Every initiative starts with the best intentions. Requirements are defined and a team sets out to select the best tool to fix the problem that's causing the biggest headache today. While every company wants to look at “the big picture”, the reality for most is that they only have the time, money and / or manpower to fix the problem at hand.
This approach can and does work. For a while. But what happens when you get the next headache? Ultimately, you either end up with too many systems, licensing models and upgrade paths for IT to effectively support – with dollars or with people - or your initiatives stall and new improvements to your business are delayed.
You're not alone. We hear it all the time…
Why Do PLM initiatives get stuck? GAPS IN COVERAGE.
Most companies have deployed pieces of their PLM process without developing a unified PLM strategy. They’ve got project management and a few different PDM tools. There’s another system for sharing Word and Excel files among non-technical users. And so on. What they don’t have is a unified view of the overall process and all of the related information stored in, and provided by, these systems. The fact is, you simply can’t provide end-to-end results with isolated point solutions.
If you’re stuck: Your users are not going to part with point solutions that work, nor should they. Instead, bring in PLM as an over arching process layer that connects all those point applications. Using techniques such as Web services federation, you can bring data from the other systems into one common user interface while leaving the point solutions intact. You get to keep what works while simplifying systems and establishing a common platform for future growth.