A blog by Oleg Shilovitsky
Information & Comments about Engineering and Manufacturing Software

PLM and “Almost Enterprise” Apps?

PLM and “Almost Enterprise” Apps?
Oleg
Oleg
29 April, 2011 | 2 min for reading

The cost of development enterprise apps was one of the topics discussed among the people on Aras ACE 2011 conference earlier this week in Detroit, MI. Where the future is taking us? The development and customization of full blown PLM suite can be long, expensive and not very cost-effective these days. During the Beyond PLM panel discussion, I raised the question about the future of agile business apps that can provide value and won’t take manufacturing companies to the hell of product suites. The approach I discussed was introduced by Dion Hinchcliffe in his Next Gen Enterprise blog.

On my way back to Boston I read Deloitte’s report “Technology Trends 2011. The Natural Convergence of Business and IT“. Download this report, read and make your opinion. On of the topics of the report is about so called “Almost enterprise Applications”. The idea resonated with my thoughts about how manufacturing organization can develop applications to be used by design engineers, managers, manufacturing planners, quality planners without taking organization into the two-year cycle of PLM suite deployment. I found the following example of “almost enterprise app” interesting:

A chemical products manufacturer had been an early adopter of Google Enterprise Apps engine – focusing on building almost-enterprise applications anchored in the productivity and collaboration suites. One example was a series of Gmail plug-ins that read the subject of emails and automatically retrieve CRM and HR workfl ow documents from SAP, with embedded controls for taking action that, in turn, execute back-offi ce transactions. Another was the ability to automatically update call notes in their CRM system with chat or voice transcripts, removing what was historically 90 seconds of low-value activity at the end of each customer service call.

PLM: Platforms and Applications

The notion of a platform in product lifycle management becomes interesting, in my view. The context of business apps can provide a new angle in a company strategy to develop a platform to serve the needs of product development processes. The focus on the platform will be in product data management rather than in business processes. Information services provided by a platform can be used to develop apps (Almost Enterprise Apps) highly focused on a particular engineers and other user’s needs.

What is my conclusion? The idea of “amost enterprise apps” is fascinating. It is easy to follow the concept of development apps based on any available services in the company. In the past, it led companies to the “excel hell“. However, combination of a platform provided information services and agile practices of small apps development have in chance to develop an efficient solution. What is your opinion about that?

Best, Oleg

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
1 February, 2013

I want to continue my BOM 101 thoughts and speak about working with Bill of Materials during early stages of...

2 June, 2022

Manufacturing is in the midst of a digital transformation. And it means that the industry is changing. For more than...

17 June, 2019

I continue to reflect on everything I’ve learned last week at PTC LiveWorx. One of the most important messages was...

24 May, 2010

An interesting post was published by Luna-Tech research about the Business Process Management redefinition. Only few years ago, PLM was...

22 March, 2013

I learned a new buzzword yesterday. Have you heard about BaaS? Navigate to the following TechCrunch article – Kinvey Launches...

31 July, 2009

For the last weeks, I have chance to speak with few of my colleagues about PLM implementations and technologies in...

12 July, 2011

This blog is my thoughts following Semantic Technology Conference (SemTech 2011), which took place in San-Francisco last month. I attended...

11 March, 2010

Continue the theme of disruption, I’d like to bring a new topic to discuss – Facebook. Actually, I discovered that...

6 September, 2010

I decided to make an unusual post today. Because of holiday (Labor Day in USA), I spent most of the...

Blogroll

To the top