.svg){kind=small}
Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) has become a strategic pillar of modern industrial organizations. Going far beyond the management of engineering data, it now serves as a central ecosystem that connects business processes, teams, product data, and numerous enterprise systems such as ERP, MES, and design tools.
However, one issue remains: how can we ensure that these investments actually deliver the expected value?
In this webinar, several industry experts analyze the main obstacles encountered during PLM implementations:
- Uneven user adoption
- Inadequate data quality and governance
- The rise of parallel tools ("Shadow IT")
- Difficulty in aligning processes across teams
- Lack of visibility into ROI and actual usage
The speakers highlight a common observation: the challenges are primarily human and organizational, rather than technological.
The webinar also explores several ways to improve:
- Establishing robust data governance
- Change management and ongoing communication
- The early identification of relevant performance indicators
- The use of digital adoption platforms (DAPs)
- The role of user analytics and artificial intelligence in identifying pain points and optimizing user journeys
Finally, experts share their insights on new approaches to intelligent assistance, including conversational assistants and Agent-to-Agent (A2A) systems, which can simplify the user experience and accelerate the adoption of complex industrial tools.
Key takeaways from the webinar
User adoption is the real driver of ROI
The success of a PLM project depends not only on the quality of the solution deployed, but above all on how it is used on a day-to-day basis. Even the most powerful platforms cannot generate value if users bypass processes, revert to their old habits, or use only a fraction of the available features. User adoption must therefore be viewed as a strategic performance indicator, not merely as a step in the deployment process.
Data quality determines confidence in the system
A PLM is, first and foremost, a data repository. When information is incomplete, inconsistent, or improperly migrated, users quickly lose confidence in the tool. This situation encourages the emergence of workarounds, such as the use of Excel files or unofficial databases. Rigorous data governance and harmonization of repositories are essential to ensure team buy-in and guarantee the reliability of processes.
Measuring usage is essential
Simply deploying a PLM system is not enough: it is essential to understand how users actually interact with the tool. Analyzing usage data helps identify pain points, underutilized features, and discrepancies between defined processes and actual practices. By leveraging relevant metrics and behavioral analytics, organizations can drive long-term adoption and more easily demonstrate the return on investment of their projects.
Digital adoption platforms accelerate skill development
As industrial environments grow increasingly complex, digital adoption solutions provide invaluable support to users. Through interactive guides, contextual assistance, and real-time recommendations, they make it easier to learn how to use tools and reduce operational errors. Combined with analytics and artificial intelligence, they also enable personalized support for users while accelerating the achievement of business objectives.
The success of a PLM project is, above all, a human transformation
One of the key takeaways from the webinar is that PLM challenges are rarely technological in nature. The main obstacles instead relate to team alignment, process standardization, communication, and change management. Successful organizations are those that involve users from the earliest stages of the project, clearly explain the objectives, and maintain constant dialogue throughout the transformation.
In a nutshell
The key takeaway from this webinar is that the success of a PLM project depends above all on users, processes, and data governance. Technology is an essential foundation, but it is the organization’s ability to support change, align practices, and drive adoption that determines the actual value generated by the investment.
