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by Beth Stackpole, Contributing Editor   | Abstract: | Industry-specific flavors of PLM promise faster time to deployment and lower cost of ownership. But customers should choose wisely and stick with vendors that have proven domain expertise in their sectors. |
When you're supporting a company that's growing 40% per year, there's no time to think, let alone squander months or years on an enterprise software deployment. So when Under Armour Inc., a leading brand of performance apparel and footwear, opted to replace a smattering of manual and outdated systems with an integrated product lifecycle management (PLM) platform, there was no question that the company would opt for a solution that was tailored specifically for apparel manufacturers' needs. Sure, there were minor modifications to be made and some integration work to be done. Even so, Under Armour was up and running on Dassault Systemes' ENOVIA MatrixOne Apparel Accelerator in less than 20 weeks, far sooner than the year-to-18-month rollout schedule generally associated with most enterprise software deployments. The ambitious timetable was critical, Under Armour officials say, to ensure that the PLM system would be in gear to generate efficiencies for the company's upcoming spring and fall 2009 seasons, which required planning to kick off in earnest in November 2007. [Click to continue] |