PLMplus's Innovative Approach to Product Lifecycle Management to benefit SMEs

Develops new approach, delivering PLM in an on-demand (web based) manner.

Following its successful round A funding in 2008 from Hasso Plattner Ventures and Cedar Fund, PLMplus has developed a solution that will enable Small & Medium manufacturers to benefit from PLM technology. Through its customer & design partner research, PLMplus has determined that the majority of small and medium manufacturers are still unable to purchase and use PLM systems. The key factor inhibiting these companies from using product lifecycle management is system complexity, implementation difficulty, and cost.

"Our research revealed that many SMB companies that were considering PLM systems have taken 12 and even 18 months to complete their evaluations, and in many cases have still not purchased ANY system, due to the high cost, complexity, and the adverse impact it would have on the organization during implementation. Due to this fact the vast majority of SMBs still do not use PLM today, even though everyone knows that it is needed.
We have designed PLMplus to fill that gap, and I am excited with the solution that we will soon release. This solution will have a significant impact on the industry, changing the way people view and use PLM within SMBs,” said Benny Shaviv, VP Marketing & Sales, co-founder, PLMplus.

In August 2008, PLMplus received $4M in round A funding from Hasso Plattner Ventures & Cedar Fund. SAP’s co-founder & chairman Prof. Dr. h.c. Hasso Plattner is the main investor in Hasso Plattner Ventures, while Cedar fund has over 12 years track record of successful high tech investments with $325M under management. Following the round A investment, PLMplus developed an on demand PLM system targeted at small & medium manufacturers, with a new approach that will enable high system adoption & usage.

Although most providers today offer users preconfigured templates and databases, they still do not provide a solution to burdensome software implementation, high cost, and most importantly – organizational user adoption and training. PLMplus provides a solution.

PLMplus delivers PLM in an on demand manner with an intuitive self-taught user interface which allows for extremely rapid deployment. The PLMplus approach to interface design is that in the real world most users will either never be trained or will forget their training – a fact which always inhibits successful PLM deployments. As such, the PLMplus user interface and application is so intuitive that novice users are practically guided through complicated steps, all the way through to successful task completion. PLMplus’ methodology and licensing model allows users to start using the application on any scale and grow only when they need to, thus making the “PLM strategy” into a very simple decision.