Your PLM System, Fully Managed,
So Your Team Can Focus on Engineering
SynapTech takes over the administration, security, integration, and optimization of your Windchill and 3DEXPERIENCE environments. Not as best effort, but as a service agreement with defined response times and one point of accountability.
You take only the areas you need. Scope, response times, and reporting cadence are defined together and reviewed quarterly.
Four Things That Change
Once Someone Else Owns the System
A managed service is not a support phone number. It is a defined transfer of responsibility, and these are the four consequences your team feels first.
Your Engineers Stop Administering Software
In most companies, the person who keeps Windchill running is also one of the better engineers. That arrangement works until it does not. We take the administration off their desk, so their time goes back into product work.
Engineering Data Reaches the Rest of the Business
A PLM system that only serves the design office is doing half its job. We build and maintain the connections that carry BOMs, revisions, and change data into your ERP, your warehouse, and your shop floor.
Problems Get Found Before They Get Reported
The gap between something breaking and someone noticing is where most downtime actually lives. Continuous monitoring closes it, so the first person to know is us, not your production planner.
Service Levels You Can Point To
Your agreement states the uptime target, the response time, the resolution window, and the support channels. Not a promise on a website, but terms both sides signed and review quarterly.
Owning the Licence Is the Easy Part.
Running the System Is the Job.
Every company that buys a PLM platform eventually discovers the same thing: the software was the smaller half of the commitment.
Who This Is For
PLM managed services are for companies that already run Windchill or 3DEXPERIENCE and have found that keeping the environment current, integrated, and available is a permanent job rather than a project that ends.
It rarely fits into an existing IT team's capacity, and it rarely justifies a dedicated full-time hire. That gap is what we fill.
Companies We Support
Manufacturing companies, engineering organizations, and industrial groups with an installed PLM environment. Whether you operate a single site or several, we adapt the scope to your IT landscape, your team's capacity, and the systems you already have in place.
Typical Challenges We Solve
If more than two of these sound familiar, the conversation is worth having.
Not sure which of these apply to you?
We start every engagement with an assessment of your current environment, so the scope is based on what we find rather than on what you assume.
Six Areas of Responsibility,
Defined Before Anything Starts
From daily administration and security through integration to long-term optimization, each area with a clear boundary and a stated business outcome.
| Service | Key Activities | Systems Covered | Business Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| System Administration & Configuration |
We run your PLM environment day to day, so your engineers work in a system that is
configured, monitored, and stable.
|
PTC Windchill 3DEXPERIENCE | A stable environment your engineers can rely on, without tying up internal IT |
| Updates, Upgrades & Security |
Version currency and security handled on a schedule you agree to, not when something
forces the issue.
|
PTC Windchill 3DEXPERIENCE | Systems stay current and protected, with upgrades that are planned rather than reactive |
| Access & Business Rules Management |
Who can see what, who can change what, and what happens when they do. Defined once and
maintained as your teams change.
|
PTC Windchill 3DEXPERIENCE | Data integrity maintained across teams, with clear accountability for every change |
| Integration & Data Flows |
Engineering data does not stop at engineering. We build and maintain the connections
that carry it to the rest of the business.
|
PTC Windchill 3DEXPERIENCE InfoBiro WMS DigiPro System MES Your ERP | One connected data flow from engineering to the shop floor and the warehouse |
| Monitoring, Licensing & Optimization |
Continuous oversight of availability, performance, and licence usage, with quarterly
recommendations based on what the data shows.
|
Full portfolio under contract | Fewer interruptions, lower licence spend, and decisions based on recorded data |
| Custom Development & Automation |
Where the standard configuration stops short of how you actually work, we extend it.
|
PTC Windchill 3DEXPERIENCE | The system adapts to how you work, instead of your team adapting to the system |
You do not have to take all six. Most engagements start with two or three areas and expand once the working relationship is established. Scope is agreed after the assessment and reviewed quarterly, so it follows your operation rather than a fixed package.
From First Conversation
to a System Under Management
Five phases, each with a defined output. Nothing moves to the next phase until the previous one has produced something you can read, review, and sign off on.
Assessment & Infrastructure Mapping
Weeks 1 to 2We review your PLM environment as it actually is: version levels, configuration, integrations, licence usage, backup state, and who does what today. You get a written report with findings and prioritized recommendations, whether or not you continue with us.
Scope & Service Level Definition
Weeks 2 to 3A workshop with your stakeholders where we agree exactly which of the six service areas we take, and on what terms. Uptime targets, response and resolution times, escalation paths, support channels, and reporting cadence are all decided here and written into the agreement.
Technical Onboarding
Weeks 3 to 5Access, monitoring, and documentation are put in place before we take responsibility for anything. This is also where we verify that your backups actually restore, which in a surprising number of cases turns out to be the first real test they have had.
Handover & Stabilization
Weeks 5 to 8The service goes live. Support channels open, your users learn where to send what, and we clear the backlog of issues the assessment surfaced. Contact is close during this period, with weekly status calls until the environment is quiet.
Operation & Quarterly Review
OngoingDay-to-day operation under the agreed service levels, with a quarterly review that looks at what actually happened. Scope is adjusted at each review, so the agreement follows your operation instead of the other way around.
The durations above are typical, not fixed. The number of sites, the state of the current environment, and how much integration is in scope all move them. We commit to a schedule after Phase 1, because a date quoted before we have seen the system is a guess.
No Fixed Packages,
but Nothing Left Undefined Either
Every engagement is built around your processes and your IT landscape. What stays constant is that both sides know exactly where the boundary runs, before anything is signed.
