The Uttermost Company extends Portal to include buy-side partners
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Plymouth, Massachusetts and Rocky Mount, Virginia – The Uttermost
Company, an industry leader in wall décor and portable lighting announced today
that it has chosen PLMresearch, a leading
Small to Midsize Business (SMB) eBusiness consulting firm, to develop Product
Lifecycle Management (PLM) capabilities within its Internet portal. This
effort will facilitate interaction and collaboration between Uttermost’s
buy-side partners (designers, vendors, manufacturers) and its factories in
the United States and China, providing an online “venue” where design and
manufacturing ideas can be shared anywhere, anytime via a standard browser
(e.g. Internet Explorer™ or Netscape™).
“Uttermost has chosen to use an outsourced business model - leveraging our
own internal skills with those of our independent designers, contract/component
manufacturers and selling agents - to bring the Uttermost product from the
point-of-conception into the consumer’s home”, stated Mac Cooper, President
of The Uttermost Company, “Most recently we’ve pursued these relationships
– particularly in the in areas of sourcing and manufacturing – on a global
basis.”
“This business model has been extremely effective for us, however, its
continued success will rely heavily upon a seamless information flow between
our partners”, Cooper added. “Unfortunately, our current collaboration processes
have (or soon will) become too intense and slow to accommodate our expansion
plans into the future. We realized that Uttermost needed a cost-effective,
real-time alternative that would link our partners together across time zones
and business cultures” stated Cooper,” and PLMresearch showed us a way to
accomplish this quickly and painlessly via PLM”.
“PLM facilitates interaction and collaboration between value chain partners
– vendors, R&D, logistics, etc – and is becoming particularly important
for companies that are utilizing an outsourced business model”, stated Mark
Withington, Principal of PLMresearch. “We will base Uttermost’s development
on an open source platform, allowing us
to deploy PLM capabilities at a fraction of the cost typically associated
with such an effort”, explained Withington.
Unlike traditional shrink-wrap software licensed products, open source provides
coding stability along with the flexibility for customization that,
until now, has been available only to large enterprises with equally large
budgets. Used in conjunction with PLMresearch’s Rapid Development Methodology
(RDM), open source development is an excellent alternative for the SMB to
base their mission critical applications.
The Uttermost Company intends to deploy its PLM capabilities over the next
several weeks.
About The Uttermost Company
The Uttermost Company is the largest manufacturer of framed
mirrors servicing retail stores in the United States, and one of the largest
manufacturers of framed prints, decorative plaques, oil reproductions and
lamps. The name Uttermost is taken from Acts 1:8, and expresses both a personal
belief and the company’s marketing plan to spread the gospel and sell its
products "to the uttermost parts of the earth".
Founded in 1975 by Bob and Belle Cooper, Uttermost is still
100% family owned today. Its culture is founded on the concept of mutual
respect for all of its partners in business: from the person in their plant
running a mitre saw to the retailer who selects and merchandises that perfect
mirror, “we’re all dependent on each other”.
Today’s Uttermost has grown to include over 300 employees
at the factory in Virginia, 120 sales representatives and thousands of retail
partners throughout the world. Its growth is primarily due to their commitment
to three things–superior service to retailers, maximizing the value of its
products, and treating its employees and sales representatives as partners
in business.
About PLMresearch
PLMresearch assists midsize enterprises evaluate, design and deploy cost
effective eBusiness initiatives - Internet technology that automates their
current inter-business processes.
PLMresearch works with its clients to help them understand how the Internet
can leverage their current internal IT systems such as Enterprise Resource
Planning (ERP) and Materials Resource Planning (MRP), to accelerate sales
and marketing channels, promote product design collaboration, foster materials
sourcing and facilitate supply chain management.
PLMresearch is a privately held company founded by Mark Withington in 2000. It
is a virtual organization of principles whose background covers application,
database and web design, security, systems administration, and business process
consulting.
The company is a strong advocate of the open source movement and is a frequent contributor
to the foundries and forums of the packages that it uses. It feels that
the flexibility and low cost that open source provides promotes vendor
independence and therefore reinforces PLMresearch’s position as a trusted
technical advisor to its clients.
