Aras recently hosted the thought leadership webinar “Let Business Value Drive Cloud PLM Transition.” We explored how businesses can establish the value of cloud PLM, highlighting SaaS PLM solutions to help drive a successful business case for migrating their PLM. Jim Brown, president of Tech-Clarity, joined me to discuss the details of his recent white paper “Achieving the Business Value of Cloud PLM.” Jim examined industry trends and recent survey results on current business attitudes and strategies for cloud deployments to create valuable guidance on the future of cloud solutions.
The takeaway: Jim reinforced the necessity for businesses to focus on the “right” SaaS PLM to enable the company’s business transformational objectives, not just their cloud adoption strategy. By leveraging survey results from their research published in “Business Strategies for Long-Term Business Sustainability 2022” (Figure 1), he emphasized that the business case for migrating to SaaS PLM needs to support the success of organizations’ changing business priorities, not just cost savings.
Figure 1
So what does it mean to be the “right” SaaS PLM solution? Jim used additional survey results (Figure 2) from the eBook “The State of Cloud PLM 2022,” describing the strong attitudes of businesses towards flexibility in their PLM solution. When discussing why other enterprise systems initially moved faster to the cloud than PLM, Jim determined a major factor can be attributed to the lack of functionality in the earlier available SaaS PLM solutions. He also has seen this trend changing and believes the recent increase in migrations directly correlates to improved capabilities in some SaaS solutions.
Figure 2
Finally, Jim outlined different cloud options available to businesses, highlighting the maturity level and tradeoffs for different categories (Figure 3). He stressed that findings from Tech-Clarity‘s research were that manufacturers that use solutions with low-code capabilities are more successful in meeting their business objectives. As Figure 2 shows, “…manufacturers that use low-code development are over three times as likely to be able to fill their digital transformation gaps ‘very well.’”
This point reinforced the theme that the value of cloud and SaaS PLM is firmly established with its ability to help deliver business transformations effectively. Historically, low-code PLM solutions can deliver solutions for a company’s unique and complex challenges, and this shouldn’t change based on the deployment approach. Without these low-code capabilities, business transformation programs have a higher risk of budget overruns or even failure as a worst-case scenario.
Figure 3
Where to get more information and five critical takeaways
To learn more about developing the right cloud PLM strategy, read Tech-Clarity’s white paper “Achieving the Business Value of Cloud PLM”. Additionally, to help you develop your own cloud strategy, many valuable data points from Tech-Clarity’s extensive research can be found in their eBook “The State of Cloud PLM 2022.” Of course, you can also go back to this webinar, “Let Business Value Drive Cloud PLM Transition,” to review any of the points you may have missed.
Figure 4
For more information about Aras’ SaaS offering, take a look at the CIMdata Analyst Commentary, “Aras Enterprise SaaS: A Generation 2 Leader.”