The past two years I have been blogging about PLM, with a special focus on the mid-market. My previous post was about PLM selection (which PLM to choose) and thanks to Oleg (How To Choose PLM? (Visual guide)) this became a broader discussion. It made me realize that although we are all talking about PLM, I am not sure if we all have the same opinion about the mid-market.
To be aligned my previous definition of the mid-market:
Mid market company: For me the definition of a mid-market company does not have to do with revenue or the amount of people working for this company. I characterize a mid-market company as a company, where everyone has a focus on the company’s primary process. There is no strategic layer of people, who are analyzing the current business and defining new strategies for the future. In addition, the IT-staff is minimal, more seen as an overhead than as strategic. Mid-market companies have their strength in being flexible and reacting fast on changes, which might contradict with a long term strategic approach.
Now I am curious about your opinion. Therefore I published a small questionnaire on a Belgium website, to get a quick feedback and I am looking forward to your response. Although I do not consider it as scientific research, your (anonymous) response will enable me review my opinion and to focus on some specific topics.
Please take the time so answers this questionnaire from the link below:
PLM for the mid-market – your opinion
Thanks for your feedback and I will publish the results end of October
Jos Voskuil
Jos Voskuil's Weblog 
5 comments
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September 12, 2010 at 11:08 pm
Oleg Shilovitsky
Thanks Jos, Looking forward to seeing results. Best, Oleg
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September 22, 2010 at 9:42 pm
Douglas
I think we need to get away from the notion that a company’s size or capacity for strategic planning has anything to do with its PLM needs. For that we need to look at the type of business it is in and the way it cooperates internally across divisional or geographical sites or externally with co-produces and/or –developers. We will assess the PLM requirements against the proper characterization of a maturity stageb defined in a PLM maturity model. If we do that, we will see that mid-size companies can have big-time PLM challenges.
Like the relatively small company that is spread over 4 manufacturing locations on 2 different continents in 3 different time zones: 3 of those 4 locations also create product data and are required to do so in the framework of common product development. These sites also release BOM data to 4 different ERP instances, 2 of which also have the capability of configuring products by using the build-in product configurator. It is worth mentioning that this organization, due to acquisitions and take-overs in the past, currently operates 4 different CAD platforms managed by 3 different PDM systems and that recently investigations have started to see if external collaboration could be started to co develop new products . Indeed a mid-size company with a big-time challenge…
Douglas hi, thanks for your reply and I agree mid-size companies can have big-time challenges. With this kind of complexity you can see there is in one way a huge need to consolidate but in parallel you need to remain flexible, which I believe is a mid-market characteristics.
Best regards
Jos
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October 16, 2010 at 4:23 pm
PLM selection – don’t do this ! « Jos Voskuil's Weblog
[…] my previous post (PLM for the mid-market – your opinion) I started a very small questionnaire – if you did not have the time (takes less than 5 minutes) […]
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October 20, 2010 at 9:48 am
Graham McCall
I agree that mid size companies have many of the complexities of much larger organisations. However they don’t have the same budgets. Traditionally there has been a high cost of entry to PLM which has put mid size companies off. These costs are not just associated with the software licenses but also with implementation, support & infrastructure etc..
Mid size companies are looking for solutions that are quick to implement and which come without the up front license costs. PLM software providers like Aras (www.aras.com) are spearheading this march. PLM implementation companies like ourselves (www.aessis.com) are helping companies evaluate & implement these new approaches.
Graham hi, I do not believe it is just the budget. In several PLM deals I have seen the PLM vendor gives the software away for free, to assure the lock in of this customer for their services and maintenance. PLM not neccessary needs to be costly upfront – and when doing a gradual step by step approach, often the ROI comes short behind the investment – I have written a post about that in the past. I agree with you that it is the role of PLM implementation companies to help customers evaluate and assist in these new approaches as PLM Vendors are more focussing on selling their software with functions and features, less on methodology
Best regards
Jos
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October 29, 2010 at 5:49 pm
Adrian
I like the follow-up posts, and agree it is nothing to do with size and market the SMB is in. It should be wholley about is PLM going to fulfill a need and therefore provide a benefit. It has too economic too, so budget including services and maintainence are a vailid part of the equation.
Uncovering the needs, fitting the correct PLM functionality to those needs requires diligence from someone who has a vested intrested in the the customer suceeding.
It is alos true PLM vendors have to be rewarded for the use of thier products and rewarded fairly. However the named user licesnesing, T&M services costs, maintainence costs are all either spent and or fixed long before the customer can tell if thier PLM project has been sucessful and therefore value for money. This loads all the risk on the customer. I personally welcome anything that challanges the market norms and give the customers lower risk propositions and reward the PLM vendors who deliver high quality, sucessfull implementations.
Thanks Adrian – fully agree
Best regards
Jos
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