Product Business Management (PBM) Software Solution Reshapes Global Product Design

ProductBase and its innovative suite of Product Business Management (PBM) modules grew out of a market need for a solution to support better product decisions, and a recognition that current Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) software could not achieve the compelling PLM vision - the promise of seamlessly flowing all of the information produced throughout all phases of a product's lifecycle to everyone in an organization, including key suppliers, customers and the rest of the value chain.

John Laslavic, veteran of the industry and founder of ProductBase, assembled a team of experts to assess the automotive suppliers' needs and the deliverables of PLM software offered by the industry leaders (i.e. Siemens, Dassault, and SAP). What they found was an industry filled with broken promises, open-ended consulting implementations, and wide-spread customer dissatisfaction.  The current software offerings were expensive, took years to implement, and more often than not, did not live up to their return on investment claims.  Partnered with one of the largest automotive suppliers in the world, they decided to rewrite the rules for PLM and rolled up their sleeves to design new software from the ground up -- ProductBase.

Their pilot roll-out, consisting of 15 trial users at one facility, was so successful the project was accelerated, and now ProductBase has 3,500 users across some 80 customer sites of this multi-billion dollar global supplier and growing.   The ability of the ProductBase software to truly manage product economics across the entire lifecycle in real time made them realize they had gone well beyond PLM, and the term Product Business Management (PBM) was born.

Starting with a clean sheet of paper, a new PBM approach; ProductBase built the software solution based on achieving the PLM vision and beyond, and had no legacy code issues to overcome.  Existing PLM vendors are forced to kluge new functionality into programs that were never designed to be a complete solution, but merely a tool kit.  As a result, the software becomes unwieldy, expensive to implement and maintain, and never quite achieves the vision the industry set for itself.   ProductBase now can provide companies visibility into the economic impact at every point of the lifecycle through powerful analytics and dashboards, which could not be achieved based on the design of older solutions.

ProductBase provides a web-based, on-demand software model.  As a result, implementations are measured in weeks, results are immediate, and return on investment is measured in months.  By contrast, the industry is filled with horror stories of the never-ending PLM consulting engagement and the 5 year ROI payback schedule.  ProductBase VP of Business Development Carl Rundell boasts that it provides 10 times the functionality for one-tenth the cost [of a traditional PLM installation].  ProductBase is the solution that PLM promised, it's not just software.

ProductBase is a complete solution that evolves to meet the continuously changing needs of not just large enterprises, but also small- to medium-sized enterprises of all types.  Redefining not only PLM, but the way it is implemented, is a key part of the PBM business model.  The new PBM solution addresses 90% of the customizations required with existing vendors by providing highly-intuitive, graphical interfaces to perform functions such as adding attributes to objects within the database, advanced report design capabilities and the ability to define workflows through simple drag-and-drop. 

Rundell is confident that the market is ready for the shift from Product Lifecycle Management software (PLM) to ProductBase's Product Business Management (PBM) solution.  He has experienced the business playing field leveling and opening up into a global field, which includes a company's complete value chain.  As products continue to become more complex, product development teams more geographically dispersed and economic conditions more challenging, strategies and environments must not only provide solid support for full product definition and management, but must also be able to handle the impact product economics plays within a company and across its value chain, stated Rundell.

The PLM giants are currently offering their software to a wide variety of industries.  ProductBase, because of their expertise and strategic plan, decided to first target the automotive industry.  The driving force for ProductBase is our customer's satisfaction, and so we made a conscious decision to manage our growth based on our ability to keep our clients happy, and consistently exceed their expectations in terms of the value we bring for the investment they've made, stated Rundell.   They have plans to expand into other markets such as the electronic and high-tech industries in the very near future.  ProductBase's growth is an undisputable sign of general market acceptance for this product economic-focused technology.

ProductBase formed in 2004 and currently has a team of 13. Their first customer was a local division of a major automotive supplier.  This customer later took them global with other divisions within the company. Their sales have increased 150 percent in 2006-2007, 200 percent in 2007-2008, and they are expecting the same growth in 2008-2009.

During their development, Automation Alley referred ProductBase to the MI-SBTDC Technology Team to assess their strategic plan. Rundell was leery to work with the MI-SBTDC because of the free service offered by the Technology Team.  He thought it would take too long to get the Technology Business Consultant up to speed with where ProductBase was in their strategic planning, and that it just wouldn't be worth his time.  I was reluctant, but took the advice of Automation Alley. By the end of the first meeting with Technology Business Consultant Tom Kelly, Tom was getting me up to speed, stated Rundell. 

It's the caliber of individual the MI-SBTDC has working for them.  Their knowledge base and experiences, both failures and successes, allows them to bring a wide array of perspective to their clients.  Rundell continued: What an asset to be able to learn the mistakes of other technology businesses without having to go through the mistakes ourselves. This has truly allowed ProductBase to grow at a fast pace.