7 Points of Consideration for the PLM System Administrator
At the end of a busy day, the last thing a CIO or IT system administrator wants is a phone call about a mission-critical system, like a PLM system, going down. Unfortunately, this scenario is all too common.
The daily grind intensifies – working with budget cuts, executive reviews, staff performance, buyer trend reports, security risk-mitigating, and digital transformation initiatives – without adding software crashes into the mix.
Consequently, inevitable question each of us ends up asking, therefore, is, “are we spending too much time buried in putting out fires?
The growing list of IT functions over the years has caused leaders to either expand department headcount or look to outside help.
Let’s take a look and see if you fall into this category.
1.) Are you short-staffed?
This dilemma is perhaps the chief-most reason businesses trudge along without addressing the problem.
Meanwhile, the problem never resolves itself. Relying on in-house, “jack-of-all-trades” for highly specialized, application-specific PLM support requires time to come up to speed and pulls resources from core business tasks, but on the flip side, hiring a full complement of in-house PLM staff quickly takes you outside your budget.
For less than the cost of a full-time employee-supported business get a team, made up of a project manager, system integrator, and an account manager – all of whom remain with the business for the entire life of the service.
PLM support immediately becomes cost-effective.
2.) Struggling to prioritize your PLM needs can be a significant hurdle.
Do you have PLM modules that are not being fully utilized or even implemented?
Moreover, delaying implementation is costly.
- It stalls the time to realize investment value from your PLM system.
- It delays experiencing system benefits and using the purchased modules.
- It is important to have a thorough understanding of your vertical coupled with industry best practices to ensure that you are getting the best value and ROI for your organization.
The support team enables more resources targeted specifically to your industry. Apart from PLM needs, they provide a wealth of knowledge to be applied to system health checks, specific training, or even consulting.
3.) Are you continuously having PLM downtime issues?
When you don’t have the proper PLM resources available, downtime can become a serious problem that can cost a lot of money, dramatically hinder your ability to grow, and keep you from taking full advantage of this critical enterprise system. You’ll end up addressing the symptoms of a problem without addressing the root causes, which leaves your PLM in a break-fix cycle that’s never-ending and nightmarish.
Furthermore, support allows you to rest assured that your problem will be fixed correctly the first time.
4.) Is your IT team stretched too thin?
If your in-house PLM expert is someone who handles the technology duties of your organization on top of their other primary responsibilities, then that person probably spends most of their time putting out fires. They have little time for proactive measures to strengthen PLM environments. Ponemon recently shared a survey that underlines this point. 73% of IT organizations are understaffed. Meanwhile, those working as IT professionals report that their average work week is 49 hours, causing burnout. Have you experienced this?
Additional focused support provides value to firms that already have internal IT teams.
5.) Is your staff focused on ad-hoc issues or preventative care?
This is a common problem. Most organizations devote in-house resources to maintaining involving patches, troubleshooting, and provisioning. This keeps PLM applications running but leaves little time for strategic issues. These issues could deliver even more value.”
IT support will detect issues early, solve them, and prevent them from happening again.
6.) Does Your Team Have the Expertise Required for Optimal PLM System Management?
Outsourcing PLM maintenance lets companies access expert resources. They support application needs, optimize performance, create security models, or implement ERP adapters..
Support instantly delivers a PLM authority to your organization that is equipped with specific knowledge, training, and certifications only gained through experience in overcoming PLM complications many times.
7.) Are you responsible for taking existing applications to the Cloud?
With technology constantly evolving, the focus on taking advantage of them rises as they become available. This includes cloud migrations, which can significantly enhance the flexibility and scalability of your PLM system.
We recently sat down with a former IT Director for the State of Utah, Ryan Walker. He shared that the primary struggles he faced were keeping up with business needs by implementing new technologies, keeping employee training up-to-date on hardware and software, and working with small budgets to get this all accomplished.
Your goal may be to move to cloud applications now or later but either way, you will need a bullet-proof plan to safely and efficiently migrate your data and then road map out new or differing functionality.
You need support who is experienced, holds invaluable knowledge and knows best practices when updating and/or upgrading the solutions of your company.
In Jos Voskuil’s Virtual Dutchman blog he talks about how C-level managers do not understand how PLM tools can help the company’s bottom line.
However, most of the time, C-level approves the budget without understanding the full implications (expecting the tool will do the work); business is too busy or does not get enough allocated time to supporting implementation (expecting the tool will do the work).
Plan Ahead
Whether you have a skeleton crew, overburdened staff, PLM crashes, in need of training, or gaps within your PLM solution. It benefits you to stop being reactive but rather be preventative and strategize improvement.
Look to incorporate a team that can create confidence within your PLM solution by bridging the gaps of knowledge. The lack of dedicated staff that may be fragmenting their time between their daily responsibilities and PLM support.
Instead of hiring and training more staff or piling even more duties onto an overburdened IT. Why not consider contacting your support with a third-party specialist. Plenty of organizations out there can help you achieve your system goals and stay ahead of problems.
Every company looking to maximize its PLM investment potential should seriously consider signing up for Application Support. While costing less than the price of a full-time employee, you add the capabilities and functions of a whole team of experts. No headaches and no money is wasted.
Click here to learn more about application support.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Domain Systems. The author takes full responsibility for the views expressed here.
[…] plan to make one significant Agile release each year. These waterfall updates contained minor coding fixes, requested feature and functionality, and some generic compatibility […]
[…] leaves Agile in a break-fix cycle that is never-ending and nightmarish. Turning the hassle of PLM support over to Agile knowledgeable managed service, you can rest assured that your issues are being […]