CHOOSING YOUR PLM PARTNER:
WHY INNOVATION IS THE KEY
TO A PERFECT MATCH©2018 Centric Software Inc. All rights reserved.

Why is the choice of PLM partner so important to thesuccess of your business?
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Competition among brands and retailers is more intense than ever. Businesses that thrive constantly
work to stay ahead and move quickly to respond to market shifts. Companies across the fashion, apparel,outdoor and consumer goods industries must now adopt new tools and tactics that will drive traffic acrossall channels. The retail winners create innovative product offerings, staying engaged with consumers andharnessing the power of technology to develop products.
Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions are fundamental digital tools for brands and retailers
to stay ahead of the game. The right PLM solution can effectively manage every aspect of design andproduct development, from initial concept to manufacturing and sell-in. Enhanced visibility, a ‘single
source of truth’ system to hold product data and access to real-time information cuts lead times, improvescommunication with internal and external teams, reduces manual data entry, speeds time to market
and, as a long-term investment, sets the foundation for growth for multi-billion dollar companies andemerging, start-up brands alike. PLM is at once an operational and strategic solution.
No matter how many cool features software has, technology is ultimately a tool that enables individuals
and to do more and do better. Product teams need software that empowers them to be nimble and agile
so they can be both reactive and innovative to propel businesses forward to the next-level of growth.
FINDING A PARTNER THAT EVOLVES WITH YOUR BUSINESSThe ideal PLM partner should also constantly innovate, with new releases and best practices to keeppace. If not, your PLM solution becomes outdated over time as new business practices emerge. Before
you know it, you are looking for a new PLM vendor or your teams have slipped back into old ways ofworking with spreadsheets and email attachments. Time to market gets longer, errors are made andproduct quality goes down. Eventually, you become less competitive and flexible and your bottom line
suffers. When your business has invested in something as large and complex as a PLM system, it’s thelast place you want to end up.
Choosing a PLM vendor is the start of a long-term partnership and a decision that you want to makesure is a good fit on both sides. Will you grow together, or will you have to implement new software or
add on code to stay current? It’s important to choose a partner that pours resources into innovation andshares frequent updates and key developments. Retail changes in the blink of an eye: PLM should be able
do the same.
There are some telltale signs to watch out for when choosing a PLM partner so we’ve created a vendor
checklist for daily users and for your IT and business leaders to help you think about critical questions
you should ask during your PLM partner selection.

©2018 Centric Software Inc. All rights reserved.

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PLM PARTNER CHECKLIST: WHAT DO USERS WANT?
1. Modern software
Modern software is intuitive. Think of apps you use every day on a tablet or smartphone – the userinterface doesn’t need in-depth explanation and it’s either very simple to use or easily configurable basedon your needs. Accomplishing a single task requires a couple of taps.
Different users have different priorities. They need to be able to configure views to see relevant alerts
for tasks routed to them and slice and dice reports on the fly to quickly view essential data. Information
should be easy to find and flexible in how users choose to display it. The right PLM is a useful tool that
supports users to work more efficiently and make smarter decisions faster.
2. Roadmap execution
Every company has a roadmap that documents the direction of their software development. Timelines for
integrating and creating new functions and features as well as dates for new version releases are includedin this plan. Often these are multi-year roadmaps, and like everything, they are prone to adjustment. It
is important to understand how items get into the roadmap? Are there documented use-cases from
actual customers?
One basic thing that people don’t seem to ever ask is how much of past roadmaps actually made it into
a new release, how long development takes and why the roadmap changes? Comparing a past roadmap
to actual software is an interesting exercise that allows you to see if a vendor does what they say they will.
Some questions to ask are: Does the PLM roadmap have features that will be useful to the team? Will it
actually deliver functionality that makes product development better, easier and faster? Are new features
market driven? Have past roadmap plans actually been completed?
©2018 Centric Software Inc. All rights reserved.

