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Gartner, PLM Social Networking and Technological Enablers

January 25, 2012

I want to talk about a social-networking topic again. I was reading Gartner Top Vertical Industry Prediction for 2012 and Beyond. Spend some time reading the short summary provided by Gartner. Navigate here if you want to get a full report. Gartner emphasized significantly the value of social networking. Read this passage:

Cloud computing and social media will continue to provide industries with new avenues for effective customer communication and engagement, facilitating increased revenue and sustainable interaction with key customers…

One of the predictions related to "social networking" and PLM caught my attention.

By 2014, the five largest PLM software providers will make social networking an integral part of their solution.

So, who are these companies? In my view, top 5 are Dassault Systems, Oracle, PTC, SAP, and Siemens PLM. The question is if we need to include Autodesk in this list. After the announcement about Nexus 360 – a new cloud based PLM, we probably need to counter Autodesk at least in the list of pretenders.

PLM vendors and Social Networking platform

The companies I mentioned above already spent significant efforts in implementation social networking and social platforms. Dassault Systems development 3DSwYm platform. I wrote about it multiple times. You can start here. Oracle presented few research and development projects in this space as well. The one I noted was Oracle Web Center. PTC made significant effort to develop social platform development capabilities called Windchill Social Link. During my last visit to PTC, I had a chance to speak recently with David Blair, VP of social product development. Navigate here to read more. SAP development product called SAP StreamWork. I probably less familiar with what Siemens PLM is doing. However, TeamCenter Community product is clearly focused on some sort of social networking and collaboration. You can read more here – Siemens augment social product development.

Social Platforms and Technological Enablers

I found a question of what technology PLM vendors are using to implement social networking and social collaboration quite fascinating. From user perspective the functionality provided in these platforms can be considered as very similar. Some of the vendors – Dassault, SAP, Oracle development their own platforms. PTC and Siemens PLM are relying on Microsoft SharePoint as a technological platform. In that context, I’ve read the following interesting article – 5 myths about SharePoint as a Enterprise Social Platform. Have a read and make your conclusion. The following passage was one of my favorites:

When SharePoint 2010 arrived in the marketplace, the platform included new social capabilities to improve productivity and collaboration. However, as the consumer social web exploded, it became clear that the 2010 platform only provided the basic building blocks of social computing.

What is my conclusion? A little more than two years ago, I asked a question – How many social platforms we need for enterprise? In my view, this question is still valid. The run of all PLM vendors towards developing social platforms will re-create one of the existing problem in enterprise software – silos and fragmentation. I’d expect customers to ask questions about what platform to use in case more than one vendor involved and how to integrate social platform capabilities coming from multiple providers. So, what do we have – an old problem with a new face?. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Image credit Nutdanai Apikhomboonwaroot / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Leave a Comment » | Daily PLM Think Tank | Tagged: Gartner, PLM, Social Networks, social platforms | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

PLM, Sharing Information and Googe+ Circles

October 1, 2011

If you developed or implemented PDM or PLM system, you probably know that definition of users, groups and roles are an essential piece of your implementation. The ability to set them and maintain within the time is very important and can influence many aspects of how a system performs and how business processes in the company will be managed. I’ve seen multiple implementations of users, groups and roles management tools and all of them looks pretty much the same.

Recently, lots of conversations happen around a so-called “social” topic. In a nutshell, lots of these talks about how to streamline organizational processes as a result of re-use some of the experience social networking website and web 2.0 applications gathered for the last 3-5 years. Social networks have been challenged by a significant increase in the level of complexity. Systems growing to 10s and 100s million of users invested a lot in the development of mechanisms to group people and establish different mechanisms define users and groups. Privacy concern made a key role in forcing social networks to develop very sophisticated information sharing mechanisms.

Most probably you had a chance to experience Google+ already. If you haven’t, make a try… Despite the obvious comparison with Facebook, I found it, actually, very different. Even if Google+ is only 3 months old, it is already running to add new features. I’ve been reading Mashable article – Now you can share your Google+ Circle with others. Google Circles are the mechanism that allows you to split and share multiple information streams. Watch the following video to see how you can share Circles:

This feature made me think about how Google+ Circle Share feature can be used to share information between different people and teams across the organizations. The user experience is the key point here. Instead of running complicated tools you can help people to find a right person to connect in the organization based on the contextual information (i.e. people’s role, project belonging, etc.). Do you think the idea is completely crazy? Tell me what tools are you using, for the moment, in your organization?

