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

PLM Implementation Lifecycle Challenges

PLM Implementation Lifecycle Challenges
Oleg
Oleg
13 March, 2013 | 3 min for reading

Implementation of enterprise information systems is a long and painful process. It requires a lot of efforts, investments and planning. ERP and other enterprise backbone technologies (eg Oracle) are good examples. In my view, PLM comes to the same list as Oracle. Yesterday, I had a chance to read CW article – Oracle Blasts Forrester Report On Fusion Applications Adoption. Spend few minutes and read that. Forrester research made a suggestion that Oracle’s customers won’t be interested to update to new Fusion Applications. Forrester defines it as a strategic dilemma – Oracle makes a lot of money from old product lines and at the same time, not many customers are adopting new stuff and tech like Fusion. Oracle criticized Forrester research. Here is a key passage to me –

Oracle has taken a “co-existence” approach to pushing Fusion Applications, wherein an installed base customer would use some Fusion modules alongside their existing E-Business Suite or PeopleSoft implementation. While Forrester mentioned the co-existence concept in its report, in Oracle’s view the research firm gave it short shrift. “Customers can adopt modules of Oracle Fusion Applications incrementally and at their own pace to co-exist with their existing deployments. Never have we forced existing customers to move/migrate out of Oracle Applications Unlimited to adopt Oracle Fusion Applications,” the response states. “Customers may not know what to do in the context of their specific implementation as each deployment is more or less specific, but Oracle’s strategy is very clear. We do not have a dilemma.” Forrester also failed to adequately acknowledge the investments Oracle is making in its Applications Unlimited products, which include planned future releases and “long lists of enhancements,” according to the response.

I found some similarity between Oracle implementation lifecycle and PLM implementations. One of the critical elements of PLM technologies and products is PLM adoption. It takes time to implement and start using PLM in an organization. Earlier this year, I attended PI Congress in Berlin where I had a chance to watch many customer presentations. I called them “big mono-PLM” projects. Every implementation is multi-year, project with a significant budget and long lifecycle. Once implemented in a company, it can be used for a long period of time. However, to maintain it and to upgrade to another system versions is very complicated. If you look over the landscape of existing PLM implementations, you can discover a variety of product, versions and technologies coming from PLM vendors for the last 15-20 years. Because of long implementation cycle and high cost, once implemented, PLM systems live very long lifecycle. Sometimes, it is also a result of a specific industry (the best example I can come with is airline program).

What is my conclusion? I think, the slow lifecycle of PLM systems is a problem. It prevents companies from innovation, adopting new business practices. PLM vendors need to focus on how make PLM implementation agile and lean initially with the ability to update with more features, and modifications. Today, there are too many companies that using old technologies and products because they cannot afford a future step in PLM systems development. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
7 September, 2012

One of the biggest issues PLM vendors want to solve today is “PLM adoption”. PDM/PLM moved from a toolbox to...

19 September, 2021

Data is a centerpiece of any business today and there is a growing concern among companies about protecting their data...

16 October, 2017

I’m learning new things about Solidworks 2018 and coming new product – Solidworks Manage. You probably had a chance to...

3 June, 2018

I’ve been reading almost traditional Kleiner Perkins’ annual internet trends report delivered by Mary Meeker at Code 2018. Almost 300...

17 June, 2023

It is 2023 and every manufacturing company in the world understands that digital transformation is the name of the game....

30 June, 2016

Enterprise software is infamous by its complexity. After years of preaching complexity and rich set of functions, enterprise vendors are...

7 November, 2013

Budget and cost. These are important elements of every IT solution. PLM is not an exclusion from this list. There...

27 April, 2016

Cloud storage became a part of our everyday life. It is easy to store files on Dropbox, Google Drive or Microsoft One...

11 December, 2017

Jos Voskuil took Part Number topic to another spin and share his thought about  – Intelligent Part or Product Numbers? ...

Blogroll

To the top