33. User-requested features
Being able to adapt to change is critical to innovation which means evolving your processes, stoppingsome altogether or connecting to new partners and systems as the world evolves around you. This is often
enhanced by a new software feature or app that ties into your existing software system.
This works differently at every PLM provider. As you do your due diligence, make sure you speak to theircurrent clients and ask about how their own needs have changed and what they do when they needa new feature in their PLM system to support their business. Find out how these changes have been
incorporated into their system and how the process went. Was the PLM partner even open to theirrequest for new features? Did it take a long time or was it really quick?
4. Dedication to your industry and relevant references
Is this PLM vendor committed to serving the needs of your industry? Do they understand the specificmarket challenges you face? If the answer is yes, they’ll have customers that have similar processes orproducts within an industry, such as retail or sewn products manufacturing, that you can speak with
about their experience and the ROI achieved on their PLM investment. Don’t be shy-ask for customer
references and case studies. Check out new customers they’ve started working with over the last coupleof years and whether their businesses are similar to yours. Better yet, contact customers without asking
the PLM vendor to intervene. How happy are current users? What is their customer attrition rate?
If they don’t have continual growth in your particular market or proven track record of satisfied customers,
are they really likely to allocate resources to developing innovations that cater to it?
5. User training and support
If your chosen PLM solution is modern and intuitive, user training shouldn’t be an issue, whether
conducted by an internal team or trainer from the PLM vendor. It’s important to clarify this process.
Who is responsible for training? Are there standard templates that can be used? Will they have to becustomized? If users understand what to do in the software and how to do it, they’re much more likely
to use it. If they can’t figure out how to do it with PLM, most people will resort to offline documents tomanage their work, negating the entire purpose of investing in a PLM system.
Ask about your prospective PLM partner’s technical support capabilities. What happens if it’s late night
crunch time just before a line review meeting and a designer gets an error message? Will they be able toget help from the technical support team or will they have to wait until the consultant who customized
their system has time to troubleshoot in a day or so?
PLM PARTNER CHECKLIST: PRIORITIES FOR IT AND
BUSINESS LEADERS
1. Implementation time
Implementation is important to get right and shouldn’t be unnecessarily rushed but it should happen in atimely manner with little disruption to your business. If implementation is completed a year after the initialplan was created, your business may be in a different place or have different needs. If what was implemented
cannot be easily adjusted or modified, each time a change is needed, its back to the time-consuming
drawing board.
Implementation time may also vary based on the hosting model. If a company’s own hosting services
are used, this may impact implementation time versus using a SaaS model that is cloud-hosted and web
enabled giving users global access to data from the start.

©2018 Centric Software Inc. All rights reserved.

42. Implementation cost
PLM providers offer a range of annual maintenance costs and what customers get for this cost canvary widely. Find out what the cost will be and what this covers. For instance, does it include the cost ofupgrades and technical support or are these are separately calculated?
In conjunction with the time it takes to implement a system, calculating how much disruption there will be
is a factor. Consider whether people will have to work in dual ways, using the new system and spreadsheets
simultaneously, until implementation is complete or a previous season’s data is fully documented.
3. Market-driven innovations
Some cutting-edge PLM providers have 3-4 new software version releases each year and continue toinnovate to keep up with the exponential pace of change that their clients are experiencing. Others releasea new version every year or two and may not include many useful new features. Ask your potential PLM
vendors when their last software version release was, what features were included and if user feedback
was incorporated. This will help you discover if they’re really committed to your market.
4. Integration with other systems
Modern business requires multiple software systems to handle different functional areas, such as ERP to
manage financials and planning systems to manage production and logistics. Many companies connect
them together to push and pull necessary data so that everyone is on the same page and decisions canhappen when they need to.
Some PLM companies make this easy and connections can be done in-house by the client’s IT team orwith minimal software vendor involvement. With other software vendors, integration with other systems
requires more costly involvement by experts over a longer time period.
Understanding what software systems need to be connected with PLM and what this entails froma vendor perspective is an essential piece of the PLM partner selection puzzle. Some questions toask are: how does the PLM connect to other systems? Does the PLM offer Application Programming
Interface (Rest API)? What options are there for getting data out of PLM and into another system?
Does the PLM include a Software Development Kit (SDK) to create new applications connected tothe PLM?

©2018 Centric Software Inc. All rights reserved.