What is my conclusion? Everything becomes flat these days. Organizations are not exclusion from this rule. Complicated hierarchies and dependencies need to go away. To develop new ways to share information between people in organizations is extremely important. Google+, as well as other social nets are good examples of what future may look like. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Leave a Comment » | Daily PLM Think Tank, Uncategorized | Tagged: Google, Information, PLM, Social Networks | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

Social PLM Options

February 16, 2010

Social is hot. Social networks, social applications, social enterprise, social CRM… social PLM (?). I put a question mark, since I wasn’t sure if to use a word social is an appropriated in this context. What means “social” for PLM? How it is different from what we’ve been doing in PLM during the last decade?

Collaborative PLM
We used to apply the word “collaborative” in PDM/PLM context many times. Despite the magic of this word, for me, it was always about “working together”. And, I think, this is true. PDM and lately PLM put huge focus on how to share data in the organization, how to access this data collaboratively. It started from collaborative review and move into more complicated areas of design, engineering, etc. Collaborative technologies in PLM passed three stages: 1/Share Data; 2/Exchange Messages; 3/Work in real time.

Social Trend
The trend for social software started from Web 2.0. Actually, Web 2.0 was a lot about how we can generate content on the web. It started as blogs, wikis and web sites provided different user experience (i.e. flikr etc.). People started to collaboratively create content on the web. In the beginning, it was purely about technologies like AJAX and user experience. It was a turning point point for Enterprise 2.0- how to bring so successful Web 2..0 user experience and new models of communication and collaboration to enterprise. Within time, it came to the point where content became secondary and actually social communication (or people) came to the first place. The “aha moment”, in my view, was when everybody understood the value of collective information about social communication and data that people generate. It wasn’t about accessing data anymore. It was about how people interact and how to get value from this interaction.

Social Trend and Enterprise Software
Enterprise Software discovered hidden potential of social trend and implication on what currently happens in the enterprise. The first who came into this game was CRM, and it is obvious why it happens. CRM is all about communication with customers. However, who are your customers? These are the same people on twitter, Facebook, linkedin and many other social networks. So, if CRM can leverage this social communication, stay connected with customers, get feedback and early alert – this is a huge value for enterprise. Take a look on the video of industry analysts Michael Fauscette and Natalie Petouhoff discussing the intersection of Social CRM and the enterprise. Recorded at the Social CRM Summit last week. I found it very interesting.

In parallel, I can see other enterprise domains are also moving towards better understanding of what social trend can bring to them. I think, we are in the early beginning of this trend. Some elements of social software in the way of user experience, people communication started to appear in the portfolios of enterprise vendors. Community software is one example of that experience. I see it very positive. Social networks provided a very significant push to the development of social software. However, it was transformed into multiple “social platforms” in the enterprise. It was a funny transformation in my view. Now, every big enterprise vendor, started to propose their own “social network”. We are still not at the mature level. However, all trials are very interesting.

So, what about Social PLM?

Finally, I wanted to get back and answer on the following question: where is the intersection of social trend and PLM? In my view, implications can come in the three possible areas: collaborative technologies, user experience and value of social networks.

Collaborative Technologies: Social software developed bunch of very interesting technologies for collaborative work. These technologies related to the ability to manage big amount of data, involve many participants simultaneously. I’m sure PLM will need to learn lesson or two from this space. It contains a huge amount of innovative ideas and technological achievements. We are in the early beginning of this discovery.

User Experience: Social software came with the next level of user interface, usability, behaviors, etc. These fresh ideas and very broad use adoption level, need to be translated into PLM. Today’s PLM user experience is far from the consumer software level. We can see it started to happen already. There are multiple examples of re-use of Facebook’s user experience, Twitter micro-blogging communication, etc.

Value of Social Networks: This is the most interesting space, in my view. We will need to think how to bring accumulated value of social network into PLM. This is especially interesting for manufacturing companies facing consumer space. And, almost all manufacturers these days are looking how to get connected to the end users. Such social innovation can be a very interesting experience for Product Lifecycle Management.

Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg

8 Comments | Daily PLM Think Tank, Future Trends, Social Media and Tools | Tagged: PLM, Social, Social Networks | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

How PLM can help me to share product secrets in organization?

