Best approach for Product Lifecycle Management

Turning PLM into business success

PLM is slowly becoming recognized as a credible innovation enabler. Until recently, PLM was practiced only by a handful of engineering departments of some companies. Today, many business leaders across industries see PLM as a necessary discipline for driving innovation, managing costs, improving pricing strategies and powering growth.

In product development projects, strong PLM capabilities make high growth possible. This can improve your product design, cut costs and lead time. Essentially, PLM is the process of managing product and product data along the entire lifecycle right from concept, design, to service and delivery. PLM integrates people, processes, data and business systems that provide a backbone for companies and their enterprise. In this article, we give insights on how to take an approach that captures the true potential of PLM. Here's what it takes to make it work. Based on our own understanding of product life cycle services, we think that product development is much more than just engineering. In this digital era, it takes much more to craft successful products. Companies need a robust solution that can assist them throughout the product lifecycle - from ideation till disposal. We believe that it is way more beneficial to create value beyond engineering.

The winning approach for product development includes–

• Sharp strategy
• High quality deliverables
• Efficient infrastructure
• Connected ecosystem

You can get winning results by collaboratively discovering an approach that best fits for the success of customer products. This starts with proposing the right engagement models, best delivery practices, perfect technologies and best platforms.

e-Zest does this by combining the best practices with technology delivery. This outlines our ‘best fit’ approach for customer success. The key differentiating elements can be classified into these three areas:

Best pricing practices -Outcome-based billing, time and materials along with fixed cost model.

Best Delivery practices - Lean, agile, Kanban or iterative methodology to deliver successful products.

Proven Technologies - Java, .Net, PHP and RoR extensively with web, mobile and tablet platforms for delivery.

We engage with our customers at every stage of product life cycle to enable a smooth transition. Following the best practices has helped us deliver predicted business outcomes to our customers.

• Idea - Do market research, feasibility study, define go-to-market strategy
• Minute Viable Product (MVP) - Involve best business analyst teams and chalk out product roadmap and decide trade-offs
• Engineering - Define/establish/redesign core architecture, identify ecosystems and leverage solution accelerators to speed up development and improve time to market
• Maintenance - Implement development operations, standardize QA and release process and refine product roadmap if required
• Support - Establish support channels, leverage product feedback and enhance customer experience
• Re-engineering - Product redevelopment, partial reengineering or complete reengineering along with redefined product vision

For business success through PLM, we have identified three essential guidelines to ensure you maximize your possibilities of generating a high return on your PLM investment and turn it into a success story:

• Strategic business approach to PLM by engaging top management
• Start an IT implementation only after expected business outcomes have been detailed
• Create value beyond engineering through focused and holistic approach

Following these guidelines help you generate high returns on PLM investments as well as build sustainability. Failing to optimize PLM investments will have a long-term impact on top and bottom-line positions of even the strongest companies.