What We Define Together
Agreed in the workshop, written into the agreement
What You Get
The practical consequences, once the service is running
What Stays With You
Stated openly, because unclear boundaries cause more friction than any technical issue
Want to see what this would cost for your environment?
Pricing follows the assessment, because a figure quoted before we have seen the system is a number without a basis. The assessment itself is where we start.
Six Situations Where Managed Services
Pay for Themselves Fastest
These are the patterns we encounter most often. If one of them describes your organization, the assessment will tell you fairly quickly whether the numbers work.
One person holds the whole system
The PLM environment runs because a single engineer knows how it was configured. Nothing is documented, and every holiday or resignation becomes an operational risk that nobody wants to talk about out loud.
The system is several versions behind
Each upgrade was postponed for a good reason at the time. Now the gap is large enough that the migration is a project in itself, and the longer it waits, the bigger and more expensive it gets.
Nobody knows who uses which licence
Renewal season arrives and the decision is made on last year's number plus a margin. Some seats have not been opened in months, while elsewhere someone waits for one to free up.
BOMs are re-typed into the ERP
Engineering releases a revision, and someone in planning enters it again by hand. Every transcription is a chance for an error, and production sometimes works from a version that changed last week.
Two sites, two ways of working
After an acquisition or organic growth, each location has configured the system its own way. Reporting across the group requires manual reconciliation, and the same part can carry two different revisions.
The audit is in six weeks
A customer or certification body wants evidence of change control, access rights, and data retention. The system holds most of it, but nobody has ever had to produce it in a readable form before.
On client references: we do not publish figures from projects we cannot name. If you would like to speak with an existing client about how the service runs in practice, ask us and we will arrange it where the client agrees.
PLM Managed Services,
Answered Plainly
The questions IT directors and engineering managers ask us before handing over a system.
The service covers six areas: administration and configuration, updates and security, access and business rules, integration and data flows, monitoring and licensing, and custom development. You do not have to take all six.
What is explicitly not included: engineering work itself. We do not produce 3D models, technical drawings, CNC programs, or simulations. We run the systems your engineers work in.
As an authorized partner of PTC and Dassault Systèmes, we manage PTC Windchill and the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.
On the integration side we also work with InfoBiro WMS and DigiPro System MES, plus whichever ERP you already run. If a system falls outside that list, say so during the assessment and we will tell you plainly whether we can take it on.
They stay exactly where they are. Most internal IT teams are competent at infrastructure, networks, and the systems the whole company uses. PLM is a specialist application that rarely justifies a full-time expert on the payroll, and that is the specific gap we fill.
In practice the boundary is agreed in the scoping workshop and written down. Your team usually keeps the infrastructure layer, and we take the application layer above it.
Your data stays yours and stays in your environment. We do not host it, we do not hold it, and nothing about the arrangement makes it harder to take with you.
Licence agreements also remain in your name with the vendor. We manage usage, not the contract. Documentation and runbooks we produce are handed to you as part of the service, so if the relationship ends, your successor gets a documented system instead of a black box.
Access is set up in Phase 3, before we take responsibility for anything, and it runs on your terms rather than ours:
- Named accounts for each of our engineers, never shared credentials
- Access through your VPN and your authentication, under your security policy
- Permissions limited to the systems in scope
- Every session logged and available to your team
If your security policy requires additional controls, they are agreed during onboarding rather than negotiated afterwards.
Deliberately, we do not publish fixed numbers here. An uptime target that makes sense for a single-site engineering office is different from one for a group running three plants, and a figure on a website that nobody signed is worth very little.
What the agreement does define, per priority level:
- Availability target for each system in scope
- Response time, meaning when someone starts working on it
- Resolution target and the escalation path if it is missed
- Support hours and channels
Performance against those terms is reported monthly and reviewed quarterly.
This is where most of the measurable value sits. Engineering data that stops at the design office is doing half its job, and the manual re-entry between systems is where errors get introduced.
We build and maintain interfaces for BOM and revision transfer to your ERP, connections to warehouse and production systems, and the monitoring that catches a failed transfer before someone downstream reports it.
What is feasible depends on how your ERP is configured, not only on which one it is, so the integration scope is defined during the assessment.
As a recurring fee, sized against the scope you take. The variables are the number of service areas, the number of systems and sites covered, the user count, and the agreed service levels.
The figure comes after the assessment, not before it. A price quoted without seeing the environment is a guess, and guesses in this area are usually wrong in the direction that causes an argument later.
Most engagements start with two or three areas and expand once the working relationship is established.
Typically six to eight weeks from the first workshop to the service running live, across four phases: assessment, scoping, technical onboarding, and handover.
What moves that timeline:
- How many sites and systems are in scope
- The state of the current environment, and how much needs fixing first
- How much integration work is included from the start
- How quickly access and security approvals move on your side
We commit to a schedule after the assessment, because that is the first point at which a date means anything.
You tell us what is not working. Not in terms of a specification, but in terms of the question you currently cannot answer or the thing that keeps breaking.
From there we agree whether an assessment makes sense. That assessment produces a written report on the state of your environment, with findings and prioritized recommendations, and it is yours whether or not you continue with us.
Plenty of companies use it simply to understand what they are sitting on. That is a legitimate outcome. Start there.
Question not covered here?
Send us the specifics of your environment and we will answer against your setup, not a generic one.
What Would Happen to Your PLM System
If Your Administrator Left Tomorrow?
If that question is uncomfortable, the assessment is worth doing regardless of what you decide afterwards. You get a written report on the state of your environment, with findings and priorities, and it is yours either way.