In Stay Sharp Episode 109, Digital Product Series: What is Propel PVM Platform, co-hosts Jonathan Scott and Juliann Grant expand on a topic begun in a previous episode, Digital Product Series: Who is Propel Software, in which Tom Shoemaker, Propel Software’s VP of Product Marketing, discussed Propel’s unique value proposition. This time, Eric Schrader, Propel’s Chief Product Officer, joins the duo to explain how the company takes PLM a few steps further than most PLM providers in order to unify teams, processes, and data across the product lifecycle.
Not Just PLM, but PVM
Propel thinks of their platform as not product lifecycle management, but rather product value management (PVM), which reflects how the company approaches the space of digital engineering and manufacturing more expansively than most PLM providers do. Jonathan explains, “It’s PLM for more of the lifecycle than just engineering and manufacturing. It’s product information management also. It’s quality management. And it’s connecting the dots on all those.” The Propel platform certainly covers PLM, but it also covers typical QMS (quality management systems) and PIM (product information management) functionality. Eric says, “By pulling these categories together, we have the goal of creating this one product thread that unites the product across the company and their interactions with the market. We see this as a way to democratize this product data and allow everyone to have access to it.”
Eric admits they don’t push the concept of PVM when they’re talking with customers. “But we do talk about managing product from concept to customer. That’s what we think of as product value management. It’s really about connecting the value chain of the product across its lifecycle,” he says. “We saw that the solutions in the market around PLM were stopping short of connecting all of the teams within the organization around product—like the go to market teams, marketing and sales, as well as customer facing teams like support and field service.”
The core process areas in Propel that Eric outlines prove the platform’s commitment to the full product lifecycle. They include obvious PLM-like functions such as new product development, supplier management, product quality, and compliance management. But the platform also offers product go-to-market for transitioning engineering deliverables into sales and marketing deliverables, field service to connect support to quality and more, collaboration, openness of integration, and of course, artificial intelligence. As is true of most companies, Propel’s use and integration of AI is evolving rapidly. “We’re focused on that from a persona perspective and really having more of an assistant or an agent helping along the way and making a user’s use of a PLM or a PVM system that much more effective,” Eric says.
Propel’s Built-In Advantages
A key differentiator for Propel—one that confers huge advantages on customers—is the fact that it’s built on top of the Salesforce platform. While Propel’s PVM software doesn’t require customers to use Salesforce itself, Propel makes use of a system in which the portability of and access to information has been perfected over decades. Because Salesforce already has a number of fundamental structural capabilities worked out, Propel doesn’t have to build hosting and global footprint capabilities or IT functionality. Eric says, “We are writing rules on top of that, we’re defining our application on top of that. The billion-plus dollars that Salesforce is innovating with on an annual basis, we’re innovating on top of that innovation. It’s innovation squared.” That means Propel can focus on what they’re uniquely good at—offering customers new and creative solutions.
AI is an area where Propel’s Salesforce foundation is especially beneficial, because the ability to build on top of the AI layer in Salesforce—Agent Force), provides built in boundaries and guidelines. “The great thing about the way that Salesforce has made this available to partners like Propel is that we’re leveraging all of the code we’ve created over the course of our history, and we can turn those into agent actions,” Eric says. “And so, rather than training a LLM to do a specific task, we are influencing the task and the actions that an agent can take by giving it the context or the rails—it’s going to stay inside the guardrails of the definition of our product.”
Learn More About Propel Software
The full podcast contains more discussion and details on a variety of topics, including what the most typical integrations are with Propel’s PVM platform, what kind of companies and industries Propel’s platform works the best for, how Propel uses a customizable layer in their UI to provide different users exactly and only the information they need, and more.
Be sure to check out Stay Sharp Episode 109: Digital Product Series: What is Propel PVM Platform and join us each week for a new podcast.
Follow the Razorleaf Podcast, Stay Sharp in Digital Engineering on:
