Wow! Blowing the dust off the 'ol keyboard here. Been a while since my last post huh? That's what 59,000 airline miles in three months will do to you. So what have I been up to you ask? If you're following me on Twitter then you know I've been jet setting around the world talking to customers that are clamoring to get their hands on Autodesk PLM 360. Since our announcement last year at Autodesk University the team has been in constant contact with companies interested in learning more, implementing, and using the product.
So just want to put that into perspective real quick... Customers up and running with PLM 360 in weeks! Contrast that to what has been determined to be an accepted standard with implementing on premise PLM. It's such a stark contrast that our competitors are trying to dismiss it - You can't possibly be up and running that quickly because it takes longer than that to setup and deploy one of their servers. So the general reaction is since they can't do it that quickly, it's either simply not possible, Autodesk is making this stuff up, or the fun one... It's toy PLM.
Ask them. Can you deploy your version of PLM and have Requirements Management, Project Management, Quality, Compliance, Supply Chain processes up and running according to your specifications and deploy it to any location around the globe in a month? Just ask them. I'm interested in what they say, do they go on the offense and start to lay BS claims that we aren't a robust solution, or that we can't possibly know the PLM space because we supposedly just realized the value of PLM? I love how one of them said that Autodesk couldn't possibly have a reasonable discussion regarding PLM. Really? Is that why your customers are calling us looking to understand why if our product can do what yours can, "then why the hell am I paying so much?" What I'm hearing is that they are spending more time in a juvenile attempt to dismiss our product than they have been promoting the value of theirs. Is it just me?
On Tuesday Carl Bass talked about how disruptive technology is often dismissed. That's the attempt here in my mind anyway, but what I think they are most concerned about isn't our technology... It’s what our technology enables – a completely unique business model compared to other PLM solutions. By its nature, PLM 360 can be setup, and rolled out to hundreds of locations without additional effort, you simply log in. The technology allows us to bring this product to market at a cost that can’t be touched with their solutions. The technology facilitates business process consulting where customers see results of their efforts within months if not days. It's the entire business model that is made possible via the cloud. Our competitions' technology cannot support this type of business model, and if they aren’t concerned… they should be.
How specifically does the technology enable this business model – in short, instantly available, zero infrastructure costs, no additional modules to buy, insanely configurable, process oriented rather than data model oriented, natively mobile, etc. These are the things that are motivation enough for people with on premise PLM solutions or not to pick up the mouse and visit our website and purchase PLM 360. Within minutes they receive their login information and at first login they are immediately presented with a tutorial on how to start configuring their instance of PLM 360. Oh and did I mention that it’s $75 / user / month?
Let’s talk about a couple examples. SMI Group implemented task management, project management, estimated vs. actual cost, employee performance, and work allocation in one month’s time. ElectronVault was searching for something like this for over two years and after 6 weeks they have implemented Project Management, EBOM, MBOM, and starting on their APQP project. Six Weeks!!!
Here's another thing that we would all do well to think about. PLM is not PDM. If you have a PLM solution today and all you are doing with it is CAD management, Engineering Change Management, and some engineering BOM stuff... dude... I'm sorry. We can do that with Vault. It's awesome to me how the others are doing benchmarks of their PLM solution with customers against Autodesk Vault. It’s like comparing AutoCAD to a parametric 3D modeler – not apples to apples son. So in comparing Vault to PLM what you are saying is that you don't really do PLM...? Is that how I'm to read that? Oh, but it costs what? 3, 4, thousand...oh, no not thousand - hundred thousand....no, not that either - million!!!? Why?
Yeah. Why?
-Rob
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