Business-to-business solution strategy and vision for 2000

Citation

(2000), "Business-to-business solution strategy and vision for 2000", Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 72 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/aeat.2000.12772cab.015

Business-to-business solution strategy and vision for 2000

Keywords PTC, Software, Information management

PTC announces its new corporate strategy, reinforcing itself as a B2B solutions provider. With its Web-based collaboration and flexible engineering offerings, PTC provides a comprehensive suite of e-business collaborative product commerce (CPC) solutions designed to support the complex, diverse, and changing information management needs of world-class manufacturers. Additionally, PTC Global Services presents a new customer interaction model that enables manufacturers to leverage a global network of premier consultants, system integrators, and educational and support services to provide a total solution.

"PTC brings unparalleled experience, resources, and domain knowledge to our manufacturing customers", says Steven Walske, CEO of PTC. "Our clear understanding of the shifting B2B landscape for the manufacturing enterprise allows us to deliver on real business initiatives that help our manufacturing customers shape innovation and succeed in the Internet age."

The company enables manufacturing enterprises to capitalise on B2B market opportunities by delivering solutions that help them achieve initiative-based objectives. These software solutions employ powerful and unique Web-based collaboration and flexible engineering technologies to streamline product development and delivery processes. PTC's software solutions are said to be complemented by the strength and experience of PTC Global Services, which provide training, consulting, support, and e-commerce services to customers worldwide.

To reflect the new solutions strategy the company reports that it is introducing a new corporate identity, based on the familiar PTC acronym. The new corporate identity draws on the strength of the parametric technology past, reflects on the new solutions capabilities PTC has to offer, and looks forward to continued success in helping transform the manufacturing industry.

"PTC's strategy allows discrete manufacturers to once again distinguish themselves by their products and innovations", says John R. Logan, chairman of Aberdeen Group. "PTC has a novel Web-based collaboration and flexible engineering approach to CPC. This, combined with its commitment to deliver high-quality global services, permits discrete manufacturers to significantly optimise the management of both intra- and inter-enterprise product and process knowledge to deliver more effectively the new products customers want, when they want them."

"In our view, PTC's Windchill strategy is arguably the most complete vision in the market today, combining the technology and applications to collaboratively manage product introduction throughout a virtual enterprise. The new PTC mission couples this strength with a new layer of engineering offerings and the services to deliver customer specific business improvement", says Bill Swanton, vice president and service director, Manufacturing Strategies, AMR Research.

Leveraging a history of providing productivity-based solutions for companies engaged in product development, PTC addresses the issues of today's manufacturing enterprise by designing customer specific solutions that are based on PTC's Windchill, the PTC/-Series, and Pro/ENGINEER. With Internet-based commerce reshuffling the deck in discrete manufacturing, PTC believes that in the dot.com world, mastery of emerging initiatives is a requisite for success. Therefore over the last 18 months, PTC reports that it has delivered CPC solutions based on the emerging initiatives of discrete manufacturers, such as:

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  Customer-tailored products - use the Web to foster customer loyalty by creating and delivering innovative products tailored to customers' needs.

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  Market-driven innovation - spur innovation by combining the insights of trading partners on how to incorporate customer needs into the product development process at the earliest stages.

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  Enterprise product collaboration - enable B2B collaboration through the use of strategic, Web-based product lifecycle portals that streamline business processes and accelerate the global introduction of new products.

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  Strategic supplier collaboration - capitalise on supplier innovation, domain expertise, and diversity by providing strategic suppliers with the means to collaborate via the Web so that products can be designed anywhere and built anywhere.

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  Internet marketplace agility - be able to quickly identify, analyse, and test potential relationships with new suppliers and partners in order to increase marketplace agility and maximise competitive advantage.

Collaborative product commerce

The company's CPC solutions are based on addressing the specific needs of customers by using the appropriate mix of Web-based collaboration and flexible engineering capabilities offered through Windchill and the PTC/-Series, respectively. Flexible engineering is the next evolution of CAD and MDA, focused at the enterprise to solve business problems in a global economy. It is also a critical and necessary element for manufacturing enterprises involved in CPC business transformations.

"In order for discrete manufacturers to deliver market driven, innovative products, engineers need to be more responsive to enterprise players, reuse knowledge, and capture product behaviors in their designs", says Jim Baum, executive vice president R&D, PTC. "The evolution of our MDA offerings into more powerful flexible engineering offerings that deliver improvements in usability, interoperability, and collaboration are designed to address this need."

"As the e-Business revolution gathers momentum, manufacturing organisations have been looking to PTC to improve their overall product development and delivery process", says Baum. "PTC is the only company focused on providing complete collaborative product commerce solutions to help discrete manufacturing companies address their e-business opportunities with confidence."

Details available from: PTC. Tel: +1 781 398 5000.