Innovate better: EY Modular Innovation Experience turns product lifecycle management into growth engine

Human-led, tech-powered innovation brings brands closer to Canadian customers

After years of high inflation, price sensitivity is top of mind for consumers in Canada. Continuous geopolitical and macroeconomic uncertainty are also moving consumers to expect more for their money. Consider this: the EY Future Consumer Index showed heighted consumer expectations around value, trust and relevance among 81% of global consumer respondents. 

For their part, retail and consumer product organizations want to match that demand. EY research shows some 54% of consumer executives plan to reshape portfolios to quickly respond to niche opportunities across categories, brands and markets. But only 29% of CP leaders say their companies are highly effective at scaling innovation quickly.

Under pressure to adapt existing products, and launch new ones, teams in Canada face hurdles that hold innovation back:

• So many SKUs, so little time. When organizations continually launch new products or extend existing lines without a data-backed way of making decisions, SKUs proliferate. Yet results don’t necessarily follow. Brands need clear data in order to innovate more strategically, with a laser focus on what customer segments want, need and will pay for in real time.
  
  
• Too much duplication, not enough centralization. Innovation now tends to take place in pockets across organizations. That means folks in research and development, marketing, supply chain, quality, sustainability, sales and operations (as well as counter parts within external partner or supplier networks) may be innovating in silos. Fragmentation like this creates disconnects. It also leads to situations in which many individuals unknowingly work to solve the same challenge, duplicating efforts and slowing results.
  
  
• Lengthy approval processes, longer launch lead times. Without a clear approval framework, product launches can become rigid and inconsistent. This tangled web prevents even the most ambitious product innovation efforts from getting to market and generating value quickly.

Overcoming those hurdles means retail and consumer product organizations need a robust and systematic approach to innovation. Building a human-led, tech-driven approach can help eliminate roadblocks and speed up time to market. Doing so also generates agility; a real strength in this environment, where purchasing behaviour, customer expectations and market dynamics change daily.

Modern EY Modular Innovation Experience platform turns PLM into a flex over the long term

EY Modular Innovation Experience helps organizations modernize PLM by connecting people, workflows and data across the innovation lifecycle. Rather than replacing the existing IT landscape, it connects systems such as PLM, ERP, product information management, artwork and master data platforms to create a more unified innovation orchestration layer. 

Innovation rarely falls short because of a lack of ideas. More often, teams struggle to work from the same data, assess opportunities consistently, manage dependencies clearly and make timely decisions. EY Modular Innovation Experience is designed to bring those capabilities together in one modular platform, helping companies move from disconnected activity to connected innovation execution. 

Through connected workflows and unified data, EY Modular Innovation Experience gives leaders and cross-functional teams a clearer view of project health, financials, risks, timelines, dependencies and performance signals. Its modular design helps organizations tailor workflows to different innovation needs while maintaining common governance, visibility and data discipline. 

EY Modular Innovation Experience also helps organizations move from rigid, sequential PLM processes to more agile insight-led stage gates. By embedding evidence-based qualification, governance and analytics into the workflow, teams can make faster decisions while maintaining control, quality and compliance.

In practice, this kind of platform cuts out the back-and-forth that might otherwise slow down necessary product innovation and progress. Specifically, this creates:

• Sharper portfolio visibility and investment focus. Because the platform allows stakeholders from different parts of the business to glean immediate data and insight, teams can make better decisions about which products to innovate, what lines to adapt and more.
  
  
• Stronger idea qualification. Using evidence-based assessments, EY Modular Innovation Experience can qualify user requirements and address customer-centric goals strategically, at any stage of the innovation process.
  
  
• Faster, clearer governance. As people innovate in a centralized way, EY Modular Innovation Experience also integrates approvals, resource management and analytics. Ways of working change to support the shift. This capability allows people to innovate with much greater discipline than in the past.
  
  
• Single-platform alignment across teams. A common innovation rhythm helps R&D, marketing, supply chain, quality, sustainability, sales and operations work from shared information rather than disconnected local processes.
  
  
• Scalable innovation execution. With teams innovating, measuring and adapting results through a streamlined process, EY Modular Innovation Experience turns PLM into a business enabler, making it easier to scale successful ideas much more quickly than in the past.