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CONCLUSION
When you’re examining a potential PLM partner, remember that the total cost of ownership isn’t justmonetary. Innovative PLM is a tool to enable your employees and co-workers to do their jobs from
wherever and whenever they need. By introducing continual and useful innovations, a forward-looking
PLM solution will adjust to changes in processes and the industry. Most importantly, a truly innovative PLM
vendor drives business growth by keeping up with industry changes so fashion, apparel and consumer
goods companies can innovate with their own products, get them to market faster and stay ahead ofthe competition.
Centric Software is a PLM partner that creates useful, smart and innovative solutions for fashion, apparel,outdoor, consumer goods and retail businesses. We thrive on customer feedback. Regularly working with
our Customer Advisory Board, we listen to our customers. Their feedback is the origin of our ongoing
innovative feature updates and releases as well as completely new functions and additional innovativesolutions made specifically for the fashion, apparel, outdoor, consumer goods and retail industries.
Centric PLM empowers designers and product developers to focus on what’s important – the customer– versus monotonous and redundant data entry. As a reflection of modern life, fashion, technology andsocial expectations continually evolve: your PLM software should do exactly that.

©2018 Centric Software Inc. All rights reserved.

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PLM PARTNER CHECKLIST
We’ve created a handy list of questions you can print or refer to on your mobile device in meetings withpotential PLM partners.
PLM partner checklist: what do users want?
Modern PLM software

Is the PLM solution intuitive to use? Is it easy to learn andconfigure?

A promising developmentroadmap

How does this compare with their development roadmap
from 1 year ago? What have they accomplished in the past
year from the roadmap?

Users can request newfeatures and functionality

What percentage of requests become part of the PLM
solution? Are new features customized? Does this affectupgrades?

Significant numbersof customers in yourindustry, growing all thetime

Is this software that other companies in the industry
are really using? Are current customers happy? Is it one
that will continue to make smart R&D investments in theindustry?

Quality user training andsupportIs training customized or standard? What about technicalsupport?

PLM partner checklist: priorities for IT and business leaders
Implementation time

How long have other customers taken to complete theirimplementations? Did they do everything at once or use aphased approach?

Implementation andmaintenance costs

What was the total cost of software, consultants, training,disruption to the business? What is the maintenance costannually? What is the cost of upgrading, both monetarily
and in terms of user efficiency?

Market-driven innovation

Do they have at least one major release a year? How many
minor releases did they have last year? Were these just tofix bugs or did they include new features? When is the next
one scheduled?

Integration with othersystems

How easy is it to integrate the PLM with other businesssystems or software? Is it a fairly simple API or does it takea few programming consultants to create the links? Is an
SDK available to create unique applications?

©2018 Centric Software Inc. All rights reserved.

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ABOUT CENTRIC SOFTWARE
From its headquarters in Silicon Valley and offices in trend capitals around the world, Centric Softwareprovides a Digital Transformation Platform for the most prestigious names in fashion, retail, footwear,
luxury, outdoor, and consumer goods. Centric Visual Innovation Platform (VIP) is a visual, fully digitalcollection of boards for touch-based devices like iPad, iPhone, and large-scale, touch-screen televisions.
Centric VIP transforms decision making and automates execution to truly collapse time to market anddistance to trend. Centric’s flagship product lifecycle management (PLM) platform, Centric 8, delivers
enterprise-class merchandise planning, product development, sourcing, business planning, quality, andcollection management functionality tailored for fast-moving consumer industries. Centric SMB packages
extended PLM, including innovative technology and key industry learnings tailored for small businesses.
Centric Software has received multiple industry awards, including the Frost & Sullivan Product LeadershipAward in Retail, Fashion, and Consumer Goods PLM in 2018 and Frost & Sullivan’s Global Retail, Fashion,and Apparel PLM Product Differentiation Excellence Award in 2016 and 2012. Red Herring named Centricto its Top 100 Global list in 2013, 2015 and 2016.

www.centricsoftware.com©2018 Centric Software Inc. All rights reserved. Centric is a registered trademark of Centric Software.
All other brands and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.