Can product development software be used to build enterprise low-code applications? Can a low-code development platform manage end-to-end product lifecycle data? Aras Innovator can.
If you’re wondering how, I encourage you to register for next week’s Aras Virtual event, The Build with Aras Experience: a three-part webinar series that walks you through application development in Aras from the ground up. For a quick preview of the first session in the series, Rapid Prototyping Your First Application Iteration, check out the video below:
What Can You Do with Your Product’s Data Today?
If you’re wondering whether a platform to build your own applications, using your product’s data, can help improve business processes to better meet your teams’ needs, consider the following questions:
- Whose Data Is It, Anyway? Associating existing data with new processes is typically a long, painful process in traditional PLM systems. On the other hand, low-code platforms offer fast, intuitive ways to model business items and process steps. But data is so locked away in traditional PLM that to use it in novel new processes requires rigid, hard-coded integrations and slow, painful, waterfall development processes. Plus, the resulting applications typically never update without added costs to you.
Not so with Aras. With Aras, your data is—well, simply put—yours, to use in any application you can build by leveraging a host of platform services freely open and easy to access with low-code methods. These platform services comprise the building blocks of every application available on the Aras Innovator platform today. This means that every PLM application in Aras Innovator—from Requirements Engineering to Maintenance Management—leverage the same core set of platform services. And, because the platform is totally open to our users, the same platform services available across our applications are available to you, to build the applications you want, using your data; the data you already manage on the platform. - What Roles Need Access to PLM? Too often, we hear from prospects and customers that traditional PLM systems are out-of-reach for most of the enterprise, both in terms of usability and price point. But, at a typical product and services company, who doesn’t need access to the organization’s most vital intellectual property, to ensure their work is in sync with the latest version of the product’s information? Stakeholders across quality, the supply chain, sourcing, maintenance, software development, and specialized systems and simulation teams too often can’t get access to data managed in traditional PLM systems. We believe this should not be so.
In Aras Innovator, even users without a CAD license can view and mark up documents stored in PLM, including 3D CAD models. They can collaborate with core engineering teams around their own contributions to a product’s evolution. And, they can perform PLM tasks using simple, intuitive user experiences requiring minimal training and designed by their administrators with the low-code modeling capabilities available in Aras Innovator. Aras can help companies ensure that users across a wide range of different roles are granted access to the applications they need, that are well-suited to their business processes and experience levels, while still collaborating in the same environment as expert CAD and PLM users. This configurability is built right in. - How Fast Does Your Business Change? How quickly do you need to pivot, change your business processes, and grow strategically to accommodate new market needs, new competitive pressures, or new industry realities? I know that, about two months ago, my own answer to this question would’ve been somewhat different—but, suddenly, we are all embarking on Digital Transformation whether we want to or not. Companies need to change direction, streamline processes, and ensure workers can do more with less. Digital collaboration via the web is suddenly more important to meeting those goals than ever before. Even prior to these recent changes, Agile processes had become the preferred practice among development teams and management alike. For efficiently improving everything from products to processes to internal IT systems, Agile has swiftly overtaken traditional, rigid, waterfall design approaches.
With Aras, you can rapidly prototype new applications. Define your MVP (minimum viable product) and quickly, intuitively try out several easy, low-code ways to achieve it. Right in line with Agile methodologies, rapidly deploy applications to your teams for testing and incorporate their feedback into the next design cycle. Then iterate—early, often, and as many times as you need to—until everyone loves the outcome. As anyone who works in software will tell you, “software is never done,” and Agile approaches make room for that reality. So does Aras. Continue updating and improving on your application, leveraging the many online resources that the Aras team and our community of users make openly available to anyone who needs it.
Each webinar in our Aras Virtual event series, The Build with Aras Experience, is designed to show you how:
- Rapid Prototyping Your First Application
- Experiment, Pivot, and Fulfill Your Vision
- Expand Your Vision and Leverage the Aras Community
It’s Your Product Data—Why Stop Improving on It?
No matter what customizations you make, the Aras subscription model means we upgrade you to our latest version free of charge: customizations and all. That means your custom applications—the ones you build to support your teams, using your end-to-end product lifecycle data in just the ways you need it—work in the next version of Aras Innovator, and the next, and the next, with no extra fees, no huge implementation projects, and no prohibitive development costs. They just work. And that’s by design.
Our enterprise low-code platform is intended both to manage your end-to-end product lifecycle data, with robust applications we provide to you; and to handle the quick, efficient building and deployment of custom applications that you’ll build to meet your teams’ needs. Use your own product information your way; ensure everyone across the extended enterprise can access your data in intuitive, straightforward ways; and never stop changing and improving your business by leveraging the power of your product lifecycle information. Only with Aras.