We have completed our 1st European Value Chain Summit in Cologne, with great success. More than 300 attendees have seen a great program that addressed all our 7 target industries in the Enterprise PLM Summit, followed by PLM Customer Advisory Board (CAB) sessions and the Special Interest Group (SIG) Meetings on CAD integration. Combined with the Value Chain Planning and Value Chain Execution Summits, we provided a very interesting program for prospects and for current customers, also highly praised by our partners. We provided excellent networking opportunities, and held deep discussions on Value Chain Transformation strategies.
All direct and indirect comments we have got from customers, partners and also from Oracle colleagues are extremely positive. The alchemy we targeted with a mix of customers, partners and Oracle presentations, with hands-on workshops, with networking time during the event and dinner, worked beyond expectations. The visible presence from our North American colleagues from Product Strategy and Development was understood as a clear corporate support to our industry strategies for Enterprise PLM in Europe. Overall, with this Summit we experienced a very strong community feeling among all attendees. From March 19-20, really Cologne was the place to be!
General Event Overview and Statistics
All seats in the main conference room were taken, when Derren Nisbet, Oracle Western Europe Specialist Sales Leader, introduced the conference concept and agenda: With this first Value Chain Summit, we were bringing together the best of the best, including the Enterprise Product Lifecycle Management for the Product Value Chain, we added Value Chain Planning and Value Chain Execution as 3 Solution Summits under one roof to create a comprehensive conference that included more than 40 sessions across all of the value chain solution areas.
With a number of 338 confirmed total registrations, actually 302 attendees really made it to Cologne: This is a really low no-show rate, indicating that the ecosystem we operate in is stable, and that our customers show a strong commitment. We had attendees from 23 different countries (Belgium, Bosnien & Herzigovina, Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Kazakhstan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, USA) – so this really was an international atmosphere we were operating in. A very nice atmosphere also could be experienced in the networking dinner, where 260 attendees had as much as 1,370 glasses of original Cologne “Kölsch” beer!
Around 65% of total attendees were specifically interested in the PLM summit sessions.
The Value Chain umbrella under which we placed the 3 Summits was reasonably well understood for a first time, although more is needed to support the concept. However, already now the overall perceived value is quite high. CIMdata and Cambashi, the two PLM market analysts that we invited, were highly impressed by the level of the presentations, by the number of attendees and by the expertise that customers, partners and Oracle teams demonstrated all along.
In the next few days, summit participants will receive an email with the link to a follow-up portal. On this portal, they will find links to the presentations that are agreed to be available to the public, as well as photos from the event.
Strategic sessions in the Value Chain Summit
The “massive” impression from Philip Morris and Novartis presentations set the tone very early in the agenda and put everyone in a listening mode. We earned a very high vote of confidence from customers and partners on the Product Value Chain strategy we are developing for each of our target industries. In his keynote, Jon Chorley gave the audience an insight into strategies on how to accelerate Value Chain Transformation. He described the Value Chain Transformation Maturity curve: How to move from Fragmented Silo-Based Processes (Limited Collaboration based on Spreadsheets & Manual Processes) via improved Internal, transactional Processes, Data Integration (based on Standardization, Integration, Foundational) and improved Point Capabilities (Selective Demand, Supply Improvements, with some advanced capabilities & best practices) to an Integrated & Aligned Value Chain with Multi-Enterprise Orchestration. With Value Chain Transformation and a well orchestrated Product Value Chain, our customers are enabled to create winning products, drive market innovation, design for supply, and commercialize rapidly.
In his presentation “From idea to manufacturing” Patrick Deconfin, Manager IS Product Development, Philip Morris International, spoke about how PMI manages all Reference Product Specifications globally in Oracle Agile PLM. PLM is key for PMI to support new product development, with high energy and a common vision. What started with a Packaging Lifecycle project back in 2004, is now a fully-fledged PLM system, embarking PLM Analytics, managing the creation of all product specifications worldwide, with stage-gate project management, handling of finished products, Bill of Materials, Suppliers, and Quality Management. It helps cope with complexity, integrate multiple stakeholders, enable a global operating model, streamline the organization and increase speed to market.
Further in the PLM Summit track, around 200 people wanted to learn “How to eat a dinosaur”. This presentation by Antonio Mazzariello, Novartis, highlighted how to orchestrate “Information Management in Pharmaceutical Industry”. Antonio is the Project Leader of the Novartis Change Control Excellence project, which is part of their overall Product Lifecycle Management Methodology and the Novartis Product Lifecycle Excellence strategy.
