10 Reasons Why You Need Cloud-Native PLM

Companies understand digital transformation is essential to stay competitive and evolve with the changing technological landscape. As a result, many product development and manufacturing companies are investing in cloud solutions to help compete with bigger brands.

Cloud-native product lifecycle management (PLM) solutions have become huge game changers for businesses of all sizes, especially small to midsized. A cloud-native platform provides you flexibility to integrate your PLM system with other cloud-based applications and services, such as engineering design, enterprise resource planning (ERP), and customer relationship management (CRM) solutions.

If your company still relies on legacy technology and manual processes, or you’re hesitant to invest in a PLM solution—here are 10 compelling reasons why you should consider a cloud-native PLM as part of your digital landscape.

Reason #1: Reduces IT Costs and Overhead

Not all companies have large IT budgets, especially new or midsized companies. That’s why cloud-native PLM is the perfect match when it comes to lowering IT infrastructure costs and delivering better overall performance. Companies can eliminate IT overhead costs associated with investments in hardware and software, as well as maintenance, because cloud solution providers handle all the updates and maintenance.

Reason #2: Centralizes Product Information

With product information being used by practically every department inside a company, it can become quickly dated if the information is not stored and maintained in a central repository. There is also a possibility that if you’re using outside manufacturing partners, you might build to the incorrect bill of materials (BOM). By using a Cloud PLM platform everyone has access to a single source of truth for product information and can see updates and changes in real time. This not only fosters collaboration but also significantly reduces the chance of errors happening from outdated or erroneous information.

Reason #3: PLM/QMS Compatibility

Companies gain a single, comprehensive view of their products by combining quality management system (QMS) processes and PLM. This can result in improved collaboration, fast and accurate issue resolution, and holistic analytics, which can lead to higher quality and a shorter time to market. Arena’s cloud-native PLM connects quality management processes to the product record, which helps product and quality distributed teams improve visibility and traceability throughout the entire product lifecycle.

Reason #4: Streamlines Design to Manufacturing Processes

PLM is vital in bridging the gap between product ideation, development, and manufacturing. Integrating PLM with computer-aided design (CAD), product data management (PDM), QMS, CRM, ERP, and other solutions streamlines design to manufacturing processes to help reduce late-stage scrap and rework and speed production.

Reason #5: Improves Collaboration and Visibility

When using disconnected solutions such as spreadsheets, email, or chat tools, it’s incredibly difficult to keep track of several revisions and continuous changes to product designs. While this practice causes communication issues for internal teams, working with external supply chain teams becomes even more challenging. With a Cloud PLM solution, all teams can review, approve, and work together on the connected product record at any time and from anywhere. This speeds up the review and approval processes for new designs, engineering change orders, quality issues, and project tasks. Collaboration provides enhanced visibility and traceability throughout the entire product lifecycle, eliminating development and manufacturing blind spots.

Reason #6: Speeds Time to Market

If you’re always racing against the clock to meet deadlines, you need a solution that will help you compete in a changing market. Cloud PLM solutions help escalate new product development (NPD) processes and reduce time to market (TTM) by driving frequent real-time collaboration between remote and in-house teams, suppliers, and contract manufacturers (CMs). This is critical because a lack of product readiness and change planning could have an influence on the product commercialization plan. PLM connects and aligns information, business processes, and people to help bring innovative, complex products to market faster.

Reason #7: Reduces Product Costs

A cloud-native PLM solution can help reduce product development costs by supporting better resource planning, minimizing design errors, removing redundant tasks, improving product quality, and boosting collaboration across teams with a single source of truth.

Reason #8: Efficient Compliance Management

All product development companies must ensure regulatory compliance or a regulatory framework at all stages of their product development. Errors in compliance can have a substantial financial and reputational impact on a product’s value. PLM ensures companies are following both regulatory standards and internal company guidelines. PLM software can help you track and monitor compliance requirements for environmental standards such as RoHS, REACH, and WEEE in addition to the FDA, ISO, and other industry-specific regulations so you can maintain a comprehensive overview of your compliance efforts. Cloud PLM supports compliance by automating controls, managing compliance documentation, and providing audit trails related to all aspects of the product design, development, and manufacturing processes. PLM addresses potential compliance risks upfront, enabling you to prevent issues and decrease the likelihood of noncompliance.

Reason #9: PLM Drives Sustainable Product Development

A PLM system is one of the best solutions for companies looking to become sustainable. A modern cloud-native PLM system makes it easier for companies to enter the circular economy because these solutions cover the entire product lifecycle—from creative concept to development to end of life. PLM solutions enable brands to create business standards and ensure that people, goods, and processes adhere to the company’s sustainability objective. They allow organizations to monitor the materials from suppliers to factories more easily. This enables brands to guarantee that their suppliers are adhering to sustainable practices. PLM helps manufacturers track how much material they need, manage the materials they use for product development, and recycle and reuse them when possible. Companies can also use PLM to track the overall CO2 emissions created by their product over its lifecycle.¹

Reason #10: Scalable to Grow With a Company

Speed of production and innovation, along with revenue, growth and customer loyalty, all add up to one thing—company growth. Cloud-native PLM software not only helps businesses in the short term but also prepares them for the future. Cloud-native PLM is built on a scalable platform to grow with smaller businesses but also gives larger firms agility and flexibility.

Arena’s Cloud-Native PLM

Modern product development and manufacturing companies rely on distributed teams and worldwide supply chains to manufacture products, ensure regulatory compliance (FDA, ISO, ITAR, EAR, and environmental compliance), and respond to customer demand. Arena helps you do all that and more by boosting visibility and traceability and providing collaboration across all team members throughout the product lifecycle.

If you haven’t implemented a digital transformation and you’re still relying on spreadsheets and manual processes to manage your BOMs, what do you think that’s costing your company?

Now’s the time to start connecting your teams and integrating processes into a centralized cloud-native PLM solution so you can manage your product development processes with better efficiency, stay compliant, and launch products faster.

Now that you know the benefits of cloud-native PLM, it’s time to explore Arena.

Sources cited:

1. Life cycle assessments (LCA) and product carbon footprints (PCF)