Time to market includes :

• new product development and introduction
• Life cycle data management

they all have 4 functions:

• Analyze, Plan & development
• procure and manufacture
• market
• sell

as you can see, this processes do not include after-sales services.

To develop innovative products is probably the most important process for the Consumer Durables industry, but also one of the least well understood. Important because, innovative products are responsible for the revenues and margins that a Consumer Durables company can achieve and its ultimate value. Least well understood because few companies assign a single individual to be responsible for the whole process. Instead, it is usually driven through a series of functional “silos” causing delays to build up and, often, the original market requirements to get lost. The time to transform an idea into a new product and launch it is too long and filled with costly delays. The average time-to-market in the CP industry is about 28 months, the best in peer needs 17 months (AMR Benchmark Analytics 2003).  But, driven by consumer demand and fuelled by advances in technology, Consumer Durables companies have to bring more and more products to market in order to remain competitive. The companies best able to develop and launch innovative products will clearly have an advantage. This is mostly reducing time to market. Under these circumstances, Consumer Durables companies are eager to streamline their development processes.

SAP can provide all of the critical elements required to support shortened time-to-market processes