Last week I had the opportunity to discuss the topic of Systems of Engagement in the context of the more extensive PLM landscape.

I spoke with Andre Wegner from Authentise and their product Threads, MJ Smith from CoLab and Oleg Shilovitsky from OpenBOM.

I invited all three of them to discuss their background, their target customers, the significance of real-time collaboration outside discipline siloes, how they connect to existing PLM systems (Systems of Record), and finally, whether a company culture plays a role.

Listen to this almost 45 min discussion here  (save the m4a file first) or watch the discussion below on YouTube.

 

What I learned from this conversation

  • Systems of Engagement are bringing value to small enterprises but also as complementary systems to traditional PLM environments in larger companies.
  • Thanks to their SaaS approach, they are easy to install and use to fulfill a need that would take weeks/months to implement in a traditional PLM environment. They can be implemented at a department level or by connecting a value chain of people.
  • Due to their real-time collaboration capabilities, these systems provide fast and significant benefits.
  • Systems of Engagement represent the trend that companies want to move away from monolithic systems and focus on working with the correct data connected to the users. A topic I will explore in a future blog post/

I am curious to learn what you pick up from this conversation – are we missing other trends? Use the comments to this post.

 

Related to the company:
Visit Authentise.com

Related to the product:
Learn more about Collaborative Threads

Related to the reported benefits:
– Surgical robotics R&D team tracks 100% of their decisions and saves 150 hours in the first two weeks… doubling the effective size of their team:

Related to the company:
Visit Colabsoftware.com

Related to the product
Raise the bar for your design conversations

Related to the reported benefits
– How Mainspring used CoLab to achieve a 50% cost reduction redesign in half the time
– How Ford Pro Accelerated Time to Market by 30%

Related to the company:
Visit openbom.com

Related to the product:
Global Collaborative SaaS Platform For Industrial Companies

Related to reported benefits:
– OpenBOM makes the OKOS team 20% more efficient by helping to reduce inventory errors, costs, and streamlining supplier process
– VarTech Systems Optimizes Efficiency by Saving Two Hours of Engineering Time Daily with OpenBOM

 

Conclusion

I believe that Systems of Engagement are important for the digital transformation of a company.

They allow companies to learn what it means to work in a SaaS environment, potentially outside traditional company borders but with a focus on a specific value stream.

Thanks to their rapid deployment times, they help the company to grow its revenue even when the existing business is under threat due to newcomers.

The diagram below says it all. What are your favorite Systems of Engagement?

Hot from the press

Don’t miss the latest episode from the Share PLM podcast with Yousef Hooshmand – the discussion is very much connected to this discussion.