Smaller Companies, Bigger Stakes (cont.)
Continued from March 2005 Main Page
Smaller companies are, more often than ever, facing issues familiar to larger organizations such as:
- Global sourcing as they seek to compete with suppliers around the world.
- Product innovation and customization that must address increasingly complex customer requirements.
- Accurate timely quotation of all available business.
- Program management that assures quality delivery on a timely basis and repeatable, traceable processes.
In fact, addressing these issues is often considered mission-critical to smaller companies and may ultimately be tied to their very survival.
In its report, AMR goes on to say that PLM activities such as initiating and executing a design change, cost estimating, propagating BOMs to manufacturing and purchasing and initiating a new product development project, among others, are all important to the success of smaller businesses as well as top priorities for improvement.
So those are the similarities, but what challenges make smaller companies different from large enterprises? What is indicative of smaller companies in particular is a consistent concern for cost of ownership, limited resource availability and an overriding feeling of "betting the business" on the systems they choose. Smaller companies may:
- Have small or no IT staff, with minimal capability for customization and support.
- Be concerned with the potential 3D data explosion as they move from 2D to 3D and try to improve reuse simultaneously.
- Have limited or possibly no processes, making automation difficult.
- Need to maximize employee time on task and thus have limited or no training resources.
- Need to minimize risk - one missed step could mean irreparable damage and going out of business.
These constraints make addressing the needs of smaller companies in some ways more challenging for IT than it is for other companies. Fortunately PLM technology provides solutions that address smaller company requirements such as:
- Windows environment - A single common user environment makes support easy for internal personnel and provides a platform for easy integration of multiple applications.
- "Out of the Box" functionality - Pre-configured processes provide built-in standardized solutions and limit the need to invest in customization before reaping advantages of the investment.
- Simple interaction model - Allows users to adopt technology quickly, with minimal training, allowing even occasional users to interact with software despite a variety of tasks required by highly varied job descriptions.
- Growth path for advanced capabilities - Scalability with built-in data protection allows for application growth as the company grows.
- Affordability - Both initial purchases and full-term, cost of ownership.
Smaller companies need not - in fact must not - be left behind in gaining the benefits of PLM. They can start with a PLM application that addresses their greatest area of pain and grow their capabilities incrementally as demand requires. And, by choosing PLM solutions that are open, they don't risk losing their investment to inflexible or proprietary technology or systems that limit their pool of potential customers or suppliers.
Smaller companies have many options for incorporating PLM, but one application chosen by a number of UGS customers is Solid Edge, a mid-range CAD offering that enables companies to design with insight by embedding design management capabilities within CAD. This week UGS is launching the latest release, Solid Edge 17, at the National Design Engineering Show in Chicago. If you would like information on this new offering, read the full press release or visit the Solid Edge Web site.
PLM is one of the few IT solutions that can actually assist in driving top-line revenue growth, while allowing companies of all sizes to innovate, collaborate, reduce cycle time and manage complexity. Now PLM solutions are available to address the challenges of all manufacturers - and that's good news for smaller companies that are thinking big!
1 - SMBs: Your PLM Options, by Michael Burkett, Dineli Samaraweera, David O-Brien. AMR Research Report, September 30, 2004.
