After Propel Software introduced their PIM software, Medical Plastics News asked the company how this will affect the medical plastics sector.
1. You say it seamlessly delivers accurate and tailored products across all sales channels - could you please elaborate?
Propel Software allows the expansion into new markets quickly with all regulatory and compliance documents connected. Product information is maintained within one source, which offers the ability to tailor product content to customer requirements in each channel for accelerated growth. For instance, hearing aids will need different content for consumers shopping over the counter versus the content service providers need.
Propel manages the source of truth throughout the entire product lifecycle, ensuring cross-functional teams like sales and marketing have the right information, approved content, and availability at the right time. We bridge the gap between product and commercial teams to ensure revenue growth is always front and centre of product strategy. To explain this further, med device company Inari Medical rapidly expanded its number of products and engineers and had to move to a traceable, digital platform. By implementing Propel’s software, Inari was able to decrease its document control process time and shorten change order cycle times - leading to faster product introduction, market expansion and increased customer satisfaction.
2. What's different about this offering compared to others that say the same?
Propel uniquely manages the whole product over its lifetime which includes quality, suppliers, distribution, commercialisation, and of course the customers. We bridge the gap between product and commercial teams and prioritise revenue as well as cost and efficiency as key parts of any successful product strategy. Another differentiator is that marketing, commercialisation, and go-to-market (GTM) teams are engaged with the product information from the beginning so that new product development (NPD) processes lead to faster launches, increased revenue streams and improved outcomes.
3. What types of challenges does this address?
Bridging these gaps across product and commercialisation teams, and delivering customer lifetime value requires a common platform, cloud availability and value chain collaboration. This ensures value plays like medical device marketing claims are approved, accurate and consistent across every sales channel. The primary value add is that it ensures that marketing legal regulatory (MLR) approvals are obtained before release. Track everywhere claims are also used across products and assets allowing for a quick reaction to ongoing changes and issues that may come up. It also shortens incident-to-resolution time, minimising the cost of poor quality and increasing customer satisfaction. Also, it addresses regulatory compliance by capturing the voice of the consumer (VoC), quickly investigating issues and nonconformances, determining reportability, always knowing which product(s) and documentation is affected, and which enterprise closed-loop corrective actions are necessary to fix.
4. How does this link to medical plastics?
Supplier management is one of the critical processes, especially today with risks of availability, off-shoring, and increased costs. This demands seamless collaboration with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), distributors and the entire value chain across product, process, and documentation. Propel enables a partner community for companies to provide secure access to relevant information across their supplier base. The outcome is shortened cycle times from accelerating the collaboration between suppliers and manufacturers, sharing intellectual property securely (no more emails and drive shares) and ensuring everyone is working on the correct product and quality data - all while helping suppliers improve their responsiveness and performance.
Many medical device companies were affected during the pandemic, as supply chains faltered and inventory shortages became the norm. Having a cloud-based product and quality platform, enables med device companies to keep business continuity by staying seamlessly connected between manufacturing teams, third-party logistics, and their supply chain partners. With inventory knowledge at all times, companies can pivot to avoid having to make stop shipping decisions.