Strategic Services

Zweave offers a comprehensive suite of services to support our client’s executives during the early stages of a strategic initiative like Product Lifecycle Management.  Zweave has a methodology and experienced consultants capable of delivering the following services.

PLM Education

PLM education is a vital early activity which helps decision-makers in a company envision ways to take advantage of strategic product development improvements that are possible through a Product Lifecycle Management business initiative.  Zweave has the latest information on PLM solutions packaged into high-level presentations suitable for senior executives.

PLM Opportunity Analysis

Zweave will lead working sessions with each functional area of the business to identify and prioritize the Product development initiatives that will enable them to achieve their strategic objectives.  We will address the question of what is the product development improvement opportunity for my department within the business?

Project Charter 

Zweave will work with you to create a  Project Charter document which is used to achieve consensus around the project vision and scope.  We will develop an initial project roadmap based on best practices.   We will provide recommendations on implementation scenarios based on your product development calendar and considerations such as roll-out by function, or by product type.  The project charter will help to answer how Product Lifecycle Management will help the company to attain its strategic objectives.  The charter will include a mapping of your strategic business goals with Product Lifecycle Management opportunities.

Financial Justification and ROI

One of the primary objectives in the early stages of a project is to gather sufficient information to assess whether it is worthwhile to proceed.    Zweave will help you answer the question of how will the PLM project will affect your bottom line.  We will work with you to identify the benefits of the project and validate and quantify those benefits.  The benefits of the project can be compared against the costs, which are included in an initial project budget.  These two basic sets of information are then compared and analyzed to ensure that proceeding with the project makes sense from a financial perspective.  During this activity will work with you to create the justification documents for the project, including an initial Business Case and Return on Investment (ROI) financial model.

Technology Alignment

Zweave will work with your IT department to create high level architectural alternatives for the Product Lifecycle Management solutions that will meet your requirements.  We will help you answer the question of which technologies and architectures we should choose.  To make the best technology choices for your unique organization, we will examine your company’s existing technology architectures and where is technology moving in the near term future.

Technology Selection

Zweave offers an accelerated technology selection process utilizing a structured methodology for selecting a short-list of vendors and systematically scoring and selecting the vendors who best fits the business requirements, technical requirements, and other key selection parameters.  There are often several areas of Systems and technologies which are reviewed as part of the overall PLM roadmap including: PLM software, Database Software, Cloud or on-Premise hosting, 2D and 3D CAD, and Design & Visualization.

Steering Committee Governance

Zweave will help you establish a project steering committee to provide governance and approvals for the project.  We will use best practices to recommend Steering Committee participants and identify internal resources and business partners whose involvement will be key to the project’s success.  We will prepare a prioritized list of questions to be answered, issues to be resolved, and

Program & Project Management

Zweave has a proven project management methodology, Fast-Forward which includes hundreds of project management templates.  We can also align our methodology with any methodologies already established within your company.  We work with our clients to create realistic plans for developing and deploying these solutions.  We will develop a proposed strategy for implementing the Product Lifecycle Management vision, including a prioritized list of Product Lifecycle Management initiatives and a phased schedule for their development.  We will create  a detailed implementation plan for the first phase, and implement a project management methodology to keep the project on time and on budget.