August 17, 2009

I’d like to follow few very interesting discussions that happened last week. Few blog posts you probably want to read before you will continue with today’s post: Should I keep secrets from my PLM system?, Yes, Oleg, You Should Keep Secrets from Your PLM System, People Centric PLM – A New PLM age is born.

So, why I decided to get back to this topic again this week? Back to my original Should I keep secrets from my PLM system? PLM introduced a concept of “single point of truth” and, even if this concept intent was good, I was afraid to see how this concept made many PLM implementations unsuccessful. In my view, it created perception of PLM to control all product’s data in organization. And this task is very complicated. Meantime, PLM can provide many additional benefits. So how to leverage them? These are my original thoughts – keep secrets from your PLM! Don’t allow “multi-year PLM project” to start in your organization. You should be lean and efficient in the way you will plan your PLM deployment.

However, I got very interesting post-answer PTC Robin Saitz. Here, what Robin is saying:

“There are authoring tools, such as CAD/CAM/CAE, which are focused on making the individual engineer or designer more productive. There are enterprise applications, such as PLM, that are focused on governance and control of product information. PLM is dedicated to shepherding a promising product idea through design development, sourcing, change and configuration management, manufacturing planning, production, service, and retirement. But there’s another set of activities that hasn’t been suitably addressed by either PLM or Desktop apps…

…new social product development capabilities (those leveraging social computing technology) can significantly improve this type of idea exchange. It’s a more flexible and natural way of interacting, and doesn’t carry the constraints inherent in a governance system. Not every idea exchanged, considered, commented on, discarded or every question asked and answered needs to be in the PLM system. But having the freedom to spawn and discuss ideas and spontaneously ask questions or help out your colleague can make the process of getting the best ideas into the PLM system easier. Then the PLM system is tasked with managing the processes needed to bring that great idea to market”.

And this is a completely different angle on what PLM is doing in organization. From my side, I see PLM as a force to integrated product development processes. The biggest PLM strength is ability to manage collaborative business processes in order not to become an only execution system. My initial though about PTC Product Point back to announcement last year was – it step to cover additional processes and re-use some SharePoint Platform Social Network capabilities? According to the PTC announcement:

“Windchill ProductPoint will give SharePoint reach into the world of Product Development. Windows SharePoint Services, Microsoft’s technology infrastructure for collaboration, has been well adopted across manufacturing companies as a backbone for Office applications, primarily for document sharing and management. With Windchill ProductPoint, PTC will enable SharePoint to understand CAD (computer-aided-design) data, increasing the reach of the familiar SharePoint user experience, and enhancing its usage across broader product development teams. For OEMs and suppliers, a future release of Windchill ProductPoint is planned to support the sharing of information among other Windchill-based systems”.

So, big question I have now – will today’s PLM expand their capabilities to provide connecting forces and enable social product collaboration within organization? I’d say this is will be smart step. Should PLM limit to process governance and control of product information? I’d say we did it in the past, but new people centric PLM age is born, and we need to move forward!

And I’m looking forward to future discussions on plmtwine during this week. Best, Oleg

15 Comments | Daily PLM Think Tank, PLM and organization, Social Media and Tools | Tagged: People PLM, PLM, Social Networks, Social Tools | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

Invisible Data Management for PLM

May 12, 2009

The latest trends in software development definitely lean towards simplification. People tend to avoid complex stuff. I think most of us agree that we rather than expecting customers to read User Guides, we want to provide an intuitive user experience, and use 3D and CAD software focuses on simplification. As the use of this software becomes more natural in the customers’ operation, products that don’t require training will definitely leapfrog over products that require education and a high learning curve. So, with all these things on our mind, how we can make the next major shift in Product Lifecycle Management to becoming… yes, Invisible!

I’d like to figure a few core implementation principles that can help us make this invisibility a reality.

1. Cloud on our mind

We need to stop thinking about a “place to store our work”. Cloud (or corporate cloud) is a technical answer to “where to store”. This place needs to be big enough and widely available in order NOT to burden people about how to save their design, Bill of Material, Item etc.

2. Tagging and Classification

My design, product data, Bill of Materials and everything else I create during my job functions need to be tagged and classified. I don’t need to be part of this job. I already mentioned Tagging in my previous posts. I think, folksonomy-based classification combined with some automatic guidance will help us avoid “boring data entering” and other “data selection” procedures. In general, my work needs to be natural and focused only on <my tasks>.

