How OpenBOM Can Help You To Accelerate Business in 2024

The new year is fast approaching, and as I counted earlier today, we have only 18 working days left until the Christmas break. I don’t know what you’re thinking, but my first thought was that now is a great time to start planning how to grow your business in 2024.

At OpenBOM, we’ve spent the last twelve months working with thousands of users and customers, learning from them and assisting them in accelerating their businesses. Today, I want to share a few secrets about how OpenBOM can help you.

Earlier this year, I wrote an article titled 5 Values of OpenBOM You Should Not Miss When Pitching OpenBOM To Your Boss. Education plays a crucial role when implementing engineering and manufacturing systems. It involves a process of changing the status quo and transitioning from your previous methods to a new way of managing engineering projects and processes.

Today, I’d like to shift gears and discuss the three objectives that every manufacturing company constantly strives to achieve: (1) increasing sales, (2) optimizing costs, and (3) mitigating risks. If OpenBOM can assist you in improving these aspects, your business will thrive.

I do a thing for a thing to do a thing… 

I have a simple formula for explaining what OpenBOM does every time I speak to potential users. While it’s easy to delve into specific features such as file management, CAD data integration, or cost calculations, these are all just “features” that may or may not be useful at a given moment. It’s worth noting that OpenBOM releases 10-12 updates each year, bringing new features every month. But, what really matters is finding the right “thing” for the right “thing” to help you accomplish your goals.

As a manufacturing company, you should always be clear about what you need to bring to the success of your business. This brings us to the fundamentals: you need software that can assist in running your product development business. To be more specific, every manufacturing company’s business process revolves around three fundamental functions:

1. Design and production
2. Supply chain management
3. Sales and marketing

Most businesses already have CAD systems for design, supplier lists for procurement, and CRM or marketing automation systems for sales and marketing. So, what’s missing?

The missing “thing” is software that can connect and coordinate all activities across design, production, supply chain, sales, and marketing. To do this efficiently, you need a reliable dataset that tracks “what” you produce at every stage, from initial design to production planning, sales, and maintenance. Without software to organize this data and manage these three processes, your company won’t thrive. Talking about exporting an Excel file from CAD and sending it to a purchasing manager won’t cut it. You need a “thing” that can connect and coordinate all these people, or you’ll be left behind (or move too slowly, which is equivalent to failure in modern business).

So, here’s what OpenBOM offers to all our customers: a software platform for engineering teams and manufacturing companies to organize product information, enabling everyone in the company to make decisions effectively and perform tasks efficiently.

How OpenBOM Helps you? 

The formula mentioned earlier is just a formula unless we explain how our customers can actually achieve what we promise. This is where I want to emphasize one of the most important aspects and greatest challenges in business and life today: the need for accurate data.

Think about it for a moment. In everything we do these days, we require accurate data immediately. Whether it’s knowing the weather, road conditions, gas prices, the latest news, or your estimated arrival time at the office, accurate data is crucial. You also want to know your tasks and have access to all the documents you need to complete them. Furthermore, you need to locate the latest design files and identify the top components that constitute 80% of your new product’s cost. Understanding your main suppliers for critical parts and tracking what was released to production as revision 5 last week are essential. Additionally, you want to know the status of shipments and the timeline for starting the assembly process. I could provide more examples, but the point is clear: data is of utmost importance.

Here are three things OpenBOM does:

1. Organizes data related to everything you do, including design, product releases, part lists, bills of materials, and all necessary documents for production and orders.
2. Assists in managing the change process and maintains a history that’s easily accessible when needed, whether for suppliers, quality control, or customers who placed orders.
3. Helps you organize complex data structures by connecting processes such as engineering releases, purchasing, and assembly.

Here is what OpenBOM essentially does for all our customers. 

Essentially, OpenBOM serves as a software platform that organizes product information in a connected manner, encompassing item information, bills of materials, files, suppliers, costs, and more. It enables everyone to access this data when necessary to execute processes like engineering releases, change management, and purchasing, ensuring on-time production with predictable costs.

How Different Is OpenBOM? 

An important question arises: what makes OpenBOM different from other PLM and ERP software? Here are five key differentiators:

1. You can create a free account in just one minute and start using it immediately.
2. You can easily share data with anyone, regardless of the company they work for.
3. OpenBOM seamlessly integrates with major CAD applications right out of the box.
4. It offers open and flexible data organization, along with APIs for seamless connectivity.
5. OpenBOM is known for its simplicity, ease of use, and comprehensive online training materials and videos.
6. We take pride in providing the best support in the world.

Conclusion: 

OpenBOM is an online software platform that effectively organizes product information, connecting and coordinating your product development and supply chain processes. 

Implementing OpenBOM results in an online central hub where you can access up-to-date product information to share with your team, contractors, and suppliers. It provides tools for managing interconnected processes like engineering releases, RFQs, and purchase orders.

What sets OpenBOM apart from existing PLM products is its ease of use, rapid account creation, flexibility in data management, out-of-the-box CAD integrations, and exceptional customer support.

Don’t miss the opportunity to register for free and explore OpenBOM. It has the potential to transform your business in 2024, and now is the perfect time to get started.

REGISTER FOR FREE and check out OpenBOM today. It can change your business in 2024. Now is the time! 

Best, Oleg