PLM Excels and Microsoft Cloud Office 365

June 28, 2011

Do you know what is the most widely adopted PLM system in the world? You probably can guess based on the title of this blog post – Microsoft Excel. I’ve been writing about Microsoft Excel and PLM many times.

PLM Excel Spreadsheets: From Odes to Woes
Why Do I Like My PLM Excel Spreadsheet?
Do We Need Chief Excel Officer To Manage BOM?

Microsoft just released Office 365 in the cloud:

Earlier today, I was reading details about Microsoft new cloud offering. Navigate to the following link to read – Microsoft puts Office in the ‘cloud,’ confronts Google. What is the story? For many years, Microsoft was leading in Office space selling Microsoft Word, Excel and Outlook to individuals and enterprises. The market share of Microsoft Office products is huge. However, for the last couple of years, Google succeeded to introduce a strong cloud competition to Microsoft Office products – Google Apps. To compete with them, Microsoft is placing Office product in the cloud for a very competitive price. This is a very interesting quote from Reuter blog post:

Google, which has had the most success in the small and medium-sized business range, says there are now 40 million users of online Google Apps suite. Microsoft does not publish equivalent numbers, but research firm comScore has estimated 750 million people worldwide use Office in some form.

PLM and Office in the Cloud

So Office is hearing in the cloud. What does it mean for manufacturing companies and PLM vendors? One of the most problematic side effects of working with Office and specifically with Excel was the ability to share data and collaborate between different people in an organization. Separate Excel files, even if you put them in the shared drives, are very bad for this. Multiple PLM systems were focused on how people can work collaboratively sharing information about drawings and bill of materials. With the introduction of Office 360 and growing competition of Google, PLM companies can find their collaborative solution with cloud collaboration supported by Excel running on cloud. Microsoft is emphasizing how Office 365 will be used by small and medium customers first. As you can see on the picture below – it is just $6 /month.

What is my conclusion? I don’t think, PLM vendors will be in a real jeopardy because of Microsoft Office moves to the cloud and competing with Google Apps. Large manufacturing companies are complicated, and PLM vendors sit deep inside with the implementation of complex PLM product suites. However, what happens with hundreds of these that are running Microsoft Excel as their PLM system? Time to make some thinking and calculations. Important…

Just my thoughts.
Best, Oleg

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PLM, Enterprise Social Software and Excel Litmus Test?

August 9, 2010

I want to take another round of thinking about Enterprise and Social Software. My last post related to that was followingEnterprise 2.0 conference in Boston in June - PLM and Enterprise 2.0: No Fight… Yet.

Few days ago, I posted about PLM, BOM, Excel – How to Make it right? Chris Williams at Vuuch made an interestingcomment that made me think again about existing PLM problems and potentials of social software for enterprise organizations.

Excel Litmus Test
I’m coming to the conclusion that enterprise software vendors can use MS Excel as a Litmus test for potential problems. Depend on the amount of MS Excels, you can make a conclusion about the quality of solutions they provide. Users are voting Excel each time enterprise software doesn’t work or too complex to be used.

Enterprise Social Software
The term ESS (Enterprise Social Software) first appearance happened during Enterprise 2.0 conference couple of years ago. Here is Wikipedia definition:

Enterprise social software (also known as or regarded as a major component of Enterprise 2.0), comprises social software as used in “enterprise” (business/commercial) contexts. It includes social and networked modifications to corporate intranets and other classic software platforms used by large companies to organize their communication. In contrast to traditional enterprise software, which imposes structure prior to use, enterprise social software tends to encourage use prior to providing structure.[citation needed] Carl Frappaolo and Dan Keldsen defined Enterprise 2.0 in a report written for Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM)as “a system of web-basedtechnologies that provide rapid and agile collaboration, information sharing, emergence and integration capabilities in the extended enterprise”.[1]

Back in 2006, Social Software was defined as one component of Enterprise 2.0.  As of 2006, “Enterprise 2.0″ had become a catchier term, sometimes used to describe social and networked changes to enterprises, which often includes social software (but may transcend social software, social collaboration and software).

Another marketing buzz was Enterprise Web 2.0. This term related to the software making intensive use of Web 2.0 technologies for creating Enterprise applications.

Enterprise Portal Renaissance?
Let me move you back ten years. Do you remember Enterprise Portals?

An enterprise portal, also known as an enterprise information portal (EIP) or corporate portal, is a framework for integrating information, people and processes across organizational boundaries. It provides a secure unified access point,[1] often in the form of a web-based user interface, and is designed to aggregate and personalize information through application-specific portlets. One hallmark of enterprise portals is the de-centralized content contribution and content management, which keeps the information always updated.

I found this definition very interesting. If you replace “organization boundaries” with “product lifecycle” you are getting almost the definition of PLM. I found an old report provided by Delphi group in Boston in 1999 about Enterprise Portals. Download it navigating to the following link. You can see below a diagram I took from this report.


I can see lots of correlations between functional categories of Enterprise Portal model 1999 and Enterprise Social Software model 2010. It looks like we may have a second wave of Enterprise Portals coming with a new name – Enterprise Social Software on top of Web 2.0 technology matured during the last ten years of Web 2.0 deployment.

