Domain Systems News

At the end of a busy day the last thing a CIO or IT system administrator wants is an auto-generated notification or phone call about the PLM software has gone down.

Work is hectic enough already - working with budget cuts, executive reviews, staff performance, buyer trend reports, security risk mitigating and digital transformation initiatives - without adding software crashes into the mix.

The inevitable question each of us ends up asking therefore, is, “are we spending too much time buried in putting out fires?

The growing list of IT functions over the years have caused leaders to either expand department headcount or look to outside help.

Let's take a look and see if you fall into this category.

In today’s high-tech industries, many companies face the struggle to maximize efficiency. What many lack is a robust and proficient enterprise solution to bolster your company’s product development while at the same time eliminating waste. Product lifecycle management (PLM) is easily one of the most critical capabilities for fast-tracking product delivery, dropping costs, and generating revenues for major high-tech industries. Every company benefits from investing in the latest PLM technology and industry best practice to make sure you can make this extremely complex process more efficient, cohesive, and simplified. Product development challenges are around every corner with businesses in the high-tech world; Inefficiency in process, disjointed data systems, immensely complex products and difficulty adhering to rigorous regulations.
Let’s take a look at the most commonly asked questions regarding Oracle Agile PLM. We will start with the broad and get more focused questions towards the end.

Times are quickly changing for businesses, products, consumers, and the solutions we manage them with.  PLM software has undergone a constant evolution in recent years to accommodate digital transformation, IoT, globalization, and still pack a competitive punch for its users. 

If your company is still operating on an older version of Oracle Agile PLM you may not know what you are missing.  

In my profession, I regularly interact with the end user.  Those who are still using relics like Agile 8.5, Advantage, 9.2, or even an early release of the 9.3 platform tend to get really excited about some simple User Interface/User Experience enhancement introduced to their environment.

While there are many reasons to upgrade, the user experience is often undervalued when compared to what comes under the hood.  

It’s important to keep in mind that user adoption, productivity, and job satisfaction all improve when the user experience elevates. 

Last year, Oracle announced an important developmental milestone, which affects users of their best-of-breed PLM platform, Agile.  They are called Agile Release Update Packs (or RUPs) and the implications of this change carry some weight, both in the now, and well into the future.

Eventually, every user will reach a point when it makes sense to upgrade. The decision, then, needs to be made whether to attempt the upgrade in-house or with an Agile specialist, like myself. Regardless of the direction you go, I want you to have a successful upgrade.  So we'll cover each step that needs to be taken, and if you follow them precisely, you will be up and running in no time.

As the pace of business accelerates, the demands are being felt by supply chains. Increased customer expectations, shorter product life cycles, added regulations to stay in compliance, and an ever dynamic market are challenging traditional methods of product management. Keeping in stride will not happen however, without the corresponding level of product automation technology. There’s just one problem…

…new tools cost money.

Deciding to hire a software consultant is a brilliant way to improve your business processes.  Consultants advise on best practices, which will result in greater profitability and competitiveness.  Hiring a new consultant, however, can land you with even greater challenges, which can damage your company’s reputation, set you back months, years, or worse. Our consultants have had to perform several "repair jobs" on partnerships such as these over the years- and I can tell you that the headaches these clients are left with, are 99% avoidable.

The overall concept of delivering computing resources through a global (web) network actually began in the 1960’s with the ideas of visionary JCR Licklider (see Intergalactic-computer-network with apologies to Al Gore).  Mr. Licklider’s idea was for everyone to be interconnected, accessing programs and data from any site, anywhere.   While not called cloud computing back then, the similarity to modern day definitions cannot be ignored.