The Top Five Principles of Successful Product Development:

According to Aberdeen’s September 2008 benchmark report, "Getting the Process Right
– a Fresh Look at PLM and Product Development," the average engineering organization
is nearly half as likely as its Best-in-Class peer to report having a centralized process in
place to support the capture and reuse of product data and information. But many
engineering organizations also struggle with how to effectively document, approve and
release final designs to manufacturing, as well as how to effectively manage engineering
changes post-release.

The following report explores how the Best-in-Class apply tools and methodologies in
each of these key areas in order to achieve greater profitability and efficiency - providing
a roadmap for others to do the same.

Five Compelling Facts from the Research, Providing Actionable Benefits

1. Best-in-Class companies showed an increase in revenue of 4% or more in the past year,

where their peers either experienced no growth or suffered from a decline in revenue of
5% or more.
2. Best-in-Class companies are 57% more likely than their competitors to meet target
launch/delivery dates.
3. Best-in-Class companies are 62% more likely than their competitors to develop
products that meet or exceed revenue targets.
4. Best-in-Class companies are 58% more likely than the Industry Average and 3.7 times
as likely as Laggards to meet or under spend product development budgets.
5. Best-in-Class companies are 61% more likely than the Industry Average and 3.4 times
as likely as Laggards to meet or under spend product cost targets.
Other Key Findings

- One of the most compelling findings in this study is that companies that have their core
product development processes under control stand a much higher likelihood of not only
surviving the economic downturn, but profiting from it. Indeed, where their peers are
either seeing declines in revenue, or flat growth, Best-in-Class companies are seeing
revenue growth as high as 40%.

- Best-in-Class companies are not only focused on providing centralized access to

product data and information to co-located design teams, but for distributed design teams,
as well. Most notably, top performers are nearly 90% more likely than their Industry
Average peers to support centralized storage and retrieval of design data for distributed
design teams. The key message? It pays to centralize.

- Best-in-Class organizations are 54% more likely than their peers to support role-based
access to design data and specifications, and 41% more likely than their peers to support
role-based access to engineering Bills of Material (BOMs).