By leveraging digital PLM platforms and technologies, companies can revolutionize how they manage their products, drive efficient operations, accelerate development processes and improve collaboration between teams. Although digital transformation has become a standard practice in industries such as complex engineering and manufacturing, not all system upgrades or deployments truly qualify as transformational. However, due to their anticipated impact on an organization's operations and processes, many are often marketed or perceived as such.
Furthermore, digital transformation is crucial for modern enterprises, not only in terms of new technology, but also for managing data complexity, seamlessly interfacing with suppliers, attracting new talent and engaging and inspiring employees. Digital platforms and technologies can enhance PLM processes by improving data traceability, facilitating communication, automating workflows and providing real-time data insights.
Beyond enabling PLM processes and decision-making capabilities through a technology-driven ecosystem, better products and increased competitiveness are driven by informed and collaborative teams, and ultimately depends on positive engagement of people within the organization. Understanding and appreciating how end-users create and industrialize product concepts and scale for future operational efficiency is critical to drive PLM transformation.
In this post, I explore the link between positive user experiences (UXs) and PLM adoption, as well as how businesses can use this link to drive successful adoption.
The adoption of new digital platforms can present challenges. Many organizations struggle to convince their teams to proactively contribute to transformation and the subsequent adoption of new processes, ways of working and digital platforms. By focusing on user-centric design, digital enterprise platforms can become more intuitive, engaging and effective, resulting in increased user adoption and overall success. This also applies to configuring, customizing and integrating PDM, PLM, ERP and other commercially available off-the-shelf platforms.
In short, having a positive UX is crucial for driving adoption of digital enterprise solutions, as it can significantly impact how users perceive and interact with the technology.
Positive UX and Its Role in Digital Adoption
The Gartner Glossary defines user experience (UX) as “the sum of the effects caused by a person using a digital solution. UX efforts concentrate on the experience people have when interacting with a specific product or solution.”
Positive UX refers to the ease of use, accessibility and overall satisfaction of a product or service. In the context of digital enterprise platforms, positive UX is critical to driving adoption. When employees enjoy using a platform and find it easy to navigate, they are more likely to use it regularly and to recommend it to others.
From a leadership team perspective, successful digital adoption is typically characterized by a combination of five factors:
- Strong leadership and buy-in: Strong ownership by company leadership ownership with a clear vision and commitment to digital transformation.
- Clear goals and metrics: Clear expectations, with measurable target outcomes such as increased productivity, efficiency or revenue growth.
- Adequate resources: Funding, staffing and technology infrastructure, to support ongoing development and implementation.
- Effective change management: From change communication to business training and support, helping end-users adapt to new digital tools and processes.
- Data-driven decision-making: Informed decisions and continuously improve their digital initiatives, incorporating feedback and addressing any issues or areas for improvement.
From an end-user perspective, positive adoption often translates in pragmatic criteria combining early visibility, simplicity, accessibility, autonomy, personalization, performance and supportability. This can be supported by:
- Early user engagement: Active interaction with the digital platform, learning and proactive involvement in the solution configuration and customization.
- Data-driven value proposition: Easily understanding target outcomes and new solution benefits, including how it can improve productivity, efficiency or overall experience.
- Ease of use and improved UX: Clear navigation and functionality that aligns with user needs and preferences, without compromising legacy data, new processes or out-of-the-box system capabilities.
- Effective training and support: Reduced learning curve, including clear documentation, onboarding processes, friendly and responsive customer support.
- User feedback and continuous improvement: Incorporating feedback and lessons learned into the ongoing development and improvement of the digital product or platform.
There are several ways to involve users and capture UX requirements. For instance, design thinking principles can be used to better understand user needs, design more intuitive and user-friendly interfaces, reports and dashboards. Design thinking principles can also improve the overall experience, leading to higher adoption rates and improved business outcomes.
The Link to PLM
As a business discipline, PLM sits at the intersection of product knowledge—from ideation to systems engineering, supply chain scalability and in-field service management. By incorporating PLM into a digital enterprise platform, organizations can improve collaboration, streamline workflows and enhance visibility into the product development process, leading to improved business outcomes.
However, many non-functional criteria, especially UX, are often overlooked when selecting PLM platforms or specifying associated requirements. It is crucial to embed UX aspects in the process and technical solution implementation—from basic workflow automation to toolset replacement. While it may not always be possible to significantly alter the user interface when implementing commercial-off-the-shelf platforms, understanding how to make process trade-off decisions and drive effective technical configurations is critical to justify and explain UX implications.
The traditional IT mindset used to focus on efficiency, service and support, whereas modern digital transformations concentrate on innovation, collaboration, high-skill domains, business analytics, cloud infrastructure, mobility, UX, agility, effective business relationship and partnership. Ultimately, UX encompasses all aspects of end-user interactions with the company, from enterprise platforms to services and ultimately its products.