Growth brings complexity. PLM brings order to the chaos.

You’ve launched a range of private label products and your customers love them. Now what do you do? To build on your brand’s successes requires new thinking and tools. What got you here may not get you there: growth brings complexity to your portfolio as well as your data. And if you’re not careful, you can lose control of both.

Today’s modern product lifecycle management (PLM) systems bring order to your business’ product development chaos. Whether you’re working to launch new brand extensions or are experiencing great gains in sales volume, you’ll quickly see exponential data growth as you track ever more products and suppliers. 

Are you comfortable relying on your existing spreadsheets when your product portfolio is expanding? We know from experience – and seeing our customers’ successes – that there is a better way.

Growth through innovation: Complex products require complex workflows

While many retailers continue to rely on simple products with high sales volumes, like private label flour or juice, they’re also pursuing growth through more complex product lines like fresh meals or premium dairy. As the product specifications grow longer, while supply chain and chain of custody become more important, and at the same time regulations become more stringent, your need to stay on top of all your data becomes paramount to your sustained success.

Fresh meals, for example, may be attractive for their higher margins and opportunity for customer loyalty, but they also rely on a much more complex product specification than shelf-stable, staple products. From designing those specifications to sending out RFPs, a single source of truth PLM platform centralize your new product development. This will give you confidence as you scale and speed up R&D and product launches.

Inability to scale: the risks associated with data growth

As your team expands with your business’ success the importance of secure and reliable data access will grow with it. When you’re small, hard copies of product specifications and databases maintained in spreadsheets may suffice. But as soon as your team is distributed across multiple offices and you have different groups contributing to a shared knowledge base you’ll need a better solution.

What you require is a centralized database that everyone on your team can access and rely on. PLM solutions are designed specifically to solve these issues for you. Built on secure cloud technology that your team can access from anywhere at any time will give you the confidence to manage through the data growth and access issues that comes from success.

Actionable Data: be prepared for consumer demand 

Leaders need actionable data to make informed decisions when considering opportunity and where risks lie within their product lineup. Modern consumers are rightfully asking for greater transparency and trust with their purchases. It pays to be ahead of the curve in tracking your product portfolio being nimble enough to meet new consumer demands.

A contemporary example of the intersection of consumer choice, regulatory control, and business efficiency is the use of plastics in CPG packaging. While new regulation regimes on plastic use through the US, UK, and European Plastics Pacts come on line you will experience more stringent requirements for recyclable plastics which will put a burden on manufacturers and retailers to better track their plastic suppliers and document their efforts towards those commitments. Our PLM solutions specifically track these important figures and will allow your team to manage the data and confidently gather and report on the state of their packaging and its ability to be recycled.

Business impact: get your hands around your data challenges

Successful for leaders and software solutions are both measured by their business impact. In our decades of experience building and deploying PLM solutions such as Trace One’s PLM for Retailers, we’ve seen time and again how quickly and substantially an investment in a PLM solution can have for our customers.

Confidence, security, and ease of use are key considerations. But ultimately you need to see a positive ROI on any new software solution and demonstrate its positive impact on your business. Thankfully, we have proven business benefits that we’re able to show you:

• Speed up the specification development process by 50 to 60% 

• Reduce costs by 0.5 to 1.5%

• Improve efficiency during crisis management by 95%

• Reduce time to market by as much as 3 months 

• Increase revenue growth by 10% 

• Improve Private Label margin by 0.5% 

PLM tools centralize your data, which allows you to work faster and with more confidence, and ultimately reduces costs by bringing better products to market, faster. Book a demo today to learn more about how PLM powers growth.