Accelerating Time to Market with Product Lifecycle Management

Over the past six months the industry has been tempered by the global economic crisis. This has provided a lens through which many of the other challenges have to be viewed.

From a macro perspective, while green field opportunities still exist in a number of emerging markets, the industry as a whole faces fierce competition both for services and equipment – especially in increasingly saturated Western European and North American markets. Many of the largest operators and handset manufacturers also have cash flow issues as new customers become harder to acquire and the global credit market dries up.

From a market perspective, the continuing consolidation in the fixed line business has led to product integration while the broadband arena is faced with the need for continued capital investments to extend, upgrade and replace existing networks. For the wireless operators there is a pressing need to demonstrate ROI while continuing to scale services and bundles to meet consumer demand for bandwidth-intensive applications like high-speed mobile Internet and data services.

Based on its ability to promote greater collaboration and data management across the extended enterprise Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), enables companies in the telecommunications industry to address three distinct issues:

Coordinating the "Extended Product"

Traditionally a company’s product portfolio and engineering functions have handled the development of products through the manually intensive process of exchanging paper-based documents. However, the development of the global enterprise and supply chain has increased overall complexity slowing the exchange of file-based designs and ultimately impacting the ability to support the re-mix and portfolio planning of new products based on available technologies and options to diverse markets.

PLM enables companies to cope with the complexity of managing the issue of geometric expansion of product portfolios with a focus on two key elements – managing the product line and driving a consistent real-time release process based on available services and technologies and secondly, aligning the ability to consume emerging technologies to drive product differentiation.

Managing the Complexity of a Global Supply Chain

Many companies are faced with the challenge of breaking down poor internal and external communications which have created an environment where high go-to-market costs and slow, inefficient supply chains are unable to keep up with market demands.

An enterprise-wide PLM solution promotes greater collaboration between key functions, geographies and suppliers creating greater efficiency in the product development process. By reducing time to market, shortening the NPI process and promoting better evaluation of capabilities of regional partners and suppliers, this approach has a proven track record for increasing productivity, promoting greater innovation and optimizing overall cost while reducing delivery timeframes of both products and services.

Adopting Emerging Technologies and Promoting Effective New Product Introduction

For many telecommunication companies a lack of collaboration and management of fundamental business processes has resulted in an overall lack of control over the existing product portfolio. This has prohibited the speedy review of new product designs and inhibited the adoption of emerging technologies, creating a climate where the industry has become susceptible to the introduction of game changing products like the Apple iPhone.

While continuous investment across programs, projects, products and operations is essential it has to be set in the context of managing the process of innovation. PLM can help link investment decisions to innovation by effectively managing programs as a portfolio. An enterprise-wide PLM solution allows companies to effectively assess investment decisions, optimize existing resources and take advantage of new and emerging market opportunities.

Robert Shinno is Global Director, of Dassault Systèmes’ Hi‐Tech Strategy & Solutions ENOVIA R&D.