Blog

Insights, opinions, and best practices.

Blog

Addressing Product Complexity With Collaboration, Integration and Configuration Lifecycle Management

As customer demands for more customization and choice increase, the complexity of products and associated product design, manufacturing and sales processes also increases. Product lifecycles are also getting shorter, requiring a constant flow of new products with high-value features and capabil ... Read more

Rule History Management

Change is inevitable. Change is constant. – Benjamin Disraeli Configurable products naturally evolve over time: new features and technologies are introduced; legal rules and customer requirements change. In this blog, I will describe how versioning and effectivity are two essential capabi ... Read more

The Changing Role of the CIO

In the past, CIOs were seen as the guardians of servers, implementers of software and maintainers of systems. Today, CIOs are increasingly becoming responsible for strategic initiatives, profitability and even new product development. The traditional CIO with a tech-heavy background was not req ... Read more

Enabling CIOs to Digitally Transform the End-to-End Customer Journey

Digital transformation has been a top priority for many companies and organizations over the last few years and has had a major impact on the role of CIOs. Given the technical nature of digital transformation, it is only natural that management and the board look to the CIO to lead the way. How ... Read more

Business Benefits of a Virtual Tabulation®-Based Configuration Solution

When configuration rules are maintained in separate systems, it is difficult to get a consistent and aligned view on products across the enterprise. This blog post will explain the benefits of collecting all the rules across the main functional areas of the organization, such as Engineering and ... Read more

Reimagine B2B sales for the COVID-19 Rebound

The impact of COVID-19 this year is causing many sales organizations to reconsider their strategies and plan for what comes next. COVID-19 has utterly changed how business is done, but there also lies opportunity amongst the challenges. For sales teams selling complex products, the current situ ... Read more

How to Enable Your Dealer Network to Configure, Price and Quote Complex Products

As a global manufacturer of material handling and motion control products, Columbus McKinnon (CMCO) is the second largest hoist company in the world and home to numerous brands, including Yale Hoists, Stahl Crane Systems, Camlok and more. CMCO’s products fall into three core areas: Industrial ... Read more

Where do we go from here?

As 2020 comes to a close, I’d like to take a look at what was, in most respects, a game-changing year. In the first quarter, as countries began closing borders and employees began working from home, there was considerable concern over how we would survive this abrupt slow down. In our field, wo ... Read more

How to Break Down Barriers to Digital Transformation in Manufacturing

In our recent whitepaper: “Accelerating Digital Transformation in Manufacturing with Configuration Lifecycle Management (CLM)” [download here], we explored the impact that Industry 4.0 and new customer demands like customization are having on the manufacturing industry. New business models are ... Read more

Parameter Models How CLM Ties it All Together

In previous articles, we talked about why Configuration Lifecyle Management (CLM) is an important part of your enterprise portfolio. In one article, we talked about how CLM can enhance the functionality of a PLM tool. In another, we talked about “configurators” are not enough when it comes to f ... Read more