various backgrounds. Look at the ‘Problems Solved’ tab on their website for a list of all their arguments. I have used some of them in my pitches. A lot of their arguments are not just specific to Arena but could be used to help justify any PLM system to a wider audience.

Cheers,
Steve

As a recent adopter of Arena I thought I would add my comments about what led our company to go with an on-demand system instead of the other options. The short list: Reasonable cost, Ease of implementation, Rich feature set, and Security

I’ll explain those items in more detail but just a bit of background on our company. We are a smaller operating unit (20+) people of a much larger parent company (6000). Our parent company dictated the use of SAP for MRP/ERP and spent a small fortune on customizing the installation for our group. They did not however implement SAP’s document control module. It was up to me to survey all the PLM solutions from open source to complete custom products. Here’s why on-demand PLM made sense for us…

Cost per seat is reasonable, well under $1K-2K depending on level of access per user. no strict licensing schemes, they actually encourage you to add users as you see fit and will adjust billing at a later date. Suppliers and partners also have free access within reason.

Cost of implementation is important but often overlooked. Based on our experience, SAP requires customization for every installation and that usually involves some VERY expensive consultants and a large amount of billable hours. Arena charged a small one time fee for complete customization including ALL data importation, training, and support to go live and a dedicated coordinator to do all the work. Also there is no IT infrastructure required. No SQL servers, no backups, etc that we have to manage.

Their feature was also found to be quite extensive and handles every single task typically found in PLM software with added integrations into common CAD packages such as SolidWorks and Altium that we use. Some packages that I looked at had all these functions but they were very poorly integrated.

Security is also a prime concern as we are effectively giving the crown jewels of our company to a third party to care for. The staff of Arena have an extensive background in providing financial grade security of network services. I would accept nothing less than this from a vendor of on-demand PLM whoever they are.

In short, the field of vendors of PLM solutions is quite broad ranging from simple MS Access addons to full blown custom solutions. We found that On-demand PLM was somewhere in the middle of these offerings. It provided us with a very high quality product not usually found at this price and was well suited for a small to medium size operation such as ours.

Steve

Thanks Steve for giving us a good insight for what are the decision factors for choosing an on-demand solution. My main question from the consultancy point of view is: Who decided that there was a need for a PLM system and who motivated everyone to use arena (the plm system) as the version of the truth ? Aligning all departments or at least the major engineering and shop floor activities need to be done I assume – who took this responsibility in your company ?

First of all – great to hear from you, been a long time since we spoke.
Per your post, allow me to begin with a fact of life: “In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they’re quite different”.
In theory, consultants do what you said in your blog. In practice, they spend time on installing & implementing systems, writing scripts, debugging, training customers, answering customer support calls, and so on. There is very little room & budget left for strategic consulting – which is where the value is BOTH for the customer and the consultant. In practice, the customer has to have a PLM strategy, otherwise they can’t even get started.

This is exactly what we want to change. As a consultant you should be focusing on the strategic side of consulting, which will give customers the most value and you the most revenue with the least amount of headaches.

I’ll use the example of our CRM – we never had a CRM strategy, but we have a CRM. It was a no-brainer decision. And we had a consultant advise us on it, and is still advising us on it – but on the strategic “best way to run your business scenario” side, not on installation, implementation, project planning, and training. Much higher value for us, much more profitable for the consultant.

Its time for PLM to become a mainstream, no-brainer decision.

Benny hi, thanks for your response and I feel where you want to push us too. I think we agree on the fact that consultants should assist in a strategic direction (help the company to agree and work on a common PLM approach). I think you generalize too much when you compare consultants with application engineers (and perhaps in mid-market companies the same person tries to play both roles).
I agree there is a conflict for the implementer. From one side selling services (training/installing/customization) is easier to grasp and sell as compared to consultancy services, where not every customer is ready for – to understand the value and the need.
Especially in the mid-market my experience is that companies do not necessary work from a PLM strategy – they experience pains and want to resolve them. Here the role of a consultant is often needed to translate these individual pain and needs into a coherent strategy.
I do not believe you can compare CRM with PLM and say it is a no-brainer. I would assume before PLM is a no-brainer that ERP would come first. ERP systems came on the market 15 years before PLM, how many ERP on demand solutions do exist /
As you can see from Steve’s comment there are companies looking for PLM services on-demand. I am curious to learn how this decision process took place and will take place. At the end in my last years post “PLM in 2050″ I wrote about the fact that even PLM as a discipline might not longer exist – curious to see what will happen till 2050