The new product development process now encompasses a much wider audience than ever before. Input from customers, suppliers, and stakeholders in nearly every function in the organization now participate in the process, yet the tools for coordinating these processes remain primitive (e.g., e-mail with Microsoft Office attachments.) The opportunity is to provide a robust business process and a comprehensive data model that captures knowledge at every decision point, facilitates the coordination of all related activities, and enables close collaboration of all relevant groups both within and outside the enterprise.

Developing a comprehensive solution for new product development requires a holistic perspective that recognizes the need to connect a disparate set of stakeholders. A new product development solution, based on the integration of several best-in-class software products, provides a much better approach. By integrating product lifecycle management (PLM), enterprise content management (ECM), project and portfolio management (PPM), collaboration, and workflow automation software products, we can provide better coordination, tighter control, and faster decision-making.