PLM software makes it easier to communicate with your product development team. But how do you decide which software is best for your business?
Below, you can compare Surefront with WFX PLM. You’ll see how these two platforms stack up when it comes to product development, project management, and more.
The Benefits of WFX
WFX is a fairly new, completely web-based PLM solution with a very good user experience - a solid B/B+. Their specialty is within soft lines, specifically fashion and apparel.
WFX' tool focuses on the initial creative portion of the product lifecycle - from initial product ideation to product confidence. This incorporates design, tech pack creation/cataloging, initial product specification gathering, and supplier engagement/input. The toolset falls off once the customer has identified a product that they're confident in proceeding with, and are ready to move on to either a sample, commitment or production stage. The platform as a whole could be more robust, but WFX does a good job for a tool that's lighter weight and lower cost.
Speaking of cost, WFX is attractively priced, starting around $150/month/user depending on the size of your account, with fair onboarding fees.
The Shortcomings of WFX
If you are larger SMB looking for a highly robust PLM solution, WFX may not be right for you. It's best described as a "lightweight" solution and may not solve for your more complex needs in terms of data tracking and team workspace configurability. It also covers just a portion of the product lifecycle process, dropping off after the initial creative piece is complete.
To expand on that, although WFX has a pretty good toolset for product ideation through product confidence or production, the primary concern of most businesses is increasing sales and growing business. WFX cannot help with this:
- There is no support for B2B sales teams who need to put together showcases, quotes, or sales orders in order to more more actively engage buyers and retailers to get to a sale more quickly and easily.
- There is also no support for eCommerce teams tasked with setting products up on different eCommerce channels. WFX is unable to offer custom exports or any sort of product syndication capabilities with platforms such as Amazon and Shopify, meaning eCommerce teams still need to hand key each product into each site you list on.
All this to say, when you want to leverage the product information you've compiled in WFX, you'll need to export the data into a PDF or Excel spreadsheet and work outside of the tool for the remainder of your product lifecycle process.
As far as customer support goes, most of the WFX team is based in India. While they can offer basic support, many who consider WFX' solution choose another vendor based on their low degree of confidence in the WFX team competently getting them up and running and eventually helping them to integrate with their other systems.
If internal and external team communication and seamless project management is important to you, you'll want to choose Surefront over WFX. While WFX offers supplier communication, Surefront takes that collaboration 10x farther than a chat tool/notes-based communication function. Surefront adds to that chat, image comments and sticky notes that are contextualized to objects, taking the confusion, guesswork, and errors out of the product lifecycle management process.
WFX may be a great choice for you if you are a small, non-complex business looking for a tool to assist with the creative and development part of the PLM process. If you are a $50+ million business that requires something more robust, Surefront is out-of-the-box configurable to your team's needs. With Surefront, you have the ability to add any kind of product attributes that you want to track, and any rules around those attributes (e.g. you can define whether those are private only to your team or shared with customers and/or suppliers, you can limit attributes to certain values, and more.). You have the flexibility to make the platform work for you and your business.
Finally, WFX was made for soft lines businesses -- think accessories, jewelry, apparel, and fashion. If you are outside of those industries - and especially if you are in a hard lines business - you'll want to consider Surefront, given the limited configurability of WFX in terms of bill of materials.
BOTTOM LINE: If you're a larger business, WFX is not going to be able to support the differences in needs across your internal teams, and the collaboration with external suppliers that you require. It won't be configurable enough to support the various scenarios you witness in your organization in terms of product information and workflow information. Surefront will.
