Exclusive: How PTC is accelerating IoT and digital transformation

PTC (Parametric Technology Corporation) helps companies accelerate product and service innovation, improve operational efficiency and increase workforce productivity.

PTC has a unique portfolio in Computer Aided Design (CAD), Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), and Augmented Reality (AR) which can be delivered on-premise, via the cloud or Software as a Service (SaaS).

With 35 years of experience, PTC helps its customers solve key business challenges to achieve their goals with digital solutions in real-world applications.

PTC is a global software company founded in 1985 and headquartered in Boston, USA.

The company has over 6,000 employees across 96 offices in 30 countries. In the APAC region, its focus is on the Australian and New Zealand region, where it has been operating since 2002, as well as across Southeast Asian markets, China, Korea and Japan.

PTC is recognised as the market leader in all four of its core product groups - PTC Creo (CAD), PTC Windchill (Product Life Cycle Management), ThingWorx (Industrial IoT and integration software) and Vuforia (Augmented Reality). In addition, the company is working continuously on expanding its SaaS offerings.

"PTC has a proven pedigree and history," says Tony Drewitt, Defence, Enterprise & Strategic Alliances Regional Director, PTC ANZ.

"We are the market leader with innovative solutions and capabilities that enable our customers to significantly improve productivity, reduce costs and increase customer satisfaction.

"PTC continues to grow and deliver results consistently."

The ThingWorx Digital Performance Management Solution (DPM) is a recent addition to the PTC portfolio. It is built on the purpose-built IoT ThingWorx platform, which allows customers to wrap and extend around existing systems.

In addition, PTC's DPM solution has four core modules: a production dashboard to monitor operations, a bottleneck identification system, a performance analysis tool and an action tracker to instigate required improvements and measure return.

There is also a user-friendly scorecard that aggregates and standardises reporting on performance across the factory. This ensures anyone within the factory has insight into performance and factory health.

Nearly all PTC's customers are grappling with accelerating digital transformation and the continuous need to improve efficiencies, decrease costs and enhance customer satisfaction.

Across large operations, this becomes very complex as it may span from tens to hundreds of factories, often located all over the world. Driving enterprise-wide improvements and programs is a challenge as there are often disparate systems, legacy environments and many differences across various parts of the organisation.

Generally, the company is seeing a convergence of traditional operational technology and digital technologies, which is driving digital transformation and applies to all industries. The ability to bring in cheaper, newer and open technologies for things like IoT is accelerating digitalisation.

The primary drivers for PTC's customers are to increase revenues, reduce costs and improve service levels. The company's DPM solution does all of that in one software tool rather than over a variety of different systems and approaches. It is an off-the-shelf solution that helps accelerate customer digital transformation.

Remote and hybrid work models saw a rapid acceleration of new digital ways of working. Training, digital work instructions, service and support of products all required new technologies like AR to enable businesses to continue to service their customers and staff during COVID. For PTC's customers and the solutions it provides, the benefits of hybrid work remain in a post-COVID world that has seen a reduction in travel and operating costs, and less dependence on ageing skills which have been improved through new digital solutions for design, engineering, manufacturing and post-sale service and support.

PTC's DPM solution is an accelerator for IoT and digital transformation, especially in a post-COVID environment that seeks to drive increased productivity and improvements while maximising investments by helping companies identify, prioritise and improve production issues.

"Only 12% of IoT projects scale beyond the pilot phase. The reason for this is selecting poor-use cases or non-value-added use cases," Drewitt notes.

"There is also a lack of standardisation and architectural design to really scale and handle the data volumes that come with manufacturing.

"PTC's DPM solution is built and tested for scale and uses a standardised approach that works across multiple factories in an enterprise, with numerous manufacturing types, to allow a company to scale faster.

"This is a unique and different approach to performance management, where we are looking at all the losses that occur, proving actionable data and measuring the return on transformation investments directly in the tool."

The channel also plays an important role at PTC, both globally and in the ANZ region. The company works with traditional software resellers, specialist and global systems integrators, and global alliance partners like Microsoft, Rockwell Automation and Accenture.

Further, it has local channel and partner management teams supporting its partners globally and locally. PTC's partner program supports PTC partners with rebates, access to software, and training. The company runs annual local and global partner events in-region and in the US as well, such as PTC LiveWorx.

PTC is currently expanding in Australia and New Zealand and looking for new partners from all parts of the channel ecosystem. The company believes in the importance of supporting and partnering with its channel partners wherever possible, such as its involvement in the recent ROKLive 2022 event (held by Rockwell Automation and Plex Systems).

In the ANZ region, PTC partners with Accenture, Rockwell and Dell. Each partner brings some differentiation in terms of skills and abilities, which help to bolster and enhance the company's DPM solution.

Its partners have systems integration and project delivery skills, as well as proven industry teams and large customer bases focused on the process manufacturing, mining and defence sectors. Moreover, PTC jointly develops solutions and outcomes with its partners that support customers' digital transformation needs.

"PTC has the ability to connect an enterprise or product development process across the entire lifecycle. We deliver this with the "digital thread" where we connect design and engineering with manufacturing and post sales service and support," says Drewitt.