Role of technology
All these technologies together collaborate on a Product Data Management (PDM) backbone that constantly allows all departments to collaborate in real time to capture changing designs in the development cycle.

The use of these technologies greatly helps in simulating product behavior in real markets and, before the actual manufacturing is undertaken, the product can be virtually tested for compliance to market needs. "Virtual Product Development" therefore is a key technology element in ensuring that market needs are met in a cost effective and an efficient manner.

The benefits of technology to today's product design, planning, manufacture and marketing lie in the successes achieved in Simulation or Virtual Product Development. This provides huge saving to the automotive and aerospace industries and all products in general by the reduction in product development time and cost by the near-total elimination of prototyping. The growth in manufacturing witnessed by Indian companies and India during the past few years, and the expected growth for the next many years, augurs well for the future for technology, engineering services, product planning, product marketing and product management.

In the front-end, the market information for the new product was captured by extensive collection of customer requirements, customer preferences and price-point, among other things, at the back-end it is the role of technology to utilize the information that has gone into product planning in creating the product marketing presentations. In other words, technology can help customers visualize product features that they had originally sought. While the product is being developed, visual 3D representations of products can be showcased to end customers to further refine product planning, greatly enhancing the success of the released product. Technology also plays a vital role in configuring complex product configurations. For example, a customer buying a plane may be able to decide on cabin configurations, seating layout, color schemes etc. by looking at simulations of the product before the product is actually manufactured. Similar uses can be found in various other fields also. Technological collaboration between the various stages of the product's life cycle (from the concept design stage to design, development, manufacture, marketing, servicing and finally retiring of the product in favor of a re-invented and re-designed new product) is critical for the success of the product.

Ramana Venkata, President & CEO, Stratify Software says: " Technology has made a marked shift in the way marketing information is collected. It has moved away from customer sampling based techniques to data mining techniques by increasing the vastness and preciseness of customer data captured. Technology trends like Web 2.0 enable self-adaptable marketing techniques by enhanced feedback mechanisms and focused interactions. And this works both ways as in disbursing product marketing info too."