Centric Updates PLM Offering

Adds executive portfolio, campaign management capabilities to version 5.0 of flagship product lifecycle management solution

Adds executive portfolio, campaign management capabilities to version 5.0 of flagship product lifecycle management solution

San Jose, CA — December 16, 2003 — Product lifecycle management (PLM) specialist Centric Software today rolled out the latest release of its Centric Innovation solution, providing executive portfolio management and campaign management capabilities in its flagship PLM offering.

Centric said that Innovation 5.0 features solutions in three key areas: executive portfolio management, program management and collaborative product development. The solution is designed to present information in context through Centric's "digital war room," or Innovation Center, helping to ensure that all team members have an integrated view of a program's goals and performance against objectives.

"The current infrastructure of most manufacturers prevents decision makers from leveraging and transforming valuable breakthrough ideas and knowledge that already exist within their own reservoir of product intellectual property," said David Burdick, president of PLM market analyst firm Collaborative Visions.

Burdick added that Centric's PLM Innovation Management application provides product executives online visibility and decision support for go-to-market goals by leveraging distributed product content, while the solution allows multidisciplinary teams to explore and validate multiple product possibilities."

According to Centric, Portfolio Management allows executives to optimize product decisions through continuously monitoring changes to business and technical information across multiple programs. Program Management provides visibility into progress against go-to-market requirements and the ability to resolve conflicts. Collaborative Product Development facilitates interaction between domain specialists across the extended enterprise in evaluating various product scenarios.

"With the Centric solution, end users can monitor and quickly assess all critical changes impacting the product value proposition across the entire value chain," said Vasco Drecun, research program director for product value management at technology analyst firm D.H. Brown Associates.

Said Mark Gersh, manager for modeling simulation and information sciences at Lockheed Martin Space Systems' Advanced Technology Center: "A key business driver for Lockheed Martin is our ability to respond more effectively to new program opportunities, known as the business capture process. This involves inter-disciplinary collaboration and project management. The war room capability within ... Innovation Center allowed us to accomplish this in record time through presenting our customer with a broader perspective of our model-based contracting effort."

Centric's Innovation can be deployed onto current programs, eliminating the need for a single data repository, according to the solution provider. By maintaining live links to disparate information, Centric said that Innovation leverages siloed product development information for critical decision-making.

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