CIMdata's Consultants

Senior, Experienced, and Professional

The core of CIMdata's business is our consulting organization. Our expertise is unrivaled and we have been leaders in the industry for 40 years. CIMdata consultants are senior, experienced professionals with diverse back­grounds. Having worked in manufacturing, engineering, management, and technology-based companies themselves, CIMdata consultants have a firsthand appreciation of the problems our clients face. Through their direct contact with organizations worldwide they have developed an understanding of the impact exerted by culture on business decisions, and the particular stresses that this places on organizations struggling to operate globally.

CIMdata consultants employ our world-class best practices strategic PLM consulting methodology and associated tools and techniques. Their expertise is anchored in solid industry research and is proactively transferred through comprehensive educational programs. Their professionalism assures that trust and confidentiality are the cornerstones of every client relationship.

CIMdata's Business Model

Consulting, Education, Research: A Range of Complementary Services

Since our founding in 1983, CIMdata has become a major resource in the use of PLM best practices and associated technologies in the support of major engineering and manufacturing enterprises worldwide. CIMdata’s strategic consulting, in-depth research, and educational services are based on proven methodologies for industrial organiza­tions and suppliers of PLM enabling technologies globally.

The price of excellence is vigilance. We know that our hard-won leadership in consulting can only be maintained by continually expanding our knowledge base and increasing our value to each and every client, and we achieve those objectives in several ways.

Consulting

CIMdata’s primary business is consulting. Because our expertise is anchored in extensive experience and continuous vigilance, we are able to provide excellent support to our clients in strategic direction and vision, linking business to technology and solutions, and best practices.

Research

As part of the total CIMdata support package, we conduct in-depth research on a broad spectrum of technologies and market developments with particular emphasis on those that address PLM. The intensive research conducted by our own consultants, and the resulting information, is channeled directly into current consulting services, our reports and publications, and the continuous contact with clients through member­ship in the CIMdata Community.

Education

Education has always been one of our top priorities. We deliver education through interna­tional conferences, roundtable discussions, an academically-oriented PLM Certificate Program, international seminars and events, and dedicated PLM education programs that are tailored for particular target audiences.

CIMdata's Industry Role

Guidance for Business Success

As the world leading strategic consulting and research firm fully dedicated to PLM, CIMdata helps enterprises improve their effectiveness and competitiveness. Through defining, implementing, and consistently applying a strategic PLM business approach, we help our clients increase both top and bottom line business benefits. Our services are focused on improving innovative capabilities over the full product lifecycle. In that respect, we help our clients optimize collaborative product-related processes, enhance the value of intellectual assets, reduce total product lifecycle costs, and leverage resources throughout the extended enterprise. In short, we help our clients successfully implement a strategic PLM business approach.

CIMdata's Unique Position

Services for Industrial Organizations and Solution Providers

CIMdata is a non-biased, independent, global consulting firm that has established itself as a world-leading source of information and guidance to both industrial organizations and suppliers of PLM technologies and services. The advantages to our clients are significant, since we can leverage what we learn from one group to help the other navigate an ever-changing environment. The fact that we are completely independent assures the highest level of confidentiality and objectivity.

CIMdata works with industrial companies, analyzing their operations, assessing their information needs, educating their staff, and helping them integrate research, engineering, procurement, manufacturing, in-field service, and other product lifecycle functions with appropriate, cost-effective, and productive solutions that enable PLM.

CIMdata also works with solution providers who rely on our strategic consulting and research services to provide insight into user needs and requirements, to identify new market opportunities, and to improve their market strategies and product programs. CIMdata provides quantitative data on shipments, installed base, revenue forecasts, market segmentation; and publishes reports about state-of-the-art technology, commercial systems, market developments, competitive information, and pricing. CIMdata serves clients worldwide from offices in the United States, Europe, and Japan.

Transformation: Consulting for Industrial Organizations

CIMdata's Consulting Methodology for Industrial Organizations Transforms Your Business for Competitive Advantage

Based on 40+ years of PLM consulting best practices and experience, CIMdata’s consulting methodology for industrial organizations—Transformation— supports your organization’s target of achieving and sustaining a competitive advantage. Embedded in every step and phase of PLM-related business process and technology transformations, education is at the heart of CIMdata’s consulting methodology.

Transformation - Support for Industrial Organizations

Strategy Development

The development of a consistent, well-thought-out, and executed PLM strategy is critical. CIMdata delivers on this because of its extensive experience with industrial organizations around the world. The strategy is not about deploying technologies, but rather about clarifying internal and external collaboration and robust decision-making processes and capabilities needed to achieve the business objectives as the first step.

Solution Definition

CIMdata’s consulting methodology for industrial organizations includes several customized activities that support the development of a detailed PLM solution definition based upon a client’s specific PLM strategy.

CIMdata takes a business-centric approach to ensure that business needs are met with the most appropriate combination of PLM-enabled business processes to support the client’s needs.

CIMdata deploys best-practice oriented tools, such as PLM-focused technology and process maturity models, and a benefits-appraisal model to help define the solution.

Solution Evaluation & Selection

CIMdata’s extensive understanding of commercially available PLM solutions dramatically reduces the time needed to evaluate and select the most appropriate solutions.

CIMdata’s evaluation and selection approach helps a company focus on the business and technical issues that are most critical for achieving its PLM strategy and vision.

By leveraging CIMdata’s knowledge of the available solutions and a client’s specific requirements, we can provide a short-list of appropriate solutions.

CIMdata’s comprehensive Request for Proposal (RFP)/Request for Quotation (RFQ) template has been proven to transform business requirements into technical requirements.

This list of three to six solutions is then evaluated with the help of technical and business-oriented templates and associated methodologies.

CIMdata helps facilitate final selection by making sure all strengths and weaknesses are measured and considered, so the best business solutions are recommended.

Implementation Planning

After selecting the appropriate PLM-enabling solutions, CIMdata’s support continues throughout the implementation-planning phase of a PLM/digital transformation project.

We offer best-practice support in implementation rollout, statement-of-work development, contract negotiation, implementation team structuring, “to-be” process definition, systems definition, cultural/organizational change management, and training, to name a few.

Our best practices cover PLM-related business processes, such as configuration management, engineering change, data modeling, and classification schema development.

Implementation Support

CIMdata’s implementation support services are extensive.

CIMdata is an independent and unbiased PLM management consulting firm and can provide strategic implementation consultants and program managers who always place the client’s interests first.

Monitoring & Continuous Improvement

CIMdata provides a robust set of services designed to maximize each client’s ability to gain the most advantage from their PLM solution.

CIMdata leverages a set of assessment techniques and other best-practice experiences to identify areas requiring improvement and then recommends roadmaps to move forward.

CIMdata’s extensive PLM industry experience plays a vital role during this PLM project phase. Our consultants, who each average more than thirty years of experience in the PLM business, leverage their knowledge of hundreds of PLM implementations in numerous countries, companies, and industries to help our clients succeed.

CIMdata takes a practical approach, ensuring that our clients not only know where improvement is required but also the recommended course of action.