Our CEO sent around this article last week: Use your own product or die. The author calls it drinking your own Kool-Aid; at Aras we say drinking our own champagne.
According to the article, if you don't use your own product the way you want your users to, you've got problems.
The author writes: If it's a car, do you drive it? If it's a watch, do you use it to tell the time? If it's an app, do you open the app daily, weekly, monthly and use it as you hope it should be used?
Interesting. Thought provoking. And downright true, in my opinion.
At Aras, we use our PLM platform for just about everything. Really. Everything. We run our website on it. It serves as our CRM. It's how we ask for a day off. We use it for finance, purchasing, project management and tracking just about anything that needs to be tracked. Customer Support uses it. And so do Product Development and Consulting. In fact, I'm confident that every Aras employee interacts with Aras Innovator
every working day, and this includes our CEO as well as our interns.
As a user, consumer or customer of a product, I expect it to be this way. I expect Ford employees to drive Fords and do so proudly. I expect Starbucks employees to consume their company's products passionately. And I expect Procter and Gamble employees to choose their company's products over the competition when doing their weekly grocery shopping.
Using your own product is absolutely vital to staying in touch with your customers. It enables you to walk a mile in your customers' shoes, and it's the best way to understand what they love about your product and what frustrates them about it because you probably feel the same way. It's worth more than millions and millions of dollars in focus groups, surveys and usability testing.
If you use Aras PLM, you know we're in it with you. If you use another PLM...I wonder when the last time one of their CEOs logged in?