Household appliance manufacturer and designer Electrolux realized $15 billion in sales last year due in part to a growth strategy that is intensely focused on new product development. This creates a need for tools that streamline related processes as much as possible in getting more new products to market as quickly as possible.But obtaining input on a global level, in order to understand which products and features may be desired or discarded in each market, can be a challenging and lengthy endeavor. This led the company to asses Sopheon’s Accolade software platform as a way to better manage their product development process.
“We had some specialized needs, and Sopheon seemed best suited for handling them,” states Johan Skanthrop, Electrolux’s vice president of global product planning. “We needed a platform that could support longer design processes and manage both the main project as a whole, as well as all the individual ones that comprise our product rollouts.”
Sopheon responded with a software platform that combined their traditional capabilities with some customized tools that would better suit Electrolux’s 1,400 users. Some of the product’s offerings include:
- A web-based user interface.
- Group-wide product planning and reporting tools that use a single common protocol, database and process, which translates to greater reporting consistency throughout the organization.
- A consolidated view of cross-regional projects and programs.
- The ability to show commonalities between global and regional projects, as well as launch product projects in the generation plan.
- A look at the business impact of future products, current projects and current production/sales as they relate to strategic regional plans.
- A transparent representation in project and resource priorities within and between regions.
- An overall seamless integration of all parts in the new product development process.
Electrolux started integrating the platform last May, and should have company-wide use by January of next year. Although there is only one day of training needed to get users up to speed, some data does require manual re-entry. Overall, however, Skanthrop feels the company has seen a significant return on their investment in terms of time saved and increased sales from getting new products out more quickly.Click here for more information from Sopheon
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