What is my conclusion? Complexity is hard. In my view, Excel Litmus Test can help you to identify it easily. PLM is in the deep complexity recession. Enterprise 2.0 and Social Software can provide some fresh air. However, as it usually happens during the hype period, many companies will try to sell you old stuff with a new name. Then we will be in danger of double-dip recession. Ask about functionality and technology? Try these things out and see if you remember the same stuff with old names. The good thing about Enterprise Social Software is try to bring modern Web technologies to enterprise. The last make a lot of sense to me.

Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg

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PLM, BOM, Excel – How To Make It Right?

July 30, 2010

The following blog article caught my attention last week – “Four recommendations for better Excel BOMs” in Arena Solutions blog by Jennifer Bomze. I found it interesting. Arena Solution is a PLM outfit that started about ten years ago as a company named bom.com. After few years, bom.com was re-branded and expanded to provide PLM on demand solution. I remember I was impressed by what Arena was doing with their web-based Bill Of Material product. I was following Arena activities over the past few years. They grew up in their functional PLM scope. However, my hunch is that the main competition is going between PLM offering and plain Microsoft Excel product.

PLM vs. Excel: Apple-to-Apple?
I had chance to write about PLM and Excel multiple times in the past. You can track my previous articles on my blog. Few of them are here:
Do we need chief excel officer to manage BOM?
Why Do I like my PLM Excel Spreadsheet?
PLM Excel Spreadsheet: From odes to woes.

Of course, Excel cannot be compared to PLM. Nevertheless, I guess, MS Excel is successfully outperforming PLM systems from the simplicity, implementation cost and data openness. So, even if you will never see PLM vendors comparing their product portfolios with Excel, they are struggling with Excel competition.

How To Make Excel In a Right Way?
Despite the fact Excel cannot replace broad set of PLM system functionality, I can see PLM companies are thinking more and more into “Excel-friendship” direction. To confirm this you can see multiple expanded MS Office and Microsoft SharePoint offerings coming from TeamCenter and Windchill. However, current proposal by Arena make it even more interesting. You can take a look on the full article here. In short, what Arena proposes – 4 recommendations how to use Excel if you decided NOT to purchase PLM system, for the moment:

  1. Be consistent. Use the same columns in the same order in every Excel bill of materials. Use a standard format for part numbers, manufacturer names, file titles and other types of data.
  2. Use standard templates. Get in the habit of hiding (not deleting) columns that aren’t needed in a particular BOM and creating separate spreadsheets for doing analyses that require additional columns. Give each column a single purpose, and label every piece of data in your Excel BOM spreadsheet.
  3. Have part numbering and part naming conventions – and a single location to store them. Develop and document a standard way to number and name ALL parts, and then manage those part numbers and names in a single location, like an item master or master parts list.
  4. Minimize repeated data. Include only as much data as is needed for each BOM to perform its core function of capturing the relationships between parts and assemblies. Store additional part data in the item master instead of multiple Excel BOMs, so updates only need to be made in one place.

In addition to that, Arena proposed free Excel templates to manage Bill of Materials.

PLM Excel Trojan Horse?
I can see where Excel PLM templates may be going in the future. By helping customers to optimize their Excels, PLM creates the foundation of a future PLM expansion. Of course, there is a danger in helping customer to keep going with Excel. However, there is a chance for being able to connect Excel data to Arena PLM and to import excel-based data into Arena PLM. It seems to me a step in the right direction.

What is my conclusion today? I think, MS Excel is a big deal for PLM companies. Customers are voting for Excels. PLM vendors may understand that their previous “Export To Excel” strategy was wrong, and they need to change it now. The competition with Excel will be growing as much as PLM vendors will be trying to expand their solutions to be used by more people in companies. So, give away some Excel templates can be a very good idea.

Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg

PS. Freebie. Arena Solution didn’t pay me to write this post.

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PLM Excels And The Ugly Truth About iPad

April 29, 2010

If you ask me, who is the biggest competitor of PLM apps, my constant answer is simple – Excel. I think Excel plays a huge role in the engineering and manufacturing life. An amount of information that engineers load and management with Excel is enormous. I’ve been writing quite many time about Excel. If you had no chance to see it before, you can take a look on some of the following posts.

PLM Excel Spreadsheets: From Odes to Woes
Why Do I Like My PLM Excel Spreadsheet?
Do We Need Chief Excel Officer To Manage BOM?

However, today, my post is not about Excel. I wanted to touch Apple Numbers for iPad. Since iPad was released few weeks ago, there are lots of discussions and conversation about if this new device will find his pathway into enterprise organizations. Yesterday, I had a very interesting discussion with my friends working for one of the manufacturing companies. There are two polar opinions were stated – 1/ iPad is a useless device; 2/ iPad is a very slick device. The second was mentioned by their manager. The point was made very clear, in my view. If we can make an interesting and useful apps on iPad to satisfy needs of manufacturing communities, the situation with  iPad in organizations in few years can be similar to iPhone. I decided to dig a little to find what can be attractive out-of-the-box in iPad and found a very cool demo of iPad Numbers.

