Research reveals concerns about impact of outsourcing on R&D overblown

CA has revealed surprising key findings from its research study on trends and outlooks for new product development. These findings include:

* Concerns about the impact of outsourcing on R&D are overblown.
* Resource optimisation is the most pressing challenge facing R&D organisations.
* Project and portfolio management (PPM) is the most widely used and the most successful technology olution for managing new product development processes.

"Our research again underscores the fact that people are the most important asset in any critical development initiative," said David Hurwitz, vice-president of marketing, business service optimisation (BSO) at CA.

"By addressing resource allocation challenges, companies can achieve significant competitive advantages and improve their bottom-line business performance."

The survey revealed that, despite the market attention paid to outsourcing, it is not the top trend impacting R&D. Almost 60% of respondents said that globalisation and outsourcing has little or no impact on their product development success. Two other trends cited as much more significant are customer involvement in R&D (cited by 70% of respondents as a major or significant trend) and the continued pressure to reduce costs (cited by 60% of respondents).

"If you are properly managing your resources, it doesn`t matter if they are outsourced or distributed all across the globe. The key to meeting customer demand and driving innovation is the ability to quickly identify and deploy the right people at the right time, regardless of location," said Mike Pritts, vice-president of development at Misys Healthcare, a long-time CA Clarity customer.

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Of all the challenges companies face, more than 85% of respondents cited finding available resources from within their organisations as the most significant R&D issue. While companies may have sufficient R&D staff, they struggle with the ability to identify, deploy and optimise those resources. Resource optimisation is also a strong contributor to other top development issues cited in the survey, including:

* Difficulty in estimating, planning and delivering development projects (81%).
* Commitment to aggressive or unrealistic milestones (80%).
* Allocation of enough time in the workday to be innovative (78%).

"Excellence in R&D requires a focus on people," said Gisela Wilson, director, product lifecycle management solutions at IDC. "R&D organisations with strong resource optimisation and capacity planning capabilities are best able to accelerate time to market and gain competitive advantage as a result."

According to the survey, while many technology solutions have helped companies improve R&D processes, project and portfolio management solutions have been the most widely used. The top technologies cited were:

* Project and portfolio management (69%)
* Document management (48%)
* Product lifecycle management (44%)

Of these three technologies, PPM implementations were by far cited by the most respondents as successful:

* Project and portfolio management (67%)
* Product lifecycle management (35%)
* Document management (20%)

CA`s survey on trends and outlooks for new product development questioned more than 100 R&D leaders from around the globe about overall trends in R&D, key development issues and technology initiatives. The survey respondents covered a range of industries including high technology, software, life sciences and industrial manufacturing. Companies of all sizes were represented among the survey participants, with almost 40% representing organisations with more than 5 000 employees.

For a full copy of this in-depth report, please visit http://myclarity.com/go/npd.