During the past several years the tables have turned on a number of large high-tech companies as several market leaders have become followers, and several followers have become market leaders. The dramatic change has pivoted on the ability of these market followers to leverage investments in product development processes to deliver more innovative and impactful products than the leaders. These processes, known as Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), extend from idea generÂation, through product market launch, to product retirement.
An analysis by Accenture has found that large high-tech companies can spend one billion dollars or more per year on Product Lifecycle Management processes. By improving these crucial processes to deliver products to market on time that meet customers’ requirements, these firms can substantially increase revenues and reduce costs. The analysis further found that many C-suite executives view Product Lifecycle Management as the engineering department’s black box resulting in a critical enterprise business process that is not well understood, measured or managed end-to-end. That view has to change.