What is the Next Big Deal in PLM services?

While I agree with most of the comments posted by Oleg, I do not think the ‘tinkering’ by service provides should be regarded as ‘destructive’. The service providers are called VAR’s – Value Added Resellers. So by their very nomenclature, they are supposed to customize and increase value of the product for the client. The service provider would be doing a big disservice to the customer if he is unable to provide enhancements in functionalities or do customizations as per the customer’s business needs. A non-operational PLM will only bring disrepute to the product vendor. The Service providers are much closer to the customer than the product vendor, and understand the customer’s needs well. The product vendor creates a a one-size-fits-all generic product, which is tailored by the service provider to fit the requirements of the customer. It’s a win-win situation.

The VAR’s indeed have a large influence on the customer in deciding which PLM they should go for – and this unfortunately at times may have some covert intentions, based on the VAR’s own predilections and competencies.

Sanjeev – I like your thinking, but unfortunately, I believe there are two main philosophies out there for service providers and VARs:

1) maximize revenue from a handful of clients
2) maximize number of clients, expect reasonable revenue from each

I believe the first philosophy can lead to the destructive behavior that Oleg described (although there is no black and white in this area, IMO). Those providers that see every client as a limited engagement with a focus on specific results have a healthy attitude. They want to add value on top of the software, not show clients how to circumvent/reinvent the software. But it takes a heavy-dose of truth-telling, and confidence in your abilities to have a lot of relationships like this: you have to be willing to tell clients what they don’t want to hear sometimes, you have to add real value, and you have to focus on results.

Oleg – I believe that the key values that service providers can add to PLM are education and process improvement. Those are the two biggest gaps between customers and software vendors. Software vendors have great tools, but not everyone understands them (but many service providers do). Many customers have outdated processes and perspectives, but software vendors are software experts, not necessarily business process experts (despite the tendency of software companies to align with industry verticals).
I’ll offer a personal case-in-point. I have been advocating an item-centric PDM approach to my clients for 5 or so years now. 5% – 10% of my clients are showing an interest and taking some action. I am not reaching enough of them, but the education that I have done with them, and the discussions I have had with them about their processes are the keys. Those discussions have brought them to the table and expanded their PLM vision for their organization. I think this is what service providers can do (beyond providing the technical skills required to deploy today’s complex PLM software) to add big value to PLM.
Consultants offer another interesting twist in the area of process improvement, too. I think consultants are a bit like honeybees in the cross-pollination process. In the same way that bees share the pollen of one plant with another plant, consultants carry ideas (in this case, PLM best practices) from one client to another and, more importantly, from one industry to another.
One more case-in-point, related to cross-pollination. Using the concept of audit trails in regulated industries and the concepts of batch printing tools, we recently delivered a solution for a client where hardcopy prints were tracked in an auditable fashion so that shop floor supervisors (for an aircraft manufacturer) could track down (and recall) outdated revisions of drawings floating around on the shop floor. This was a great example of ideas from a medical device manufacturer impacting solutions for an aerospace company.
Please excuse the long comment, but I thought this was a really interesting prompt, and of course it hits close to home. 🙂