Product Lifecycle Management, commonly shortened to PLM.

Product Lifestyle Management refers broadly to managing a product and the information surrounding it throughout its life.

PLM is the practice of managing product and process information throughout the product lifecycle so the right information is available for decision-making.

You’ll also encounter PLM used to describe specialized software. It can describe a business strategy integrating people, processes, and information from idea through design, manufacturing, service, and disposal.

For SMBs, we think it’s useful to step back from the software interpretation and focus first on the underlying principle: different stages in a product’s life require different decisions.