Across every industry, the voice of the customer has grown more prevalent. Consumers have come to expect personalized and frictionless experiences with companies they do business with, which has brought forth meaningful benefits as well as unexpected challenges.
For one, today companies are required to move at a much faster pace compared to their competition while maintaining a healthy balance between speed of light execution and keeping up with the ongoing technological advancements and innovation. This balance is a delicate one that merits having the right tools in place to collaborate contextually, receive customer feedback, and produce high-caliber products that meet and exceed expectations.
Given these demands, it's more important than ever to optimize your manufacturing workflows and technologies and build a comprehensive cloud product lifecycle management (PLM) strategy that delivers true product success.
1. Reduce costs
Your company needs clear visibility into product costs during early product development phases given the increased pace of price erosion and variability. You also need to model a forward-looking view of associated product costs and this can only be done through full transparency.
Next-generation PLM software helps companies put together a forward cost model by providing a holistic view of the product lifecycle.
Since 70% of overall product costs is determined in the design phase, it is imperative to begin your costing analysis early in the product design process to reduce costly iterations. Various internal and external teams can find durable and cost-effective product materials, exchange information, and utilize real-time dashboards or scheduled reports while product designs are still being developed. Sharing feedback and recommendations earlier helps you get an accurate read on your product costs that could help determine viability as well as associated profit margins. This is far from possible if product data resides in disparate and siloed systems.
Costs associated with delayed feedback, product variance, and over- or under-buying could be avoided by using a purpose-built PLM system that helps build the required organizational intelligence. It also helps deliver closely on your customers’ interests, and accelerates time to market.
READ: Top 10 Benefits of PLM Software
2. Accelerate time to market
It takes time to hand-off product changes between engineering, manufacturing, sales, and services. Managing product versions and sharing updates over email increases the likelihood of introducing errors and inconsistencies which could significantly delay the launch and commercialization processes. In order to match the pace of innovation and technological advancements, it is crucial that product information flows quickly across the entire value chain to all your employees, partners, contract manufacturers, suppliers, and customers. Besides, it's critical that all these stakeholders can access, review, and approve product designs from anywhere, anytime, on nearly any device in today's social- and mobile-first culture.
Contextual collaboration is required for teams to immediately and efficiently discuss product challenges and brainstorm ideas along each step of the product development cycle.
With the scalable and extensible PLM platform in place, companies can drive faster time to value while reducing their Total Cost of Implementation (TCI) and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
By implementing the next-generation PLM, you can accelerate your time to market by up to 75%. This acceleration helps you outperform your competitors and establishes your brand as an innovation leader, which is a significant driver of customer loyalty.
3. Maximize customer satisfaction
The traditional focus of concept to release has quickly evolved to concept to customer by incorporating the voice of the customer. Your customers' pains and challenges must be quickly disseminated to your team for greater responsiveness and satisfaction.
Medical device manufacturers, for example, are required to maintain compliance with federal regulations. Listening to their customers' perceptions, issues, and complaints as part of a closed-loop quality process allows them to track and resolve issues and concerns. Similarly, engineering-to-order businesses use PLM system to track customer responses, which helps build tighter customer relationships and ensures customers are happy.
A highly collaborative PLM drives productivity and facilitates designing innovative products by tying the customer record to the product record.
Continuously improving products based on your customers' feedback can help you maximize customer satisfaction by building trust and loyalty.
Today's manufacturing companies contribute far more than just goods into the world's economies. They're also significant contributors to employment and GDP. The most successful companies, however, are those that prioritize innovation as consumer expectations rise, while continuing to manage costs.
