Product lifecycle management, also commonly known as PLM, is a systematic process for managing the whole lifecycle of a product, from creation to sales, and even end-of-life.
One of the most important goals of every company is to keep the lifecycle of all products as long as possible preserving its efficiency. To truly be able to benefit from the product you must ensure its longevity. One of the main reasons for a product to have a predictable lifecycle is to improve on its efficiency and profitability. A long efficient product lifecycle saves new product development costs and increases the strength of your brand. To get this cycle to be as long as possible, you have to determine the sales strategy correctly.
Each product survives in 5 stages, just like a living creature, every product goes through the following lifecycle stages: development, introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. This entire process enables the design, analysis, engineering, marketing and sales branches to be tracked and managed.
PLM controls the life cycle of companies’ existing products. At the same time it provides details for the strategies to create new products. PLM automates and helps businesses streamline their workflows and production processes. With the added value it provides, it enables an increase in operational efficiency. This is because the guidelines of the workflows and execution processes from one single source make it easier to focus
There is only one way to the right strategy: meeting demands of the target market. If your product(s) no longer meets the demand of the customer, the product life cycle is reaching its end. With an operations strategy, you try to align customer expectations, competitive requirements, and your operational resources. You have to start with customer demand and what influences that demand, so you can allocate the right resources and build the most fitting operational strategy. If you don’t meet the exact customer demand, some of your products (or product ideas / developments) already die at the beginning of the lifecycle. Competition in the market directly affects this. If you do not meet the demands of your customers, you cannot provide correct product management.
The most fundamental problem in product management: incomplete or incorrect data flows between your sales, R&D and production departments. This problem complicates product management and leads companies to errors. The production team has ERP, the sales team has CRM, R&D has PLM. Data transmissions from CRM and ERP must be correct for your PLM system to work properly. Because if you do not bring and collect CAD drawings, part and component details of your products, and the requested order quantity, you cannot provide product lifecycle management. These details are crucial.
Although CRM, ERP and PLM are different processes, they should work in harmony with each other. As you want your different teams to work in sync, these structures should work in the same way. We know that this question comes directly to your mind: “How can I integrate ERP, PLM and CRM systems to meet my customer’s demands?” CPQ software is the answer! With the right integrations, the advantages of CPQ software will increase efficiency in your product management.
We know that there are tens, hundreds, maybe thousands of different parameters for your products. Think of color details or mechanical parts…. You may be keeping these parameters and all the details of the products in your PLM system. Because you have your product development team in place to further develop your product. You have two purposes in keeping this information:
You can either share these parameters directly with your customers or present them through your sales team or dealer network with CPQ software. You will understand and correctly meet the demands of your customers if you present the right data. It is possible to achieve these with CPQ software and PLM integration. You will see how efficient it is to use your PLM data in the guided selling.
As we mentioned above, every team has different needs and different software they use. Companies have many different software made up of three-letter abbreviations: ERP, PLM, CAD, CRM, CPQ, PDM… When technology turns into a nightmare: different softwares that cannot be integrated with each other.
All of these software systems support some part of the business processes. If your IT teams cannot integrate software properly, the product management process becomes difficult.
As Elfsquad CPQ software, we have the solution to this nightmare of software developers. You want to integrate in a few clicks. You don’t want to hire a consultant to create your integrations. You want to be in control. Our CPQ software offers the solution to of your software developers. We comply with the OpenAPI standard. You may already know that you can easily integrate Elfsquad with more than 3.000 professional applications. That’s the way to go.
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Elfsquad removes all worries from your pre-production process. With Elfsquad as backbone, we realize the digital factory that smart industries have been trying to find for so long. We do this through a product configurator, with integrated solutions for marketing, sales, and operations.
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