Sound System Manufacturer Pivots Business Model During Pandemic

Award-Winning Loudspeaker Manufacturer Faces Market Disruption

During the pandemic when most companies were struggling to pivot business models to survive, Meyer Sound adapted quickly to changing market conditions by focusing on product innovation and geographical market and industry needs. Launching award-winning loudspeaker systems and focusing on installations in performing arts centers, corporate headquarters and universities helped avoid dependence on venues with short-term ticket sales.

According to Meyer Sound’s QA Manager, Mr. Chris Conner, Propel was brought in to replace a legacy PLM solution. The company was looking for improved configurability and process automation. It needed a new solution that could respond quickly, provide flexibility, and increase communication across the business. It needed a single source of truth for all of its documentation, and that source needed to be knowledge based. With an increased work-from-home employee base, it also needed to address existing remote desktop problems, as well as provide worldwide access to teams working from anywhere, including overseas customer sites.

Propel Enables Quick Reaction to Changing Market Conditions

As a leader in the industry, Meyer Sound constantly pushes its product technology to be better, and its internal business technology solutions needed to do the same. According to Mr. Conner, the user experience of Propel compared to its legacy system immediately gained the support of the users with Propel now managing a wide range of product information including parts, BOMs, deviations, change orders, and assembly work instructions. With Propel everything is documented digitally, from manuals to operating guides, to end products, so that technicians can follow a bar code from product to web page, to documentation.

Delivers Complex Control without Complexity

Mr. Conner and his team have implemented workflow automation resulting in significantly improved efficiency and responsiveness. In doing so, it has cut document control overhead by 50%, allowing staff to focus on value-added projects that compress time to market and help expand the company’s award-winning product portfolio.

“Propel makes it easy for the engineers to do the work themselves and retain control over the entire process. As an admin I can create solutions for internal systems that weren’t there before, removing the complexity of using a web developer, or an IT department. It’s a huge time saver and the flexibility to configure to our needs gives us full control over who has access to what, and when. Propel gives us a level of complex control without the complexity.” - Chris Conner, QA Manager at Meyer Sound.