Case study

Specialized Bicycle Company Enhances PLM to Meet Growth Across Product Lines

How Specialized Bicycle Company partnered with ArcherGrey on a two-phase assessment and rebuild of their FlexPLM environment, going live on FlexPLM 11.1 in March 2020 with a scalable foundation and a successful migration of 100% of the data.

Retail, Footwear & ApparelPLM TransformationProgram Management
IndustryRetail, Footwear & Apparel
Solutions

PLM TransformationProgram Management
Background

Headquartered in Morgan Hill, California, Specialized Bicycle Company designs and manufactures bicycles and cycling gear, including shorts, gloves, jerseys, helmets with crash detection sensors, and battery-powered e-bikes. Their tagline: "Made for riders, by riders."

The inflection point

Building a FlexPLM foundation that scales.

Specialized had previously implemented PTC FlexPLM 11.0 with another service provider. The system design chosen at the time prevented the team from reasonably expanding FlexPLM to other product lines, with system design and scalability issues that limited what the platform could support.

Specialized also needed guidance on fitting subsequent FlexPLM versions into their technology roadmap and on enabling product features that hadn’t been leveraged before. The opportunity: rebuild the FlexPLM configuration to scale across the full Specialized product portfolio.

Our approach

A two-phase assessment and rebuild.

Specialized asked ArcherGrey to partner on the project through a two-phase structure: assessment first, then implementation. The assessment phase identified gaps and pain points and produced an action plan against them. Design workshops focused on accommodating Specialized’s broad product offerings and the adaptability the team would need going forward. Because the existing configuration architecture had to be redesigned for scalability, we upgraded via a new installation in the target environment with data migration.

What we owned:

  • A two-phase engagement: assessment, then implementation
  • Gap and pain-point assessment with a detailed action plan
  • Design workshops scoped to fit Specialized’s broad product offerings and future adaptability
  • A redesigned configuration architecture built for scalability
  • New installation in the target environment plus data migration
  • Use of ArcherGrey’s proprietary FlexPLM Loader and FlexPLM Extractor tools to bridge data migration gaps
  • Configuration, development, testing, UAT, and release across multiple weeks

Business outcomes

Live on FlexPLM 11.1 with a foundation built for scale.

In March 2020, Specialized went live on FlexPLM 11.1 with a redesigned configuration that consolidates product information into a modern, scalable architecture. With the new system as the source of truth for the scaling business, Specialized has the foundation to extend FlexPLM across product lines as the company grows.

What we delivered:

  • Successful migration of 100% of the data
  • Consolidated product information in a modern and scalable configuration
  • A redesigned FlexPLM 11.1 environment positioned as the source of truth for the scaling business
  • A March 2020 go-live following multi-week workshops, configuration, development, testing, UAT, and release

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