The Big Bang Approach to Success: Lessons from Breg’s PLM & QMS Transformation | Propulsion 2024

In 2021, Breg kicked off a project to deliver revenue and margin growth, improve agility, and increase scalability by digitizing its product development and quality processes. Led by Serena Oaks, Director of Product Development, and Erika Blair, Product Development Manager, Breg bucked the trend of incremental SaaS deployments in favor of a Big Bang approach that immediately delivered positive ROI in the first year.

In this session, Serena and Erika share their best practices for successfully launching an integrated PLM and QMS platform, including their strategic approach, keys to keeping the project on track, and how they were able to grow revenue and increase user satisfaction from day one.

Breg's results:
–20-40% faster speed to market.
–500% more projects in process with flat staffing.
–33% less time to onboard new product engineers.

Key Insights

SERENA:

"The most important thing to us was whether people were satisfied with the system. A year since our our go-live, we showed that 91% of our users are satisfied or highly satisfied. We confirmed that we were achieving speed to market with these improvements, but we also confirmed that people are feeling that improvement and it's making them happier, and adding value to their day-to-day."

"One of the big motivators for our implementation was speed to market. Being able to show that we could drive our revenue and our profit by turning out product updates and cost improvements on a more regular basis. A big part of our financial model was showing the annual increase that we'll be able to get by being able to have more product launches in a given year. We understood the value of being more agile, more scalable, more resilient and being able to just have more time back."

ERIKA:

"For me, Propel's value is really in its interconnectedness. When you're connecting your people, your data, creating process linkages, you have access to the intellectual power of your organization. Paper processes just aren't designed with that in mind, and neither are some older PLM tools."

"Everyone around you is going to have the best intentions, and they're gonna help you by raising risks, concerns, and roadblocks. Those things are probably going to sound like reasons why you can't do something. So I would encourage you to stay curious and listen to that questioning voice, which says, 'Well, why can't we do that? How else could we get there? What else could we be doing?'"

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