New Accolade® Version 7.0 from Sopheon Enables Product Range Management and Technology Reuse

Enhanced Offering Expected to Accelerate Company’s Entry into Discrete Markets and Deepen Penetration of Consumer Goods Verticals

Sopheon, the international provider of software and services for product lifecycle management (PLM), today introduced the latest version of its Accolade® product portfolio and innovation process management system.  Accolade version 7.0 features a broad mix of capabilities designed to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of cross-functional product innovation planning and execution.  New differentiators such as the solution’s support for complex portfolio and product range management are expected to accelerate the adoption of Accolade by manufacturers in automotive, aerospace and defense markets.  The company anticipates that they will also contribute to extending its penetration of targeted vertical markets within the consumer goods industry.

Many of the principal enhancements in Accolade 7.0 evolved from Sopheon’s work with existing customers and are specially geared to supporting the product lifecycle requirements of manufacturers with multiple large, global portfolios of complex products.  For instance, Sopheon’s experience with companies such as General Motors and Electrolux contributed to capabilities in the new Accolade version that make product planning easier by enabling better investment decisions on variations of products.

Automobiles and consumer packaged goods are among the products that often have to be changed slightly to meet the unique competitive, regulatory and cultural requirements of individual regions around the world.  A vacuum cleaner for the Chinese market, for example, might require different attributes than the same vacuum cleaner originally developed for the U.S. market.  Such product variations can now be defined in Accolade, which graphically represents the relationship of a variant to the core innovation program or product platform with which it is associated.  Business data on product components can similarly be modeled and linked.  Besides simplifying the planning process, these capabilities will facilitate the reuse of components and technologies across product lines, contributing to cost savings and reductions in concept-to-delivery times.  They will also help to synchronize marketing, engineering and manufacturing views of long-range product plans.  Their overall impact will be to increase the revenues and profits generated from investments in core products. 
       
“Electrolux’s customer-driven approach to product innovation depends upon our being able to effectively define, develop and manage complex, regionally focused portfolios of technologies, products and product variants,” said Johan Skåntorp, vice president, global product planning, Electrolux Floorcare & Small Appliances.  “Prior to our adoption of Sopheon’s Accolade system, we had searched unsuccessfully for a PLM solution that could support the layer of business information needed to make sound planning and product range management decisions.  We encouraged Sopheon to develop the capabilities that are now being introduced in Accolade 7.0.  We helped shape and test them, and for more than a year we have experienced their value.  For manufacturers faced with the challenge of managing product innovation and technology reuse on a global scale, these capabilities are game-changing.  For Electrolux, they are indispensable.” 

In addition to its range management capabilities, Accolade 7.0 introduces more than 40 distinctly new features.  These enhancements include:

• More powerful process models that make it easier to extend the use of Accolade to other applications.  Accolade process models can now be more easily developed for virtually any type of project or process portfolio, including technology and basic research projects.  They can also be readily adapted to business process areas outside of product innovation such as Six Sigma, marketing campaigns, capital development, mergers and acquisitions, and IT projects.  Multiple portfolios cannot only be examined separately, but collectively rolled up into a single portfolio view.  Additional modeling features make it possible to capture and manage product-related intelligence, including information on patents, competitors, regulations and other business factors critical to effective portfolio decision-making. 
• The capacity to define, visualize and analyze interrelationships among portfolio components.  This set of new features is specially designed for organizations that want to do a more effective job of organizing and managing complex portfolios.   Relationships among programs, projects, products and ideas are depicted graphically, allowing users to make assessments visually rather than by having to read detailed reports.  Data from linked projects can be rolled up into program summaries.  Navigation across projects is intuitive and efficient, saving time and contributing to thorough analysis.
• Extended scalability, security and product forecasting features to support large, complex product portfolios and global process implementation.   Scalability and performance enhancements available in Accolade 7.0 include the capacity to support up to 100,000 projects on a single server.  Advanced security features allow refined levels of control over access to project information, providing added protection of intellectual property and ensuring safe collaboration.   For international organizations, the solution’s ability to automatically convert multiple currencies to support local and corporate reporting requirements will improve the efficiency and accuracy of global portfolio management, product forecasting and financial data management.  
• Increased ease-of-use and ease-of-configuration.  Accolade is already widely regarded as the gold standard for ease-of-use among PLM solutions.  A variety of features being introduced in Accolade 7.0 raise this important differentiator to a new level.  Among them are increased flexibility in the handling of gate decisions; the capacity to embed project documentation that resides in external repositories; reporting capabilities that support richer portfolio visualization; additional document alerts; and enhancements that make it easier to manage project, deliverable and activity data.  Because version 7.0 is also very easy to configure, the processes it supports can be owned and managed by business end-users without dependency on the IT department.   

One of the biggest potential impediments to successful product innovation is the internal silos that develop between functions and operating units, blocking communication and the information-sharing needed for effective decision-making.  Many of the Accolade features new in version 7.0 are designed to tear down those barriers by automating the real-time transfer of critical decision data across organizational boundaries to the cross-functional groups responsible for product planning and execution.  These features will also contribute to capturing and reusing lessons learned, and ensure that intellectual property is leveraged across geographies. 

“This is the most extensive and most significant Sopheon product release since our introduction of the first version of Accolade seven years ago,” said Bryan Seyfarth, solutions marketing director for Sopheon.  “One of the historic criticisms of PLM software in general is that it has not done enough to support enterprise-wide, cross-functional product planning.   The argument is that, in order to be effective, PLM must move beyond product data management and collaborative design to provide a way to address the core business issues of product innovation.  Accolade 7.0 fills that void.  It captures, organizes and delivers the business information companies need to set strategic product initiatives in motion and inform the planning and portfolio decisions that will lead to financial success.  With the release of version 7.0, Accolade truly stands alone as the business layer for the product innovation process.” 

Accolade version 7.0 is available immediately for purchase and implementation.