Mark the date – February 16, 2017. On this day Gartner published research officially proclaiming the need for CIOs to embrace Product Portfolio Management.
“Manufacturing CIOs must invest in product portfolio management to provide decision makers with a structured, objective process for defining and adhering to corporate strategies and supporting programs. We explain how PPM can increase product and corporate strategy alignment for greater success.”
In 2009, Planview introduced our first dedicated Product Portfolio Management solution. We were the first mainstream PPM vendor to develop purpose-built functionality to support the product portfolio. Over the years, we have seen the use of portfolio management in R&D and product organizations continue to grow significantly. Every year at our customer conference we hear truly inspirational presentations of companies that have reengineered their product pipeline to increase innovation and improve time-to-market using PPM.
Ironically, all of this success has all happened as a shadow market that has frankly been downplayed or even ignored by the majority of industry analysts and the PLM community. It would now appear that this has officially changed, which is a good thing for everyone.
Based on the experience of some of our most successful customers in this space, it has become clear over the past several years that the PLM market has two faces – the one we traditionally all know and this previously shadow market. The one we all know is the “Engineering” PLM market dominated by the big PLM vendors – awesome product suites that help engineers and product organizations manage the technical lifecycle of products.
The other one I call “Business PLM”, and it is really the application of PPM to the end-to-end product lifecycle (Gartner now calls it Product Portfolio Management, which is OK too). This domain is not about CAD, supply chain, simulation, etc., but evaluating ideas, picking the right products, optimizing engineering resources to deliver R&D projects, understanding the financials of product development, and managing not just new products but EOL from a business perspective.
Gartner calls out the synergy of these two domains in the same research:
“By 2020, 75% of PLM applications will have partnerships or intrinsic integration with PPM applications.”
The combination of Engineering PLM and Business PLM is a powerful capability for a product-centric company. Our most innovative customers practice these two disciplines and see tremendous results. With Gartner on-board the market visibility of portfolio management in the realm of products will only increase, and hopefully more organizations will see the benefits of this broader approach.
Exciting times. Digital Transformation and the pace of innovation are restructuring every market and driving new business needs. IT and R&D are no longer siloed in the world of digital convergence, hence the product portfolio is just as important to the CIO as the CTO. The product portfolio is the ultimate manifestation of most companies’ strategy so IT cannot afford to be disconnected. Even within IT we see this convergence happening, IoT is creating a new landscape that has the potential to converge the Enterprise Architect and the CTO. Is a shoe with a sensor and embedded firmware conceptually any different from a server running a software application?
Again, these silos are collapsing because of the market forces of digital convergence and the associated transformation required to adapt. At Planview we are thrilled to see Product Portfolio Management receive this elevated status, and we are equally excited about the opportunity to work with our customers to bring together the broadest range of portfolios (product, project, application, resource, etc.) and domains (R&D, PMO, EA, Finance) to accelerate the translation of strategy into execution.
Learn more about the Product Portfolio Management solution.
![Product Portfolio Management in the Digital Era [Webinar]](https://blog.planview.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Product-Portfolio-Management-in-the-Digital-Era-750x400.jpg)
![The 2018 Product Portfolio Management Survey Shines A Light on Top Performers [Video]](https://blog.planview.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/PDPM-study.gif)
