PLM, QMS and PIM Connects Product Development and Commercialization

This is Propel Software’s claim during its Propulsion 2023 Event.

In the introduction to Propulsion 2023, Ross Meyercord, CEO of Propel, reported an 800 percent revenue increase over the last three years. This comes with a list of over 200 customers and three times more employees.

Propel was recently named a strong performer as part of the Forrester Wave for PLM in Discrete Manufacturing. (Image: Forrester Research and Propel.)

Propel was recently named a strong performer as part of the Forrester Wave for PLM in Discrete Manufacturing. (Image: Forrester Research and Propel.)

This has gained Propel a lot of accolades. It was listed on the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 for North America for two consecutive years. In addition, Meyercord proudly mentioned that it was included in Fortune’s list of the 300 most innovative companies in America. Finally, Forrester Research recognized Propel as a strong performer in its latest wave for Product Lifecycle Management (PLM).

Propel’s vision revolves around a “product value management” (PVM) platform, built 100 percent on Salesforce. The aim is to converge PLM, Quality Management Systems (QMS) and Product Information Management (PIM) under one roof. In his keynote, Meyercord highlighted four key themes that represent Propel’s focus:

  1. Accelerating agility and speed in product innovation.
  2. Directly sharing customer insights with product teams.
  3. Providing product data and collaboration solutions to generate value.
  4. Utilizing technology to drive business evolution.

In this post, I discuss the potential of PLM to connect with QMS and PIM. I will also elaborate on some of the insights shared at Propulsion 2023.

PLM Democratization, Towards “Product Ops”

George Lawrie, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester, highlighted that there is a lot of disruption happening in the world of cloud technology, with the challenge of “PLM […] stretching to both asset-intensive and asset-light manufacturing.” Light asset manufacturing is said to be the fastest growing area with consumer electronics or life science devices leveraging contract manufacturing sourcing models.

Furthermore, Lawrie referred to “PLM democratization” which is not just about time to market anymore. It is now extending to supply chain resilience, sustainability and the ability to manage product end of life. The core PLM ability to manage “where used” while considering component interchangeability, alternates and substitutes is essential—especially with the rigorous traceability required in regulated industries. Hence, he claims that legacy PDM or PLM solutions are hindering product changes instead of facilitating them, due to rigid embedded processes and cumbersome data models.

To that extent, Ray Hein, chief strategy officer and Founder of Propel, supports the need for integrated and continuous data flow beyond R&D and product teams. He said, it is about “extending to marketing, sales and service with a single platform that natively combines PLM, PIM and QMS. Connecting product and commercial teams with a single data thread and unified process flows makes it easier to find actionable data, helps automate processes across and increases overall speed.”

Broadly speaking, PLM, QMS and PIM are three distinct perspectives used in different aspects of product management and business operations. Specifically:

  • PLM focuses on optimizing product design, engineering and documentation, as well as managing product changes, versions and configurations.
  • QMS primarily aims to meet customer requirements, adhere to industry standards and enhance overall product quality and customer satisfaction.
  • PIM objective is to streamline product and pricing data management, improve data accuracy made available across various channels—such as e-commerce platforms, catalogs and marketing material—towards enhancing the customer experience.

Putting it together, PLM focuses on the overall management of a product’s lifecycle, from concept to disposal. QMS centers on maintaining product quality and adherence to standards. PIM concentrates on centralizing and managing product information to ensure consistency and accuracy across various channels. While these disciplines and associated technical solutions have unique purposes, they also complement each other to support efficient and effective product management and business operations.

Hein refers to this as “Product Ops.” He says it reaches beyond product development operations to become an integrated discipline that facilitates product data sharing across the enterprise while harvesting commercial rewards from product innovation.

He summarized it as follows: “Aggregating all the signals that are coming from product processes and data helps make better, more proactive decisions that directly affect business revenue. This aligns with the rise of innovation in [other] functional areas, [like how] MarTech led to Marketing Operations and CRM led to SalesOps.”

Product Threads: Connecting Development and Commercialization

Lawrie mentioned “product threads” as the ability to connect product teams vertically and horizontally, uniting all processes and functional teams from development to commercialization. This is in contrast to digital threads which are merely the associated “technical” enablers.

According to Hein, “Existing legacy PLM solutions […] are more focused on moving their on-premises solutions to the cloud rather than connecting to customers,” whereas “Propel is the only solution that helps companies maximize their product portfolio value by connecting product and commercial teams on one platform.” This is a thought-provoking comparison to support the prioritization of customer experience and product launch scalability.

Furthermore, Hein elaborates on Propel’s Spring 2023 release, which he claims delivers further business benefits across the following three areas:

  1. Mitigating risk by designing for supply chain by tracking component shortage risks with BOM workflows. This addresses questions such as: “What can I source? Are the components compliant? Where are they located?”
  2. Improving decision-making with design collaboration by integrating workflows to Altium for ECAD users, leveraging close loop feedback beyond engineering teams. This addresses questions such as: “How are technical changes affecting costing? What are compliance and sustainability implications?”
  3. Launching products successfully with product content distribution by exporting BIM profiles for product assets to fulfill multichannel environments, or vendors like Walmart, Amazon, Target, and more. This addresses questions such as: “What are the cost reduction opportunities? Which products are the most profitable? Which ones have the least issues?”

Eric Schrader, chief product officer at Propel, presented an interesting list of partners as part of the Propel product roadmap to extend towards integrated enterprise-wide capabilities, such as with:

  • ERP: Epicor, Infor, JD Edwards Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics, NetSuite, Oracle, QAD, Rootstock, Sage, SAP.
  • MCAD: OnShape, SolidWorks.
  • ECAD: Altium, Cadence Allegro, OrCAD.
  • Electric component libraries: SiliconExpert.

Schrader explained that the latter collaboration helps remove manual work in proactively keeping ahead of the dynamics within the supply chain. “Our Component Insights product enriches your AML (approved manufacturer list) with supply chain data, environmental information, risk analysis, data sheets […] to provide automated updates and tracking of change,” he says. These are essential QMS-relevant features when dealing with change, obsolescence, REACH and RoHS compliance, at both component and product levels.

“In the Summer release, we will focus on operational reporting. Our goal is to provide each persona, or functional area, with a dashboard or set of reports that informs or helps them prioritize their specific area of work. Unlocking these insights is a simple way to help our customers realize additional value,” says Hein.

Written by

Lionel Grealou

Lionel Grealou, a.k.a. Lio, helps original equipment manufacturers transform, develop, and implement their digital transformation strategies—driving organizational change, data continuity and process improvement, managing the lifecycle of things across enterprise platforms, from PDM to PLM, ERP, MES, PIM, CRM, or BIM. Beyond consulting roles, Lio held leadership positions across industries, with both established OEMs and start-ups, covering the extended innovation lifecycle scope, from research and development, to engineering, discrete and process manufacturing, procurement, finance, supply chain, operations, program management, quality, compliance, marketing, etc.

Lio is an author of the virtual+digital blog (www.virtual-digital.com), sharing insights about the lifecycle of things and all things digital since 2015.