We often hear that PLM upgrades are complex, error prone, effort intensive and time consuming. This is the norm. With conventional approaches, the scope for improvement is minimal. Some of the obvious hindrances in the conventional approach are as below:

• Each upgrade rehearsal is done with the full production dump. This increases the turnaround time for issue resolution – technical or otherwise.
• Any defect analysis is time consuming since its difficult identify upfront whether it’s a code/configuration issue or a data issue.

This often leads to customers postponing the upgrade as long as possible. This inherently makes the system more obsolete and further increases the cost of upgrade.

The “Upgrade adoption service approach” circumvents the challenges of the conventional approach in a disruptive way. This innovative approach by design has two distinct phases

• A Quick Start Phase
• Production Upgrade Phase.

This two phased approach ensures that the pure technical challenges are addressed upfront in the quick start phase and the data related and relatively complex functional challenges are addressed in the later production upgrade phase. The approach is backed by 4 key tenets. These tenets help define a methodical approach to the upgrade which in turn ensures success.



This two faced approach has been tested and proven across customers and has provided them an added advantage of about 20-30% cost savings. This approach can also provide an early visibility of the to-be system to some of the key users. This could pave the way for Organizational Change Management initiatives.

PLM upgrades are essential to ensure compatibility, security and business process alignment with some of the industry best practices. The need for adopting Upgrade Service is accentuated by:

• Additional capabilities in the next versions of 3DEXPERIENCE platform.
• Support available for product issues.
• Added advantage of previously inherent shortcomings addressed in the newer version – thus negating the need for customization and ensuring smoother upgrades in the future.

The two-phased Upgrade adoption solution ensures these advantages are harnessed in the most cost effective way.

• An early key-user engagement in the Quick Start phase addresses the gap of user adoption challenges.
• The quick turnaround time with the ability to see and use the to-be system paves the way for process optimization if need be.
• The Quick Start Phase helps define the timelines for the larger Production Upgrade Phase making it more predictable and manageable.
• A dedicated step of upgrade process optimization during the Production Upgrade Phase ensures adherence to pre-defined production cutover timelines.
• The upgrade process optimization also helps identify inherent gaps in the infrastructure and helps define a way forward for continuous performance improvement.

All of our customer’s aspiration is to have seamless version upgrades – which are predictable, short in duration, effective and yet efficient. Our two-phased Upgrade Adoption Service addresses these aspirations. With our vast experience of executing the same across multiple customers and geographies, learnings taken from each one of these, improving upon it with our upgrade practice initiatives.

(Disclaimer-This offer is recommended for customers having baseline behavior or less/medium customization CSE environments.)