You can configure the perfect PLM system — the right workflows, the right data model, the right integrations — and still watch it fail. Not because of the technology. Because of the people.
After working across multiple large-scale PLM implementations, one pattern keeps repeating: organizations invest millions in Teamcenter licenses, infrastructure, and customization — and then underinvest in the one thing that determines whether any of it delivers value. Getting people to use it.
This isn't a technology problem. It's a change management problem dressed up as a technology problem. And until organizations start treating it that way, the failure rate won't change.
The Real Numbers Behind the Hype
Gartner and Forrester have both reported that adoption failure — not functionality gaps — is the leading cause of ERP and PLM underperformance. Anecdotally, in the implementations I've observed and participated in:
- 30–40% of licensed users are effectively inactive 12 months post go-live
- Key workflows get bypassed in favour of email, shared drives, and spreadsheets
- Data quality degrades quickly when upstream inputs aren't captured
- ROI projections built on full adoption never materialize
The tools work. The process designs are sound. The gap is almost always between how the system was designed to be used and how people actually work.
The 5 Root Causes Nobody Wants to Admit
1. The System Was Designed for the Architect, Not the User
Most PLM configurations are built to satisfy data governance requirements, audit trails, and integration needs — all legitimate. But the resulting experience often feels like filling out a government form. Too many mandatory fields, too many clicks, too little feedback.
If an engineer has to navigate 7 screens to release a drawing that used to take 2 steps in a folder structure, they will find a workaround. Every time.
2. Training Was an Event, Not a Journey
The classic mistake: a two-day classroom session before go-live, a user manual in SharePoint that nobody reads, and then silence. Training needs to be contextual, role-specific, and reinforced over time — especially for infrequent tasks that users encounter only once a quarter.
3. No Champions in the Business
IT-led PLM implementations often lack visible, empowered advocates inside the engineering and manufacturing teams. When a user hits a confusing workflow at 3pm on a Tuesday, they don't want to file a ticket. They want to ask the person two desks away who actually knows the system. If that person doesn't exist, the workaround does.
4. The 'Why' Was Never Communicated
Most users experience PLM as something that was done to them, not for them. They were told what changed, not why. Connecting system adoption to outcomes they care about — fewer revision errors, less rework, faster sign-offs — is almost never done at the team level.
5. Leadership Didn't Model the Behaviour
When senior engineers and managers continue to approve designs over email or maintain their own Excel trackers, the message to the team is clear: the new system is optional. Adoption is always highest where leadership visibly participates.
What Good User Adoption Actually Looks Like
The organizations that get this right share a few common characteristics:
✅ They treat adoption as a program, not a project phase. Change management runs in parallel with implementation — from requirements to hypercare.
✅ They segment users by role and tailor the experience. A design engineer's Teamcenter experience should look and feel different from a supplier's portal or a program manager's dashboard.
✅ They measure adoption, not just deployment. Active users, workflow completion rates, and data quality scores are tracked alongside traditional project KPIs.
✅ They invest in internal champions who are given time and recognition to support peers.
✅ They connect system use to outcomes — shorter review cycles, reduced ECO volume, improved audit readiness — and communicate those wins.
A Practical Fix: The 90-Day Adoption Reset
If you're 6–12 months post go-live and adoption is stalling, here's a structured approach that works:
- Audit where the system is being bypassed — map the gaps between designed process and actual behavior. This is usually uncomfortable but essential.
- Fix the friction points first — before re-training anyone. If the workflow genuinely adds friction with no user benefit, reconfigure it. Don't just train people to tolerate a bad process.
- Identify and activate champions — 1–2 per team who are respected peers, given structured support, and recognized for their role.
- Run short, role-specific refreshers — 30-minute targeted sessions on the tasks people actually struggle with, not a repeat of the original training.
- Publish a visible adoption dashboard — make adoption metrics visible to leadership. What gets measured gets managed.
- Celebrate early wins loudly — a team that cut their design review cycle by 2 days using structured workflows is a story worth telling.
The Bottom Line
PLM is infrastructure. Like any infrastructure, its value is realized only when people use it consistently and correctly. A Teamcenter environment with 40% adoption is not a partial success — it's a liability. Data is incomplete, processes are split across systems, and the promised single source of truth is anything but.
The organizations winning at PLM aren't necessarily the ones with the most sophisticated configurations. They're the ones that invested as seriously in people change as they did in technology change.
"Technology enables. People deliver. Design for both — or prepare for the gap between them to cost you more than you saved on the software."
Reach us at info@mavenberg.com to know more about how to improve your PLM adoption with our in-house tools and methods.
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