Why is Social PLM DOA?

For the past two years I have heard many technology vendors touting the benefits of social tools. No one can miss the astounding uptake of such solutions as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Linkedin and others. There have been many articles on the value that social tools can bring to your business. However, the uptake of social tools within Engineering organizations in the guise of social PLM has been very low; possibly non-existent.

Why is this the case? Is there no value in Engineering for social tools, or is it just hard to exploit these tools in the product development environment? There is clearly a need for more social collaboration during product design, so it would stand to reason that these social tools would have some value. As I have introduced many engineers to Social PLM in my PLM Certificate Education classes, I have often wondered about the lack of enthusiasm for these kinds of tools.

I think there are three main reasons for this lack of excitement for the potential value of Social PLM:

1) Age - Most of the people in my classes are not young. No offense, but most of you are pretty old, uh, I mean experienced. Very few are linked up with the tools teenagers user every day. Many of these experienced engineers look at Facebook and Twitter as huge time wasters with no real value. Some of my students are just now learning to text...what? Come on!

2) Email dependence - I am old enough to remember when some people called email a fad. Now we have become dependent on 100s of emails invading our in-box each day. When you tell most Engineers that there is something that might one day replace email, it's like telling them you are taking away their favorite slide rule (I remember those too); the push-back is predictable.

3) Separate software applications - All of the Social PLM tools I have seen are delivered as separate software applications that must be learned. An Engineer is not going to leave the CAD/CAM/PDM/email environment to learn and use another application, unless required.

So, what is the answer? In my opinion, until we have social tools embedded into the native PDM applications that Engineers are using today to do their work, social PLM uptake will be slow. Look at some of what is available today: SocialLink from PTC, 3DSWYM from Dassault, Teamcenter Community from SiemensPLM, and a host of point solutions: Yammer, Jive, Vuuch, etc... Many of these social solutions are based on MS Sharepoint, and they bring the inherent limitations of that tool. All of these software solutions also require the engineer to learn some type of new tool. I just don't see that happening very quickly.

I hope to see social features moved from standalone software solutions into the PDM environment, where they are easy to use, and readily available. Then, I think you will see Engineers and others start to use them, and they will begin to see the value of social PLM tools for product design.

What do you think?

Cheers,

Jim

How Will Social Media Technology Impact PLM?

I just read an article (Read it here, if you like) that highlights the amazingly fast rise of Pinterest as a social media site. I also found some interesting statistics about people's experiences with social media:

• 91% of today’s online adults use social media regularly
• 300,000+ businesses have a presence on Facebook
• 28% of smartphone owners watch video on their phone in a typical month
• It has been found:
• $15,000 in direct mail = 200 new customers
• $7500 in billboard ads = 300 new customers
• $0 spent on Twitter = 1,800 new customers
• Only 18% of traditional TV ads generate a positive ROI

Facebook, Youtube, and eBay were the three top brand searches in 2011. The most popular social networks are Facebook, Twitter, and moving into third place, Pinterest; pushing Linkedin to number four.

Facebook is #1 today: 1 in 4 page views are on Facebook. Second is Youtube for video content, and finally Google is third. What this means is that if you don't have a presence on Facebook, or Youtube, then you are missing many of the eyeballs that you need to make money.

If you have a blog, or a traditional web presence, then you need to make sure people can link between your various social personas easily and quickly; many companies do not understand this yet. Mobility is also a strong trend, as more and more people log into the internet from smart-phones, iPads, Kindles, and other mobile devices. If your web site looks like a steaming pile of moose poo-poo on a mobile device, then you will not get the kind of traction you are hoping for from your web site.

Companies are not only working on their traditional web presence, but some of the heavy-weights are getting into the social media space big-time. SAP just bought Ariba for $4.3 billion to support the cloud and mobility, Salesforce.com bought Buddy Media for $690 million, and Oracle just bought Vitrue for $300 million and then they bought Collective Intellect, all to support social clouds, mobility, and social analytics.

All of these new technologies will have a big impact on PLM. The way your users collaborate will change dramatically in the next 5 years: We will go from a predominantly email collaboration model to a cloud-based social platform model; We will see a much stronger push for mobile access to all information; We will see the emergence of Social PLM. These changes will help you, or your competitors, to be more efficient and productive; which, is up to you.

What changes do you see coming in your business?

Cheers

-Jim