How to Evaluate Vendors

Manufacturers should develop a business case that carefully ties the software strategy to the strategy of the business as a whole

PLM is a much more diverse platform than enterprise applications such as ERP or supply chain management (SCM), making it more difficult to compare PLM systems.

Given the broad scope of PLM, few providers cover the full range of functionality. Certain vendors and solutions are better suited for different aspects of a product’s lifecycle.²⁴

PLM providers from the 3D design space (e.g., Dassault Systèmes, PTC, Siemens PLM Software) offer platforms optimized for processing, managing, and controlling data such as 3D CAD files. These vendors make sense when a company’s “pain points” are around engineering collaboration.

If the corporate process in need of the most attention is supplier collaboration, sourcing, or efficiencies in manufacturing, PLM platforms from enterprise platform providers such as SAP or Oracle may make more sense.

One expert says the primary PLM vendor should support your biggest problem. Choose the vendor that can fill in some of the other gaps as well; however, don’t ignore your primary business problem for the sake of getting a full suite. You could end up with a lot of breadth, but little depth.²⁵

PLM systems provide a foundation for companies to compete in innovation-driven environments demanding lower costs, rapid time-to-market, collaboration across the supply and demand chains and within the extended enterprise, high product quality, and regulatory compliance. As these systems are far more extensive than standalone CAD or product data management (PDM) systems, they reach into multiple aspects of a business, and across multiple organizations. For smaller companies, selecting the right solution can be a greater challenge due to limited resources available for the evaluation process.

PLM Selection Pitfalls

In many instances, selecting a PLM system is done at too low a level, with less than adequate consideration of strategic corporate issues, little understanding of the product development environment and of proposed improvements to that environment, and poorly conceived ideas of ROI or evaluation metrics. ²⁶

Selection should start with business objectives in mind, and manufacturers should develop a business case that carefully ties the software strategy to the strategy of the business as a whole. Without this alignment, the selection process may be skewed to the technical merits of the software system, avoiding evaluation criteria that are critical to successful implementation and realization of ROI..²⁷

A number of logical steps are essential to the vendor evaluation and implementation process:

1. Determine the need

2. Assess where the company should be

3. Organize the evaluation

4. Determine management requirements

5. Determine technical requirements

6. Determine integration requirements

7. Evaluate potential vendor partners

8. Select a system and vendor partner

9. Implement and monitor the strategy²⁸

It is important that vendors be evaluated based on requirements and product demonstrations. Vendors’ responses to questions will help eliminate them or strengthen their cases. Minutes of meetings should be prepared, and vendors should be required to sign them. This will prevent false claims and make them accountable in case of failure to deliver promised results.

Check for successful PLM implementations by the vendor. Before making the final call, visit and consult companies where the selected PLM package has already been implemented. If the solution is working as expected in those companies, it will reinforce confidence in the selection. However, if issues are identified during this review, the purchase decision should be reconsidered.

Throughout the vendor evaluation and implementation process, conclude each step with the consensus of all members of the selection committee, including end-users, to gather enterprise-wide acceptance for the PLM package.