Check it Out: "Attend a PTC Virtual Corporate Visit" Video

By Anthony J. Lockwood

Dear Desktop Engineering Reader:

Small- and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) are in an interesting jam. You have to deal with today’s increasingly complex electro-mechanical,  software-enabled products that you develop and manufacture globally. Your major clients tend to be big outfits that outsource knotty technological problems to you to solve. This all means that, across clients, suppliers, and even in-house, your IT architectures and data sources are inherently fragmented;  multi-CAD and multi-PLM, for example.

These pressures are just the cost of running a modern business, of course. The issue for SMBs really is figuring out how to control your product development process so that its complexities are well managed,  enabling cost minimization and revenue maximization. Adding just a bit more pressure is that many possible system providers simply want to move technology,  not collaborate with you to build the right technological solution structure for your business. Finding that requisite collaboration and technology is the subject of today’s Check It Out webcast re-broadcast from PTC.

Now, many of you might think that PTC is only interested in the big fish because of its well-publicized relationships with, say,  Caterpillar or Volkswagen. The reality is that PTC’s average client is an SMB. Its Windchill ProductPoint, for one, is well-suited for SMBs or workgroups needing lots of PLM functionality to manage and communicate MCAD data across a SharePoint network but, for whatever reason, do not need the weight of all of PLM’s potential functionality.

The video, “Attend a PTC Virtual Corporate Visit,” is the sort of treatment you’d get if you visit PTC’s headquarters, only you have to bring the donuts and coffee. (If you can make it there, do it. I have. The demo theater is great and the product managers and execs you meet are down home.) It first covers the who and what PTC is. Incidentally, Jim Heppelmann, a really nice guy who will soon be PTC’s CEO, blows away the notion that PTC doesn’t get SMBs.

The second part, at about the 34-minute mark, begins a segment called “6 Ways to Make Money – Harnessing Product Development.” PTC’s Value Framework concept takes center stage here. There’s a lot going with this concept, but let me zero in on one key point: technology in and of itself has little value supporting your business initiatives and processes. You need a logical pathway to select, implement, and leverage the right technologies that solve real problems and support your business.

Windchill ProductPoint could mean just that technology for you. The video has a demo of Windchill ProductPoint at about the 54-minute mark, and it’s concise and highly informative. But, really, this is not about it alone. It is about you alone and what you and PTC can accomplish together. This is a video for you and your brain trust to watch and discuss. Including Q&A, it runs over 70 minutes. A lot of ground is covered, but it’s the ground that you pace back and forth over wondering what to do. This executive presentation is where you begin formulating the answers you need.

Thanks, Pal.—Lockwood

Anthony J. Lockwood
Editor at Large, Desktop Engineering

Register to watch the video, “Attend a PTC Virtual Corporate Visit.”