To meet the long-term goals and short-term objectives required to stay competitive, you need to manage portfolios and projects efficiently. This kind of management involves five basic steps: strategic planning resource and schedule planning, cost management and control, information transparency, and improved management oversight.

SAP expedites this process with capabilities to:

• Align your portfolios with corporate objectives, including portfolios of projects, programs, and services within R&D, professional services, and IT.
• Prioritize, plan, and execute activities aligned to corporate strategy and more readily provide the right resources at the right time from the right source required for execution
• Plan and track activities more precisely to improve speed of execution
• Plan and monitor budgets and maximize financial returns
• Support both portfolio and project decision-making processes
• Minimize risk, redundancy, and bottlenecks through better resource capacity planning

Key Portfolio Planning Benefits of PLM Software from SAP

With SAP Product Lifecycle Management, you benefit from:

• Lower project costs
• Improved resource efficiency
• Better internal and external collaboration
• Improved monitoring of project status and portfolio performance
• Alignment of activities, resources, and budgets with business priorities

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Read how you can optimize full use of resources in your projects for measurable improvement to your business in a competitive marketplace (PDF).

SAP PLM supports the complete product development process, including innovation and service processes at early development stages. The application strongly supports design and engineering phases and the hand-over to follow-on processes such as manufacturing – and project management in the development process.

At the document planning phase, you can manage technical document, parts, and product and process structures. SAP PLM also supports classification and variant configuration. For discrete industries, the solution uses bill of materials and routing; for process industries, it uses specifications and recipes. SAP PLM also provides as-built and as-maintained structures for service and maintenance phases.

Features include:

• Product data management
• Engineering change management
• Variant configuration
• Recipe management
• Digital manufacturing

Key Development & Manufacturing Benefits of PLM Software from SAP

With SAP Product Lifecycle Management, you benefit from:

• Better design decisions, and as a result, better products
• Faster development
• Improved manufacturing operations

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	Find out how you can reconcile incompatible business goals, conflicting designs and constraints, and competing solutions – before design features are locked in (PDF). Log-in required.
	Learn why SAP Product Lifecycle Management (SAP PLM) helps ensure performance, quality, and continuous improvement. Discover how managing products and processes with SAP PLM boosts collaboration for design, engineering, quality management, regulatory compliance, and maintenance management across the product life cycle (PDF). Log-in required.
	See how chemicals industry giant Ashland used the SAP Environment, Health, and Safety Management application to accommodate a dizzying array of product-labeling regulations around the world – and maintain an excellent compliance record (PDF).
	Read more about how product development software provided by SAP can help you manage product data, engineering changes, and overall costs in an integrated way – with comprehensive product development software that's easy to install and easy to use.

Many manufacturers have introduced new revenue streams by making the benefits of their products available to customers through service agreements – extending their business model from "manufacturer" to "solution provider." Such new business models start with an innovation process that spans product and operational services – often linking directly into processes delivered by partners.

With SAP PLM, you can involve service and maintenance in product development, innovation, and management processes. SAP PLM helps you:

• Maintain and update maintenance manuals; product documentation; maintenance, repair, and service records and histories; and configurations for products and systems of multiple companies
• Define and manage processes focused on handling claims and warranty activities
• Manage the physical assets – buildings and facilities – of an organization for manufacturing, processing, or operations

Key Service Benefits of PLM Software from SAP

With SAP Product Lifecycle Management, you benefit from:

• More revenue per product (product plus value-added service)
• Ability to offer better business models to customers (value-based differentiation)
• Reduced operating costs and increased efficiency with improved asset and maintenance management

Learn More

Learn why SAP Product Lifecycle Management (SAP PLM) helps ensure performance, quality, and continuous improvement. Discover how managing products and processes with SAP PLM boosts collaboration for design, engineering, quality management, regulatory compliance, and maintenance management across the product life cycle (PDF).
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