Now, think about these two things together. Excel as the king of PLM universe and iPad Numbers. Sounds as a perfect match to win hearts of managers. I’m almost sure your Bill of Material will look very slick on such device, and you will like the idea to show it this way to your boss. In my view, this is the “ugly truth” about how iPad is going to win in the organizations.

I’m interesting to hear your voices? Have you had chance to play around Numbers on iPad? Would you like to have Your BOM on Your iPad?

Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg

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COFES 2010, Maieutic Parataxis and PLM Excels

April 20, 2010

I hope you know about my “love and hate” relationships with Excel. I posted many times about how deep Excel integrated into current CAD/PDM/PLM software life. Think about that, for the moment. You are getting Bill of Materials and Design Tables in CAD using Excel, lots of reports, catalogs and other data. There are lots of other reasons too. Just as an example you can take a look on one of my old “Excel” posts – Why Do I like My PLM Excel Spreadsheets?

About few months ago, I found an interesting Microsoft Live Lab product called “Pivot“. I posted about that. You can see my original post via this link. My initial thoughts were about how to try this pivot functionality on the real PLM data to see what is possible to achieve. Fortunately, this blog post got into attention of Simon Floyd from Microsoft, and he made this experiment. Last week at COFES 2010 during Maieutic Parataxis session, Simon presented his experiments. Full presentation from Maieutic Parataxis session will be available later this link. However, you can see some of the slides below.

I think, Pivot concept is an interesting experiment. Excel paradigm is very popular. At the same time, customer demands towards simple and clean user interfaces in PDM/PLM systems are very strong. Pivot can put lights on some potential in more deep exploration of Excel capabilities. Some of the visual representations in Pivot are similar to existing PLM products. Filtering and pivoting functionality is strong and interesting. To get information into Pivot can be challenging in my view.

What is my conclusion? PLM Pivot experiment requires attentions. Usability in PLM systems is a hard problem.Despite all claims mainstream customers are dissatisfied.  I’m very interesting to hear what do you think about this example? As usual, I’m looking forward to your comments.

Best, Oleg

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How To Visualize PLM Excels using Microsoft Pivot?

December 30, 2009

If you haven’t had chance to see Microsoft Live Lab Pivot project, please do. I found this approach as somewhat very interesting. The idea of data visualization is not new. However, the key question is how to make it simple? My view is that “collections” of data are a very strong and simple presentation abstraction worked well in many cases such as – SharePoint lists, Excel and many others. You can see trends towards simplification of user experience in Facebook and Twitter too.

When Pivot is still prototype and Lab product, I bet play around can give you couple of fresh ideas of what you can do with your PDM/PLM experience. The biggest amount of engineering data today is concentrated in what I’m calling “Corporate Strategic Excels”. So, maybe Pivot will be the right way to present Engineering and Product Excels to us?

What do you think?

Best, Oleg

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PLM Prompt: Product Data Visualization in MS Excel 2010

September 16, 2009

Short Prompt. Excel, in my view, is the most popular engineering and product data management tools. I had chance to discuss Excel multiple times on plmtwine before.

PLM Excel Spreadsheets: From Odes to Woes

Why Do I Like My PLM Spreadsheets?

MS Excel is coming with a set of new visualization features, that I see as a an interesting additional capability for product data visualization. Take a look for more details on the following post in Microsoft Office 2010 Engineering Blog.

Picture 2
How do you see Excel future in the context of PLM?
Best, Oleg

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PLM Prompt: Why Excel is not Enterprise System yet?

August 28, 2009

I was reading the following article “Why Excel is not Enterprise BI Solution Yet. What I liked is the way author presented the anti-Excel case in BI. I thought, this is very co-sounded with my Excel-PLM discussions. Everybody like Excel, but Excel have hidden cost and complexity you won’t be able to manage.

What is my conclusion? There are two possible ways:

1. To transform Excel into Enterprise Platform. Microsoft is trying to do so by introducing Excel Services and marriage of Excel and SharePoint.
2. To think about how to improve usability of enterprise solutions.

Just my thoughts… Best, Oleg

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PLM Prompt: Google App’s scripts for PLM?

August 20, 2009

My short and powerful prompt today. Google launched Google Apps Scripts. I’d recommend to see video.

I think, this is impressive and expected step from Google. Even, if I understood Google Apps is armed against MS Office, it creates more advanced environment for collaboration online. With my love and hate relationships to Excel, I started to draft my Bill of Material in Google Apps today.

Just my thoughts, ymmv. What do you think?
Best, Oleg

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PLM Prompt: Google Doc’s users want tables! PLM shocked…

July 21, 2009

Very impressive capabilities of Google Docs including Auto-playfeatures. I think presentation becomes very mature.Two questions incontext of this information I had in my mind:

Google Docs: You want tables!

Making presentations better with auto-play

Making presentations better with auto-play

1. Is it matured enough to replace multiple Excels we are using today?

2. What do you think about embedding of similar capabilities in PLM products to manage Bill of Materials and other product data?

Waiting for your thoughts?

Best, Oleg

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