3. Collaborative (Social) Networks in the Organization

We need to translate the benefits of social networks in the organization to the level of self-identification. These networks need to be created based on the organizational information and conceptual definition of processes. Mapping of people/roles/processes need to be done automatically. As soon as this happens, the issue of “workflow” management in the organization will disappear. The system will route tasks/messages without asking users additional and complex questions.

4. Natural Language Processing (NLP)

Last, but not least. Even after many years of computing, people still prefer communicating in their natural language. PLM needs to invest more in communication using natural languages, at least the written language (i.e. you can build commands to enhance/enrich/develop user experience on top of NLP tools).

2 Comments | Daily PLM Think Tank, PLM and organization, Technology | Tagged: Classifications, Cloud PLM, Future PLM, NLP for PLM, PLM Tagging, Social Networks, Technology | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

Four directions for successful PLM collaboration

May 11, 2009

Collaboration is a magic word that we use a lot in Product Lifecycle Management. I’d say we also use the word “collaboration” even if we’re just talking about Product Development, Engineering, Simulation, Manufacturing etc.

Collaboration is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together on common goals — for example, an intellectual endeavor^[1] ^[2] that is creative in nature^[3]—by sharing knowledge, learning and building consensus. Collaboration does not require leadership and can sometimes bring better results through decentralization and egalitarianism

Collaborative software is software designed to help people involved in a common task achieve their goals. Collaborative software is the basis for computer supported cooperative work. “It is not a question of how well each process works; the question is how well they all work together.” – Lloyd Dobyns and Clare Crawford-Mason, Think about quality. Such software systems as email, calendaring, text chat, wiki, and bookmarking belong to this category. It has been suggested that Metcalfe’s law — the more people who use something, the more valuable it becomes — applies to such software

So, with such a broad definition, I’d like to discuss more deeply what collaboration means for Product Development and Product Lifecycle Management; as well as share a few ideas with you about how PLM collaboration needs to be developed in the near future.

1. Collaboration Networks. This is what we know today as “Social Networks”. Social Networks is a rapidly growing segment of the consumer sector. Such products as Twitter, Facebook and others use people’s natural tendency to build relationships. Such relationship building processes allows people to realize their need to communicate, share ideas and information. How do you translate this into a business and enterprise organization? Today everything is siloed and people have low to no ability to communicate with relevant people in an organization. I believe that we need to find an easy way to build these relationships and build such “collaboration networks” in an easy and flexible manner. People need to share their work, experience, information. They have to have the ability to find relevant people and organize communication.

2. Multiple Rich User Experience and Mobile Devices. I think that the User Experience will play a major role in PLM collaboration software. In my view, topic such as Web, non-Web, on demand etc. will disappear and people will only be focused on what user experience is and how to get access to services. I expect that people will experience many ways of achieving their collaborative goals- going with the Web, installing additional applications to get their preferred user experience, touch interfaces, game-like controllers, going mobile etc. So, my propose direction here is to find explicit user experience for specific groups of people dependent on their role, tasks and personal preference. In addition, I think that Mobile device strategy will play a special role in the future of PLM collaboration. New mobile devices let people change their working habits and be more flexible in the way they organize their common tasks.

3. Operational Usage. I think that this one is very important to connect our traditional PLM approach focused on design and engineering with the overall corporate and supply chain operation. I think that when you discuss what’s more important– Innovation or Operation, for the consensus these days is that “we need both”. The way that I see making this possible is to have the ability to organize cross-functional collaboration networks between people belonging to different siloes in the organization. This operation transparency will allow PLM to step into the operational field and expose more product knowledge and information to support operational decisions.

4. Information and Connectivity. Last but very not least. In the current world, according to some of the research I’ve read lately, we double information in organization every 18 months. I think that PLM collaboration needs to face the situation that multiple information pieces are distributed by multiple channels in an organization. Being able to keep track and connect and integrate related information is top priority for many of enterprise projects. In PLM context is becoming a top priority and PLM collaboration needs to provide a way to share this information ubiquitously.

4 Comments | Collaboration, Daily PLM Think Tank, PLM and organization | Tagged: Collaboration, Information Management, PLM, PLM Collaboration, Social Networks, Technology | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

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