In their presentation, Denis Senpere (VP Enterprise PLM, EMEA) and John Kelley (VP Strategy, Product Value Chain Solutions) discussed the Oracle Enterprise PLM Strategy for the Product Value Chain. According to CIMdata, Oracle is the #2 Worldwide Vendor for Enterprise PLM in 2011, with again the highest growth in the Top 5. Many of the Gartner Top 25 Supply Chain companies are using Oracle Enterprise PLM solutions alongside their SAP ERP installations. As John pointed out, with Oracle, companies can achieve Product Value Chain Transformation. He specifically highlighted the new Fusion Innovation Management solution and PLM Analytics, and gave an overview of the Product Value Chain Roadmap. The investment areas are clearly:
- #1 Invest in the core PLM use cases across all PLM Product Lines
- #2 Invest in Commercialization Use Cases
- #3 Invest in the Fuzzy Front-End Of Innovation
- #4 Invest in Analytics to Expose Business Value
Value Chain Research: Managing the Value Chain in turbulent times
In the early morning of day 2, Dynamic Markets presented the results of their Independent Market Research (commissioned by Oracle), a quantitative research with senior decision makers in large organizations in 9 countries across EMEA (UK, France, Germany, Russia, the Nordics, the Netherlands, Poland, Turkey and the UAE). A total of 677 surveys were collected from companies with more than 250 employees. The report really shows shocking statistics that prove that companies are well advised to look into Oracle Value Chain solutions to overcome difficulties which were identified.
- Two-thirds (63%) of EMEA companies have experienced disruption to their value chain due to unpredictable events in the last 12 months.
- On average, it has taken 2.1 months to get back to ‘business as usual’ following such incidents.
- The average cost to date has been €519,838 per incident per company; but this is as high as €20.4M in one company.
- Only 25% have performed a risk assessment on all elements of their value chain.
- 79% have to comply with at least 1 type of legislation / trade regulation that affects their value chain, but 30% have been non-compliant during the last 12 months.
- Not all companies are able to gather a comprehensive set of product / service line data, and among those who can, on average it takes 3 weeks to complete this task.
- 85% say departments / groups in their organization struggle to provide timely data and information relating to products and services - those in customer services and finance think their own departments are the worst.
- 94% think there are barriers to internal communication and collaboration within their company and 61% blame data and / or technology problems.
- Also, 87% think barriers exist to external communication and collaboration with customers / suppliers - and 56% blame data and / or technology problems.
- When conducting promotional campaigns in the last 2 years, 71% have seen a negative impact on the company as a direct result.
- Just 12% measure all the elements that they feel are important to measure.
Value Chain Planning and Value Chain Execution Summit Customer Sessions
As part of the inaugural Oracle European Value Chain Summit, a dedicated Value Chain Execution and Value Chain Planning track included presentations by several leading global companies, like IKEA, Lufthansa Technik Logistik, Oracle Sun, Uponor, Lafarge, Smith Medical, Ferring, British Gypsum, Red Dot Corporation, and Zebra Technologies. Alan Braithwaite, visiting professor at Cranfield University, explained the importance for companies to have visibility of their Supply Chain to react swiftly and agile to the changes of the modern business. Companies that make use of Supply chain systems show a higher delivery rate, higher customer satisfaction and a higher profit margin.
Enterprise PLM Innovation Award for Prof. Dr. Martin Eigner
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Martin Eigner is a well known expert for Product Lifecycle Management and CAD/CAM. Back in 1985 he was the founder and CEO of the EIGNER + PARTNER GmbH, and CTO of EIGNER Inc. in Waltham, Massachusetts (USA). In August 2003, Eigner Inc. was acquired by Agile, which later in 2007 was acquired by Oracle for 495 Mio $. In July 2001, Martin founded the consulting company ENGINEERING CONSULT, and since October 2004 was appointed the professorship for virtual product development at the University Kaiserslautern, Germany. In parallel, he is a visiting professor at the University of Applied Sciences Offenburg, Germany and University of Sofia, Bulgaria, and a honorary professor of the state of Baden-Württemberg, Germany, and the Karlsruhe University. It was a special honor for Denis Senpere, Oracle Vice President Enterprise PLM EMEA, to hand over the Oracle Enterprise PLM Innovation Award 2013 to Prof. Dr. Eigner. This was a special appreciation for the dedication, hard work, expertise and innovation that Martin Eigner has brought to the world of product development. Even today, we are working with more than 160 customers who have purchased the former Eigner software, which evolved into today’s Oracle Agile PLM for Industrial Manufacturing (Agile e6).
Industry sessions: PLM for Food and Beverage, Retail, LifeSciences, High Tech / Electronics and Industrial Manufacturing
Kim Glenn, Tyson Foods Director Research & Development showed in her presentation “Increase Visibility, Improve Innovation” how Tyson has overcome the difficulty of balancing Innovation vs. Quality & Compliance. Thanks to the implementation of Agile PLM for Food and Beverage (Agile for Process), they have been able to move away from 11 Giant Filing Cabinets to one trusted Online Location. They have significantly improved audit efficiency through visibility of suppliers by item and by company. Tyson has implemented Supply Chain contingency planning with the ability to easily identify components affected by supplier change, and great visibility of supplier documentation – including audits and documentation of company actions. Electronic workflows ensure that appropriate reviews occur.
