PLM connected with CRM for customer-centric servitization

By Kerri Doyle

Siemens and Salesforce together can help you connect with your customers in a whole new way using the world’s leading PLM and CRM solutions for comprehensive service lifecycle management.

Read the Siemens press release to learn more about how Siemens and Salesforce are teaming up for customer-centric servitization – PLM connected with CRM.

The formula for service excellence resulting in customer loyalty will always include a complete understanding of your customer’s needs, while having the right data and the right solutions to address them. Software solutions for PLM and service lifecycle management connected with CRM will ensure you are in the know of your customer’s full story including product knowledge – to avoid downtime, service right the first time, improve operational efficiency, drive down service-related costs, increase service revenue, and impress your customers.

Comprehensive PLM-based Service Lifecycle Management and CRM

To lower service-related costs and drive up service revenue, many discrete manufacturers are extending their product lifecycle management (PLM) software to include service lifecycle management (SLM)
capabilities. Comprehensive service lifecycle management connects product and service engineering to service planning and operations, helping to maintain an accurate representation of both the product digital twin, and its physical counterpart – the physical structure of the asset in its current configuration. It enables service technicians to execute service with a full understanding of the product, including as-built bill of materials records, status, and service history.

Bringing together the software capabilities of PLM for service with those of customer relationship management (CRM) takes service lifecycle management to the next level. By combining knowledge about the product, its current configuration, available upgrades, spare parts information, intuitive service instructions with 3D visuals and animations – with the full customer story, you get a seamless and personalized customer-centric user experience that promises to meet your customers’ needs with quality service, and continuous product improvement.

PLM and CRM together for service excellence and increased revenue

CRM software helps manufacturers orchestrate and track their customer’s interactions, and applies data analytics to support customer relationships. For example, CRM can track customer contracts, warranties, past and current cases, and everything manufacturers plan to sell to their customers. It supplies a unified environment for customer-centric efforts in marketing, sales, service and commerce.

Advanced CRM software applies artificial intelligence (AI) to its data, using deep learning and predictive insights to help anticipate customer needs. Using AI for example, manufacturers can empower their service teams to reach faster resolutions to issues and personalize every customer experience. When CRM software is combined with the power of PLM software, bringing together customer knowledge and product knowledge, you get even more benefits.

Let’s talk about product knowledge. PLM software manages information around the customer’s product, including design, engineering and manufacturing data, how the product should be serviced and when, service requirements and service planning data with the right resources and skillsets, service documentation with rich 3D visuals and animations, service history, etc. Further, IoT tied into PLM can be used to monitor equipment and predict maintenance needs, helping to keep assets running efficiently and to avoid downtime. Service engineering and RAMS, also important elements of PLM, are leveraged to address Design for Service (DfS), ensuring your service requirements and sustainability needs are met before you get the product out the door. When you combine PLM and CRM into a single digital thread – you get a powerful solution that will help you accelerate servitization to drive up service revenue while keeping your customers happy.

Siemens Teamcenter SLM app on Salesforce

The Siemens Teamcenter SLM app on Salesforce is a SaaS cloud app that bridges PLM (Teamcenter) and CRM (Salesforce) together, resulting in service efficiency and revenue opportunities. As shown in the demonstration below, AI from Salesforce’s Einstein GPT capabilities can leverage product and service engineering data pulled from Teamcenter to create knowledge articles that can assist service agents when processing customer issues. See the full product demonstration here.

Siemens Teamcenter SLM app on Salesforce showing AI capability to assist service agents

Using the Teamcenter SLM app for Salesforce, service work plans are automatically created leveraging service planning data pulled from Teamcenter, providing the required skill sets and tools when assigning resources to the job. Service technicians are equipped with service instructions that include 3D visuals and animations of step by step service procedures, authored in Teamcenter, ensuring they service right the first time. And with a window to product upgrades and available spare parts, the service agent is empowered as a revenue generator.