Global Views selects PLMresearch to automate design process
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Plymouth, Massachusetts and Dallas, Texas– Global Views, Inc., an
industry leader in the decorative accessory industry, announced today that
it has chosen PLMresearch, a leading Small to Midsize Enterprise (SME) eBusiness
consulting firm, to develop its Internet based product development portal
system. The Portal will facilitate the efforts of Global Views’ designers,
suppliers and manufacturers in their challenge to bring new product to market
faster by syndicating information out to Global Views’ value chain partners anytime,
anywhere via a standard browser (e.g. Internet Explorer™ or Netscape™).
“It’s all about accelerating the rate in which product design information
moves”, explained David Gebhart, President of Global Views, Inc. “We travel
around the world identifying the most beautiful, diverse and high quality
home accessories available in the market today”, Gebhart added, “and our
designers rely upon a vast network of suppliers and agents to bring these
unique accessories into the home. As our business has expanded, the administrative
burden involved in coordinating information from so many disparate sources
has become intense”.
That which cannot be measured cannot be managed…
“Quantifying and recording attributes like size, weight, color, packaging
type – the byproducts of the product design – is critically important to
ensure that quality and profitability goals are met. This is especially
true for companies like Global Views that rely upon external sources for
production, and logistics”, stated Mark Withington, Principal of PLMresearch. “Traditionally,
most companies start recording this kind of information via standard MS Excel™
spreadsheets, but soon find these ad hoc systems inadequate.”
“We needed a centralized location where all [authorized] product design
stakeholders could view and edit product design information. Unfortunately,
emailing spreadsheets lacked that capability”, stated Gebhart. “We realized
that Global Views needed a cost-effective, real-time alternative that would
link our partners together across time zones and business cultures and PLMresearch
showed us a way to accomplish this quickly and painlessly”.
“This kind of functionality falls under the heading of Product Lifecycle
Management (PLM) ”, added Withington. “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. We will base Global Views product development portal 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 SME to base their
mission critical applications.
Global Views intends to deploy its design portal over the next several weeks.
About Global Views
Global Views, Inc. (founded in 1996), designs, sources and distributes accent
pieces to beautify living environments. Its culture is dedicated to building
a profitable company that values and rewards individuals who help provide
outstanding services to its customers, in an environment that emphasizes
creativity, social responsibility and serenity.
Global Views’ designers unleash their creative spirit and talent in virtually
any medium they can imagine. From iron and stone to wood and wax, Global
Views sets few limits on its design team, yielding a creative freedom of
experimentation that is almost unheard of in the accessories industry.
An important factor that makes Global Views a market leader is its ongoing
commitment to innovation. This commitment is clear in every facet of the
company, including design, sales and marketing, and industry promotion. It
is this constant search for innovative solutions that has catapulted Global
Views to its position as a leading design resource for the home.
About PLMresearch
PLMresearch assists midsize enterprises evaluate, design and deploy cost
effective eBusiness initiatives - Internet technology that automates their
current inter-business processes. It 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.
