Making the right choices when it comes to PLM can help prepare companies ready for the when the economic situation turns around.
What divides the winners from the losers in a recession? It all comes down to business process excellence. In or out of a recession, the main differentiator, when it comes to bottom line results, is operational excellence, delivered by business processes.
BPE (Business Process Excellence) basically means that businesses can do more for less. The need to continually beat the competition with less resource today means that BPE is more critical than ever, as nearly all businesses are under tremendous pressure. It’s not just about the way your business survives the current slowdown, but more importantly, how your business is positioned for the eventual turnaround.
Realising BPE
In recent times, the PDP team have had the opportunity to work on several PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) implementations and I’m pleased to say that the companies concerned have recently gone live and on time with their PLM solutions and are now starting to make significant inroads on their BPE. What’s more important is that, not only are they doing more with less resource, but they are also positioning themselves way ahead of their competition for the turnaround and will certainly reap the benefits of all their hard work.
Now I can understand that many companies out there today are focused on getting through these tough times, but believe it or not, I’ve recently met one or two companies that are actually struggling to maintain control due to continued sales growth! (Yes, there are still one or two lucky ones out there!) However, the economic situation is still very tight and those sitting tight and doing nothing will be left behind. On the other hand, we are still seeing businesses proactively responding to today’s challenges by moving forward with new PLM strategies:
• Defining a clear and tested ROI (Return On Investment).
• Understanding what needs to be done on business process improvements to help bridge the maturity gaps between manual processes and fully automated processes.
• Choosing the right PLM solutions to fix the business pains.
• Implementing in line with the ROI linked to key milestones based on moving from success to success, rather than the big bang approach.
• Using the best global PLM delivery ‘Experts’ to deliver the continuous improvements.
Making the right choices and doing something is key to your business survival and success!
Contact me
Please free to share your experience in assessing and selecting a PLM solution. Email me at mark@whichplm.com I look forward to your feedback.
Mark
Mark Harrop is a leading Apparel PLM expert with more than 34 years experience in the industry. Mark co-founded the Product Development Partnership Ltd, the team of experts behind WhichPLM.
