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Product Portfolio Management
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Product Lifecycle Management
Posted By:
Trace One
Breadmaker sales quadruple. Ketchup flies off the shelves as more and more children eat their lunches at home. Hand sanitizer disappears.
As long as there are consumers, there will be changes consumer behavior. And with so many supply chains in flux, the gap between brands who are ready to weather the storm and those who aren’t continues to widen. PLM accelerates the new product lifecycle by digitizing and consolidating information, eliminating inefficiencies, and facilitating collaboration.
Eliminate inefficiency with a single source of truth
What separates the prepared from the unprepared? Often, it boils down to having a single source of truth to quickly adapt, as one senior platform manager and PLM evangelist can attest.
When the PM landed on the scene at a national food brand, he found chaos that resembled the (very old) video game Asteroids, “bits and pieces flying around” everywhere. One of his first orders of business was to introduce the “OnePLM Vision,” which would consolidate information into a single source of truth. R&D would have a single place for their global commodity database, formulation development, nutrition claims and safety guidelines. Likewise for QA’s policy guidelines and supplier qualifications, for RA’s regulatory guidelines, and for manufacturing and labeling.
“Speed to launch is our primary driver,” the PM said. “We’re trying to get rid of the exchange of information, of human error.”
Automate approval workflows to accelerate product lifecycles
It’s difficult to gauge just how inefficient processes are until there’s a benchmark to measure them against. When another project manager set about streamlining project management with Trace One Devex PLM, she was floored when she realized how many times a single Word or Excel file made the email rounds. It was a light bulb moment, she said. “I asked myself ‘Why are we still doing it this way? Let’s just add a new field to Trace One Devex PLM and be done with it.“
Every month, the company held a meeting to approve or kill new product ideas. After installing Trace One Devex PLM, those meetings are no longer necessary. Everything is done through a workflow in Trace One Devex PLM. “Tons of email correspondence that happened around projects and important information is now all housed in a Trace One Devex PLM project and a workflow,” she said.
Use pre-built temples to get up and running quickly
Trace One Devex PLM provides out-of-the-box templates specifically designed for either the food and beverage or cosmetics product lifecycle.
The template bundles include pre-configured data sets, spec templates, documentation, and business process workflows to prototype and launch new solutions quickly, ideal for quickly creating and testing multiple scenarios.
Be prepared for what comes next
Trace One’s Innovation Process Management Suite (IPMS) provides tools to rapidly define and implement new strategies, like the consolidation or replacement of suppliers and raw materials or simplification of the product portfolio.
IPMS users can quickly and easily:
- Align portfolios with business goals and strategies with decision criteria management linked to the organization's objectives (making fact-based investment decisions and managing approvals simple and efficient).
- Manage project goals, schedules, and responsibilities, with instant notifications to team members at significant project evolution points.
- Centralize project data, project plans and timelines, technical data, marketing data, financial data, team definition and post-launch tracking into one clean and organized structure.
- Ensure real-time collaboration with workflows optimized for teamwork and perfect for work-from-home scenarios.
Changes in consumer behavior happen. Trace One Devex PLM ensures that you’re ready adapt, come what may.