Nouveau NPD: CA brings its product portfolio management solution to the PLM arena

CA, long known as a leading supplier of solutions for managing IT resources, is moving into the product life-cycle management (PLM) realm with the introduction of a solution for managing the new product development (NPD) process.

By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff November 22, 2008

CA, long known as a leading supplier of solutions for managing IT resources, is moving into the product life-cycle management (PLM) realm with the introduction of a solution for managing the new product development (NPD) process.

The solution—dubbed CA Clarity Project and Portfolio Manger (PPM) for New Product Development (NPD)—is a new version of the system CA offers for managing IT projects. It was unveiled at CA World , the company’s annual user conference, held in Las Vegas this month.

CA Clarity PPM for NPD is billed as an integrated solution that incorporates industry best-practice processes used to drive NPD initiatives, including:

• Product portfolio management;

• Idea-to-launch management; and

• Requirements planning.

Product portfolio management helps executives better align their innovation and business strategies by enabling them to track product development priorities and resources in a portfolio view. CA Clarity PPM for NPD establishes visibility into product portfolio composition and status; real-time comparisons between planned product costs and resources and actual results; and automated scenario planning to help organizations optimize NPD resources.

The idea-to-launch management capability enables efficient capture of new product ideas and prioritization of the best concepts through time-tested practices. With support in CA Clarity PPM for NPD for top workflow management processes, Stage-Gate and PACE, organizations can leverage pre-built best practices to streamline and improve gate reviews and decisions by stage—automating the complex innovation process.

Proper requirements planning can improve new product success rates by ensuring products have the features customers are demanding, and that the company has the proper resources available to build products. Integrated requirements planning capabilities in CA Clarity PPM for NPD automatically compile road maps with product-specific plans and features, and assign projects based on available resource capacity.

CA Clarity PPM for NPD is bundled with best-practice content and rapid implementation services that speed deployment and boost user adoption.

“Developing commercially successful products—while staying on time and on budget—is a top priority for our clients,” says Sander Stoffels, managing consultant, Capgemini . “CA Clarity PPM for NPD can help our clients manage mission-critical development processes like product portfolio management, requirements planning, and comprehensive idea-to-launch management—all in one integrated solution. Together with our expertise in project performance improvement, we’re excited to offer this powerful solution to our clients.”