Product Lifecycle Management (PLM): Critical Issues and Challenges in Implementation - Information Technology and Product Development - page 100

the application contain more information than many of the real-time custom reports
that most product development organizations have had.
The challenge for the implementation team is actually measuring the devel-
opment process using the on-line display lists and 8-10 reports provided in the
application. All of those important measure and metrics identified in the business
case used to justify the cost and disruption of implementing the PLM application
will most likely require custom development for the final solution - plan for it!

...

5.4.4.2 Square Peg Round Hole

The other significant PLM reporting “gotcha” is the corporate data warehouse. The
corporate data warehouse contains all of the transactional data collected through the
front (e.g., sales, order entry) and backend (e.g., purchasing, GL) systems. This
information is then adjusted with “dimensions” (e.g., time, geography) and de-
normalized to enable the kind of reporting that the executive team needs to run
the business.
Needless to say, the corporate data warehouse takes a lot of work, careful man-
agement, and budget to be effective. Most PLM projects are given a directive to
use the corporate data warehouse for all reporting. On the surface, this is a good
idea. First, whenever existing technology investments are leveraged, that is a good
thing. Second, connecting the product development cost data quickly and accurately
back into the business operations makes for better business execution. Third, cen-
tralizing the data warehouse will help to contain overall support costs. So what's the
challenge?
The challenge is that the PLM data is defined as an object and not as a rela-
tional structure. This does not mean that the data can't be messaged so that it
too can be stored and sourced from the corporate data warehouse. The key issue
is project expectations. Because of the data structure differences, executive teams
are surprised by the large amount of time and effort the PLM implementation
team will need to devote to “reporting” - a seemingly low-value activity. With
the high cost of PLM applications and implementations, reporting budgets are one
of the first items to be squeezed - hard - sometimes even cut from the initial
project scope. This makes for a difficult post-deployment ROI analysis since as
mentioned earlier, most of the process metrics identified in the business case justifi-
cation will require custom reporting. Without those defendable metrics, convincing
management that the PLM solution is delivering the value that was originally
promised becomes very difficult and funding for the next phase of the project very
unpredictable.

5.5 Conclusions and Directions for Research

Based on the PLM implementation challenges outlined in this chapter, we can
identify four promising issues or topics for research in this area.