Like road-cycling grand tours, PLM strategies and roadmaps require timely cross-functional teamwork, ongoing expectation management, and adjustments in anticipation of — and in response to — changing requirement landscapes and technical factors.
Driving a PLM transformation implies building a credible business case. That's also a mandatory stakeholder-alignment exercise, as is securing implementation budgets. When it comes to PLM or any enterprise solution, driving top-down clarity (and accountability) is essential. It starts with a clear definition, scope, and stakeholder alignment at all levels, in a combined top-down and bottom-up approach.
Developing and managing a robust, agile PLM roadmap is crucial for successful implementation. Agility is necessary to remain aware of evolving business needs and adapt to change. This approach involves ongoing alignment and education, effectively managing risks and issues — and avoiding the need for everything to be perfectly defined up front. Although leadership teams often agree on the need for PLM (the "why"), aligning on the "what" and "how" requires ongoing effort.
Furthermore, PLM isn't always seen as a strategic concept by executive stakeholders in some organisations, and may not reach the board directly. Other priorities or different terminology can also impede PLM's recognition. As a result, preparing the relevant PLM business case and achieving stakeholder alignment can take months of pre-work and bottom-up effort. To ensure a realistic implementation roadmap, a trusted advisor or business integrator is often necessary to facilitate alignment and maintain accountability.
How to approach the board
Presenting to the board requires political mapping and initial one-to-one interactions with each board member — appreciating individual perspectives in an informal setting. No one wants to go in blind to a formal board review: it can be a one-shot opportunity to make a good impression (risky strategy).
It's important to adjust the PLM story based on how key stakeholders absorb information. Some might want to see details; others would be happy with a high-level vision and simple investment plan. Key questions include: what help is wanted or needed from the board; what's in it for each of the key stakeholders and their teams; and how will they and their teams be involved in driving the respective business functions?
The key is to understand how the board makes (or is likely to make) decisions — hence the importance of setting and aligning expectations first. Based on an operating culture and appetite for change, some organisations might prefer to initiate a quick proof of concept or short-term pilot to figure out on the fly whether it has value (a "fail fast" approach). Others might prefer to review an evidence-based discounted cash flow analysis — standing that up in front of the CFO to baseline expectations.
What to present to the board
Beyond the obvious storytelling exercise, board presentations must be concise and straight to the point. In driving board discussions, it's important to:
- Start with why — What challenges is the business currently or likely to be facing in the future? How would PLM contribute to improve or enable business capabilities? What would be the target operating model once the change is in effect?
- Define what PLM is, in simple terms — What do we mean by PLM? Who are the business owners? How does PLM relate to what the business does? How does it contribute to the ways of working across the associated teams, processes, data, and systems?
- Position PLM in the wider context — With sufficient evidence as backup: what value will be delivered? What are the core hypotheses? How and by whom will they be validated? Who will benefit? What are the sizing assumptions? What will be the implementation approach and roadmap?
- Make them hero(ine)s — Which stakeholders are supporters and detractors? Bringing forward expected change leaders, what changes will be expected from them, and how will they contribute to driving value realisation?
It's also super helpful to relate to proven techniques in bringing these points across without ambiguity — leveraging methods such as value stream mapping, enterprise architecture framework, etc. — to avoid being perceived as trying to reinvent the wheel or boil the ocean.
How to communicate to the board
Board members might have little to no interest in discussing a "plan for a plan" — they'd rather review a tangible first-pass roadmap. To support that, the PLM business case doesn't only have to be financial: the focus is first and foremost on stakeholder alignment, preferably highlighting required flexibility, adaptability, and agility to keep options open. As a matter of fact, quick-start elements might be either stepping stones toward the full solution, or a throwaway "quick and dirty" interim step.
Additionally, board members might want to hear it from an external trusted advisor bringing a fresh perspective to the subject — whereas sometimes the same story might be better understood if led from an internal source equipped with the relevant stakeholder intimacy, most likely a CDO or CTO/CIO positioned to lead the transformation and cross-functional executive alignment.
In any case, key considerations when addressing the management board about PLM include:
- Always position PLM budget in the wider context, and define credible top-down ROI assumptions — to avoid the myth being debunked later, at the expense of credibility.
- Define the relevant cross-functional perspectives, per the agreed PLM scope, without overreaching it.
- Avoid creating unrealistic expectations — focus on the budget to start, rather than the budget to complete.
- Run an early blueprint to validate assumptions and architect the solution MVP.
- Respectfully educate the board about the "how," not only the "why" and the "what" of PLM.
- Define the relevant urgency and priority criteria based on the maturity of the business.
Driving alignment across the business and preparing for change is a capacity-intense activity — but it's worth investing in up front to facilitate execution once the vision has been defined, goals have been agreed, and key executives are aligned.
