This series of posts turned the corner from giving guidance on how to approach, justify, and define your path to PLM - and started the conversation on how to choose a vendor. The prior posts suggested that you need to know your business and know the vendor landscape. One area where these two items collide is how well your industry is supported by the vendor.

Why Does it Matter?

A minivan that is designed to carry a throng of children to and from school, sporting events, and other daily activities will likely make a poor construction vehicle. It is simply designed with other needs in mind. It may have the same basic capabilities (engine, wheels, steering wheel, etc.) but it wasn't build for the ruggedness of construction (although I have seen the mess my kids can make in our minivan, and perhaps there are more parallels than I care to admit). There are basic assumptions made in designing the vehicle - and the same holds true for software - that may make it acceptable or not for a particular industry.

For example, if you are in industrial equipment and managing 3D CAD is important to your business, a solution from the big guys - Teamcenter (Siemens/UGS), Windchill (PTC), or Enovia VPLM (Dassault Systemes) could be strong candidates. This is where their core strengths were developed. On the other hand, if your company is an apparel company - you might be better off with a specialty solution like those from a host of specialty vendors that includes Centric Software, Freeborders, Gerber, NGC, Zimmetry, and Zweave among others. These companies have built specific capabilities that address unique concerns of the fashion industries (I will share some highlights our benchmark on PLM Agility for Apparel on this blog after it is published in January).

But here is where things get tricky. The larger suite players have also set their eyes on industry-specific functionality. PTC acquired Aptavis, and now offers an apparel-centric solution built on Windchill. Enovia MatrixOne (Dassault) has an "accelerator" product that extends the core solution with apparel capabilities. These larger vendors are not content to support the traditional complex discrete industries like automotive, aerospace, and industrial equipment. And by the way, each of those industries has some special needs as well. This leaves companies a choice:

• Specialty Vendors provide focus. These vendors, although typically smaller in size, have the luxury of supporting a single industry (or perhaps several related industries) with their solutions. They know the needs and trends of the industry. The software "speaks the language" of the industry, and supports common business practices in the industry. These vendors should be evaluated in any selection process, if for no other reason to understand where the suite providers might be lacking (trust me, they know, I made my living as an industry specialist for some time).
• Suite Providers provide depth and breadth. They provide best practices from across industries, and typically can make larger investments in generalized functionality. They typically have deeper pockets, and have often spent more of their time on building out core technology and infrastructure. Not all of these are the big guys, though, for example Aras and Arena Solutions are smaller companies that compete based on other specialization (open source PLM and software as a service respectively). And don't forget that the largest of the suite providers, Oracle and SAP, are very serious about the PLM market. Oracle's acquisition of Agile Software might be more noticeable, but SAP has been working on a 3 year PLM Roadmap that offers some compelling capabilities directly in the SAP environment.
• A Hybrid model provides some of the benefits of both. This is where the suite providers invest in specific capabilities by industry. SAP and Oracle, for example, have been doing these for years in ERP. This may be through templates or specialized versions of their software. In PLM, the most commonly supported specialties are in complex discrete industries, perhaps adding some capability for developing medical devices.
• A Mixed model provides dual benefits as well. An example could be running a specialty PLM solution for process industries - like Enginuity PLM, Optiva (Infor), or Selerant - but wrapping them underneath and "enterprise PLM" such as MatrixOne.

I am running out of time, and you may be running out of patience in reading this longer post. I'll pick this up again next time.

 I look forward to your comments. If you have dealt with special needs in your industry or know of a vendor that is particularly good at supporting an industry, please feel free to add it to the conversation.