Benefits for Tyson Foods are:
- Improved Speed to Market
- Better Supplier and Product Quality
- One Innovation Platform for All
In the respective PLM for Food and Beverage breakout sessions we were able to welcome 50 attendees to listen to the case studies about Amadori, United Biscuits and at Raisio. It was great to hear about their specific projects and PLM journey and about the value of their implementation partners SinfoOne and CGI Finland.
With regards to Retail, there were several relevant presentations. Most prominent, Anna Edvardsson from ICA Sweden (former part of Ahold group with around 2,100 own and retailer-owned stores in Sweden, Norway and the Baltic countries) described how to lay the foundation for competitive Product Development in Retail. ICA Sweden is one of Sweden’s leading retail companies with Food, Non-food and Nearly-food products. In 2012, ICA Sweden took the first step of implementing Oracle’s PLM tool, based on a need to lay the necessary foundation for further growth within the focus area Private Label. The PLM solution was delivered on time and budget in ten months by a joint team Accenture + Oracle Consulting Services. The presentation showed why ICA found the introduction of PLM as inevitable, and what they have accomplished:
- Uniform way of working for all ICA’s Product Development
- PLM necessary for completed ISO-certification
- Transparency in process gives support for decision-making and taking action throughout the development and the whole life cycle of articles
- Better support in deciding what products to launch
- Better support in prioritizing maintenance of current assortment
- Better support for following-up different types of projects and the time each project phase takes
- A common source of information for our Product Development and Private Label assortment
Sachin Patel from our Product Management highlighted how to implement multichannel commerce with PIM / PDQ and Endeca. So in the summit we covered our complete offering for the Retail industry with Multichannel Product Catalog and Private Label Retailing.
There were also great presentations for everyone interested in Life Sciences: Adding to the presentation from Novartis, Smith Medical and Ferring Pharmaceuticals presented in the all-hands keynote. These companies have started their Value Chain Transformation journey in the areas of Value Chain Planning and Value Chain Execution. However, they are now ready to further move up the VC Transformation maturity curve and look into Oracle Enterprise PLM. Covering their experience with Oracle PLM in the Medical Device industry,Vibeke Nyrop, GN Resound, highlighted how to achieve FDA compliance with Agile PLM. As a medical device manufacturer, GN ReSound must meet stringent product data control regulations. GN ReSound facilitates compliance with Agile PLM as the foundation for the company’s new, global, product information and documentation environment, which provides a complete overview of all products and parts.
Several presentations were given by customers from the High-Tech Electronics industry: Freescale, Cameron, and Domino Printing reported on Protection of Intellectual Property, Obsolescence Management, and CAD Integration.
In the area of Industrial Manufacturing: Doosan Skoda Power, Marel and SPX Cooling presented their PLM success stories and praised the strong backbone capabilities, deep CAD integration and world-class engineering functionality of Agile e6 for managing complex machinery businesses, often unique to a given customer, and requiring worldwide servicing. AutoVue for Agile was recognized as a unique Enterprise Visualization solution that is the natural companion for Agile PLM. More and more customers use AutoVue for supplier collaboration on documents, on packaging documents, on drawings, on 3D mechanical models, on electromechanical models, all under control of the Agile PLM backbone for traceability.
Product sessions on Innovation Management, Product Roadmaps and Strategies
PLM has been adopted by many companies in the world today. 65% of the CPG Industry has adopted PLM for at least specification management and new product development process management: But is that making them better innovators? Market leaders have a more holistic view of innovation. Fusion Innovation Management brings this holistic view from Oracle. We enforce a model in which the wall is gone between PLM and the rest of the Value Chain, and where a company has one holistic view from Idea to Retirement. Fusion Innovation Management is a solution which brings end-to-end data together and shows fit with Business & Innovation Strategy. Accountability becomes clearer for a product during its entire lifecycle, from end-to-end, and with real-time decision-making about project & product portfolios This was presented by the two “Innovation Gurus” Mick Broekhof, Kalypso, and James Ramsay, Oracle, in their presentation “Making Strategic Breakthroughs in Innovation Management”. With the NEW Oracle Fusion Innovation Management companies can capture, discuss, enrich & screen new ideas, to improve the ability to identify the best ideas & convert them into business value faster,and to ensure each new product fulfils targeted customer needs & requirements.
With Fusion Innovation Management, companies will be able to
- Build stronger ideas pipeline
- Consistently satisfy customer needs
- Better align product portfolio with corporate strategy
- Optimize lifecycle return of your products
...REPEATEDLY!
