Enterprise systems for long time are well-known as a place where IT plays the role of the king on the road. ERP, CRM and many other enterprise systems and implementations proved that. If you want to sell to enterprise organization, you need to focus on key IT people, preferable on CIO, Chief of Engineering, Manufacturing etc. Earlier this year, I had a healthy debate about this topic following my blog post – PLM, Viral Sales and Enterprise Old Schoolers.
The disruption in Enterprise IT is one that I see as one of the most interesting trends these days in enterprise space. The following presentation caught my attention yesterday – The challenges and opportunities of business in the disruptive tech era. I recommend you to take a look on this even the presentation is 56 slides. However, the following slide stands out and resonate with the point I wanted to make about IT.
Let’s get back to PLM domain. In the existing ecosystems, there are two major ways to sell and implement PDM/PLM projects. One can be made indirectly mostly via CAD vendors channels. The complexity of these implementations is limited and these implementations (with some small number of exclusions) are limited to catch the level of enterprise IT. Another one is a direct channel developed by PLM and ERP vendors selling PLM implementations to top level management in IT organizations. The higher level of IT people is better.
I can see multiple reasons why existing IT is not getting excited about technological disruption in PLM and other enterprise organization. The disruption means changes and changes are usually come with the lost of control and existing status. For example, cloud means no servers need to installed, implementations can be done remotely and product development has a better chances to focus on user experience and business needs rather than on how to implement and run enterprise deployments.
What is my conclusion? The future of PLM implementation will shift focus from PLM buyers to PLM users. At the end of the days, people need to get job done. PLM needs to focus on user needs, user experience and the ability of systems to help people in everyday business life. Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg
