The Project

Need for digital transformation

“Centric PLM™, with its flexibility and scalability, is more suitable for FMCG companies like ours. Centric Software has deep insights into the FMCG industry, and is always able to think ahead in terms of features and scenario applications.” Mr Lin Zejing, General Manager of Jermey, reflects on why the educational products brand selected Centric to spearhead its digital transformation.

Jermey used to manage product development and production on spreadsheets. Categories of early childhood educational stationery are diverse, requiring market analysis of thousands of categories and the development of tens of thousands of SKUs. As Jermey experienced rapid growth, this became incompatible with their traditional product development model.

Jermey’s old approach resulted in tremendous challenges, including difficulties in implementation tracking, inability to share and reuse design resources, serious information asymmetry in BOM management and change management and low cross-departmental work efficiency.

Seeing that digital transformation was necessary, Jermey implemented Centric PLM™ to lay a foundation for long-term development. Jermey launched its PLM project in 2021. Within six months, Centric PLM became the core of a digital ecosystem driving Jermey’s strategy across six areas: brand, product, customer, talent, competition and marketing.

Stationery leader

Jermey™ is an independent brand of DELIGAO, aiming to provide green, cost-effective educational products for kids to grow happily and adults to relive childhood fun.

It has developed into a modern enterprise featuring brand-independent research and development, integrated production, omni-channel marketing and wraparound services. “Jermey Stationery” and “Jermey Educational” are the stationery and early childhood toy brands under the umbrella of Jermey™.

No more guesstimates

Jermey’s management of workflows ‘by eye’ using spreadsheets often led to information silos and inefficient collaboration across departments, with a lot of time wasted in the process from R&D to sales. Technical documents and production data were not collected and stored in a digital database, which badly affected productivity. Jermey urgently needed a digital solution to manage product development with accurate, real-time data, and selected Centric PLM.

As an FMCG company, Jermey places considerable emphasis on front-end competitive analysis, product planning, and product design. Centric PLM’s simple interface, clear hierarchical logic, easy visualization and in-depth integration with Adobe and 3D software are advantages that cater to Jermey’s specific needs.

From seven days to one day

So far, the most obvious effect of implementing Centric PLM is the significantly shortened product lifecycles. Centric enables Jermey to more easily manage complex categories and large numbers SKUs, thus accelerating product development.

“For simple products, it usually takes 5 to 7 days to go from project planning, to design (illustration, graphic, packaging), to technical sampling, and to procurement and production, and PLM has successfully shortened the entire process to one day,” notes Mr. Lin. “The complex product lifecycle has also been reduced from one month to one week.”

Improved visibility and collaboration

With optimized workflows and collaboration, employees can see the bigger picture and easily identify problematic areas, which results in significant reductions in time and resources spent on inter-departmental communication.

As most labor-intensive tasks are now handled by PLM, employees can focus more on value creation. This helps Jermey identify more talented personnel and make better use of their strengths.

Win-win for suppliers and distributors

Centric PLM also enables Jermey to collaborate more effectively with suppliers and distributors upstream and downstream to build a better future together.

“Some time ago, we showcased our recent product planning and R&D trends on the PLM platform to key distributors around the country, and shared insights into preschool educational products,” shared Mr. Lin. “During the pandemic, this has been a much-needed shot in the arm for worried distributors, so they’re more confident and willing to grow with us.”

Jermey plans to include a growing team of suppliers in the system to drive efficient collaboration in reviewing samples and mass production.

Top-down backing for PLM

Jermey marks the first successful Centric PLM implementation in China’s stationery segment, and it would have been impossible without strong support from Mr. Lin Zejing. Mr. Lin, a pioneer in digital management, was involved throughout the process from project initiation and development to user training. This was essential to the successful implementation and continuous engagement of the PLM project.

As an active user of Centric PLM, Mr. Lin is looking forward to viewing more statistical analysis reports in different dimensions to drive process optimization and further business growth.

Expanding PLM in the future

Today, Jermey has a digital product development management platform that has shortened product lifecycles significantly, improved process visibility and enhanced cross-departmental collaboration. In the future, Jermey will expand the breadth and depth of PLM to achieve mutually beneficial development across the supply chain.

Centric Software and Jermey share the same “customer-centric” business philosophy, which is an important foundation for the partnership.

As Mr. Lin concludes, “The Centric team is truly remarkable, and I can genuinely feel how they prioritize customer service. The team has been very proactive in helping us with any problems we have encountered.”