Oracle Product Lifecycle Analytics (OPLA) was a really hot topic on the summit. We started with a common presentation “Making Informed Decisions with OPLA”, followed later on the day by a hands-on PLM Analytics workshop. The hands-on workshop created a strong impression with our customers: “This stuff is really easy to use, and there are tons of content that is usable for my business out of the box! “. “I have it on my iPad! This is so cool…”.
In the respective product / industry breakout sessions, we were openly sharing the Product News and Roadmap for Agile e6 & AutoVue, for Agile 9.3 as well as for PLM for Process. Matt Johnson and Jeff Pratt presented on "Product MDM and Data Quality: How Fusion Product Hub drives value in your business and in the Cloud." Whether planning, building, selling or shipping products, a value chain can only be as good as its data. Everybody who attended this presentation now knows how Fusion Product Hub streamlines product data processes while improving governance, security and data quality, and learned about Oracle’s latest product MDM innovations – such as MDM in the Cloud. Our general attitude towards our products (confident, proud, smiling, relaxed) was also captured by our customers. It was even further extended by the CAB sessions and the SIG. Openness is paying off, for sure!
Oracle Innovation Management survey
On the summit, we were pointing our customers to our current Innovation Management Survey: Are you getting the maximum Return on Innovation? Participate in the ORACLE INNOVATION MANAGEMENT survey and receive a complimentary research report. All you need to do is to invest 10 minutes. As a reward, you will gain insight into:
- Top challenges impacting return on innovation
- How companies are looking to improve their innovation management processes
- How your company’s experiences benchmark with those of other leading organizations
Participate in the online survey (for german version, go here).
Partner view: Well-earned Enterprise PLM Partner Excellence Awards!
The partners also reported how pleased they were with this event. The Gold and Silver Sponsors were delighted to receive special recognition awards delivered to them by Denis Senpere and Ulf Köster. While ICP Solution and Kalypso received the Oracle Enterprise PLM Excellence GOLD Award 2013, xPLM Solution, DataSquare, Kallik, Maier CSS, SinfoOne, Systematics and Zensar received the PLM Excellence Award for their support and cooperation. All our PLM partners understood that we care about them and want to do more with them. The PLM partner exhibition on the event was very well attended. The atmosphere was very energetic and inspiring, so that the partners also have taken the opportunity to discuss with other partners, and find areas for cooperation.
Feedbacks: A few words from our customers and partners
Here are some selected feedbacks from customers and partners:
“I want to thank you for arranging this great summit. Great presentations and a very good combination between Oracle and the customer presentation - and great opportunities for networking. I also want to thank you for inviting me to the CAB meeting bringing up- and discussing areas for system improvement. I have learned a lot that will be useful for me and have got some very good contacts to other companies for future networking. It has been the best conference since Agile was acquired by Oracle. I hope that this will not be the last one. Please bring forward my thanks to all the helpful people supporting the summit.”Vibeke Nyrop, GN Resound
“It was a fantastic event and quite great experience for me. I would recommend adding a little content for middleware applications that can help value chain innovation requirements (i.e. Enterprise – mobility)”Sayed Mohammed El-Sayed, Savola Group, Saudi Arabia
“The event met my expections. There were many good opportunities for networking and sharing experiences. By meeting a lot of Oracle people, we also got a better sense of how your organization is set up and how we can work better with you.”Anna Edvardsson, ICA Sverige AB
“This is just to thank you for inviting me to Köln. I much enjoyed the event and learnt things about Oracle that I had not previously known. Hopefully you feel I made a useful contribution. Also I will be pleased to connect Oracle with Cranfield and it would be good to have you as part of the SCRiP research club. I am following this up with Vikram and Dominic.”Professor Alan Braithwaite
“The
Oracle PLM Summit was a very well organized event. The summit gave us a
good understanding of Oracle products that are coming soon to the
market. A pleasant surprise was the multitude of customer presentations –
accounts of Oracle Product Implementations, which covered in detail,
the numerous challenges faced by the industry. My suggestion would be to
arrange the program agenda in such a manner that as far as possible
customer presentations should not clash as it is difficult to choose
between two equally good presentations.“Ashutosh Shrivastava, Mahindra Satyam
“Regarding the Summit, we heard only positive signals from our network. What we would do better next year is to put even greater energy into bringing more clients and prospects to the Summit. Testimonials from this year’s attendees will be a good vehicle.”Mick Broekhof, Kalypso
“I have seen a strong cooperation between Customers, Partners and Oracle teams: the Customers were pleased to share their experiences with the other people, the Partners had no difficulties to meet each other and find valuable form of collaboration, the Oracle people did their best to facilitate the contacts between Customers and Partners. I also have seen a real interest from the audience in the topics covered at the event, so the sessions were often interactive with many questions and considerations from the attendees.”Giuseppe Malorgio, SinfoOne