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This trend also is being extended to apparel retailers that are becoming more involved in manufacturing, and producers who are now retailing to increase control of supply-chains. This trend has become especially visible in Mexico. It is also becoming more common in other developing nations where firms wish to become more involved in the higher value-added areas of production.

"There's more of a need for verticalization in PLM than in any other big enterprise application class because the characterization of product information varies so much," says Kevin O'Marah, Vice President of PLM for AMR Research Inc. (Boston, MA).

"The generic approach has been successful until now, but for PLM companies to maintain growth and drive into new markets, verticalization must be a high priority," says Kurt Andersen, Director of Product Marketing at MatrixOne Inc. (Westford, MA). "Today, you have to offer pointed solutions mapped to the specialized processes of specific industries - it's really about time-to-market and improving ROI."

These companies, all leaders in their industries, opt to participate in the development of the vertical package for a number of reasons. For one thing, they gain access to the intellectual property of other companies in their field. It also promotes their standards and processes across their industry and lowers the cost of ownership of their PLM investment, since others share in the custom development.

As a strategy for getting PLM off the ground, packaged, vertical applications might just provide the right value proposition for companies that have been laboring over cumbersome and complex PLM rollouts. Convincing companies to invest in proprietary development is a difficult thing.

The real goal is to verticalize everything that constitutes functionality in the ERP world. For example: SAP - It is a building map, realize matrices of vertical industry requirements and using them to direct internal and third party project. The map tells the user everything he/she needs to know in the ERP software to run vertical business and where SAP or a partner provides a product.

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* Contributed by -
Varun Gupta,
B.E. (Electronics), Mumbai University,
MBA, ICFAI University, Hyderabad,
Currently working as Business Analyst with NSE.IT Ltd., Mumbai.