[March 7, 2005]

Omnify Announces ReliOn as New Client

By David Sims, TMCnet CRM Alert Columnist

Omnify Software, a provider of product lifecycle management software for mid-market electronic, medical, mechanical, and defense OEMs, today announced that ReliOn, Inc. will use the Omnify PLM system to manage their new product development cycle and streamline processes for materials management across the company.

The addition of ReliOn to the Omnify client roster expands Omnify’s west coast presence, a market Omnify’s targeting for reseller channel partnerships.

ReliOn provides high-reliability fuel cell solutions for backup power applications. Brian Sossaman, manager of Information Technology at ReliOn says the firm selected Omnify PLM because the company needed a solution that did not require a great deal of customization, but had the capability to manage and speed the entire product development cycle and provide a central location for managing product data.

Calling Omnify PLM a good “collaboration tool,” Sossaman said ReliOn is now able to streamline our data management across the entire company, as well as with outside contract manufacturers: “Omnify's open architecture enabled us to integrate with our existing systems, while providing an out-of-the-box solution that can handle customized reporting, manage all part data, new part requests, and bills of materials.”

ReliOn deployed Omnify PLM in a about a week and with the help of Omnify's professional services team. Deployment included integrating the technology into its engineering environments, OrCAD and Solidworks, and ERP system, Solomon.

Part of the ROI ReliOn’s expecting to gain from the Omnify products will come from eliminating the data entry duplication often associated with managing product development in various spreadsheets and databases, and more efficiently managing bill of materials, engineering changes and documentation.

ReliOn is also counting on being able to enter data into Omnify and immediately share it across all of its systems, reducing the time it takes to complete a product's development. The company is also looking to Omnify to upgrade its real-time communication capabilities by enabling communication and workflow across the company and with its outside contact manufacturers.

David Sims is contributing editor and CRM Alert columnist for TMCnet.