We made the move over 3 years ago from Intralink 3.4 to Windchill 9.1and still feeling the pain. We have a small user community running 26 licenses of ProE. The move has been almost total disaster. Many users find the solution so confusing and complex they refuse to use it unless forced. Upper management has convinced itself the solution is too expensive and so in many respects ProE is finding itself in a fight just to survive as cost perception becomes more and more critical.
I have concluded if I do not understand Windchill enough to explaina casual users questionin a few minutes of time, then I do not understand it well enough to successfully run it. Upper managers are the worst. It seems I typically have two or three minutes at most to answer a Windchill question and demonstrate effectivness and cost savings. If I can't do it, battle lost!
I am convinced PTC does not understand how to help the small user community implement a Windchill solution one step at a time and grow from limited data management to a comprehensive solution as needed. The software certainly does not allow gradual implementation. Documentation does not discuss such a topic and the user has to intimately understand the complete solutionto know how to turn certain functions off without unintended consequences. The only optionavailable is to install ProIntralink instead of the complete Windchill solution. But beware, neither the documentation nor PTC makes it clear what the differences are and how to implement a ProIntranlink solution.
We were going to try and go back to ProIntralink with an upgrade from Windchill 9.1 to Intralink 10, butwe have given up on the idea and will just try and turn off as much of Windchill 10 as possible. While we pay for the full Windchill license, PTC refused to let us implement the partial Intralink solution without purchasing new licenses (go figure).
Kim Davies
Idaho National Lab
