(Siemens: Plano, TX) -- In the post-recession economy, successful product development efforts will increasingly be shaped and driven by advanced IT tools like product life-cycle management (PLM) and collaborative software that will enable design stakeholders to share updates, reuse data, and streamline processes. This was one of the key findings released in a survey of more than 1,200 global enterprises, conducted by the Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, which sought to understand how companies are positioning themselves for revenue growth as the economy improves. The survey was sponsored by Siemens PLM Software, a business unit of the Siemens Industry Automation Division and a leading global provider of PLM software and services.

Against a backdrop of increasing global competition and tightly-controlled research and development (R&D) budgets, the firms were surveyed with regard to their plans for enhancing R&D efficiency, and the role that they expect IT to play in those plans.

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