Choosing a PLM or PDM system has never been simple. Engineering and manufacturing teams often evaluate software under pressure: products are evolving, suppliers need accurate information, and spreadsheets that once felt “simple enough” gradually turn into a source of confusion. Meanwhile, PLM vendors typically describe their tools using broad concepts—platforms, digital continuity, lifecycle orchestration—without showing how the system behaves in day-to-day engineering work.
Most teams care about something more fundamental:
- Will this tool help us reduce errors?
- Will it keep engineering, manufacturing, and procurement aligned?
- Will it integrate with our CAD systems without friction?
- Will people actually use it?
This is why peer reviews matter. In the PLM world, public feedback is relatively rare. Many enterprise systems have long deployment cycles, require consulting-based customization, and aren’t widely adopted by smaller teams—so user reviews seldom reach a volume that reveals patterns. OpenBOM crossing 700+ reviews on G2 is therefore unusual. It signals widespread usage across industries, but more importantly, it provides enough data for meaningful analysis of what customers consistently describe as valuable.
In this article I want to expand and speak about what these reviews reveal—not as marketing, but as a way for other engineering and manufacturing teams to understand how OpenBOM fits into modern product development workflows. Three themes appear repeatedly across reviews:
- Replacing spreadsheet-driven BOM workflows with structured, transparent data
- Connecting engineering, manufacturing, procurement, and supply chain teams with shared information
- Integrating CAD systems and automating CAD-to-BOM data continuity
These themes show up in different forms depending on company size, industry, and workflow complexity, but the overall pattern is strikingly consistent.
From Spreadsheet BOMs to Structured, Real-Time Product Data
Spreadsheets remain the default BOM management tool in early-stage companies and even many established engineering teams. They are flexible and accessible, but not designed for multi-user engineering data. Spreadsheets lack relational structure, revision tracking, controlled access, validation rules, and the ability to maintain cross-linked data across assemblies and suppliers. As one reviewer put it, they eventually become “confusing,” “fragile,” or “broken”—a reflection of the inherent limitations, not the expertise of the team using them.
Many OpenBOM reviews describe the transition away from spreadsheets as the turning point in modernizing their engineering workflows. This sentiment is captured clearly in one of the recent reviews:
“OpenBOM was an exchange of confusing spreadsheets for an intelligent and collaborative hub. I like the freedom to organize and share engineering information without relying on broken spreadsheets or rigid systems.”
The move from spreadsheets to structured data is not a cosmetic change. It fundamentally alters how information flows through an organization. Instead of periodically exporting BOMs from CAD, manually adjusting them, and emailing them around, teams work from a continuously updated representation of their product. This reduces the number of manual touch points, eliminates retyping, and improves the reliability of data before it reaches procurement or manufacturing.
What customers consistently highlight is not the idea of “centralization” but the practical outcome: fewer errors, clearer ownership, and the ability to make decisions based on information that reflects the current engineering state.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Keeping Teams Synchronized
Another common theme is the shift from siloed workflows to a shared model of product data. Many engineering teams maintain separate versions of information—engineering works in CAD, procurement works in ERP, manufacturing works in spreadsheets or PDFs. This fragmentation increases the cost of communication and introduces ambiguity. When one team’s update does not propagate to others, downstream processes slow down or rely on outdated information.
A significant number of reviewers describe OpenBOM as the tool that finally keeps these functions connected. One recent review expresses this plainly:
“One of the well-planned online tools where companies can effectively manage all their product information. It has kept our design, manufacturing, and supply chain connected.”
This connectivity does not come from a heavy top-down PLM framework. Instead, it comes from a shared data model where engineering changes, part metadata, and BOM updates appear in real time to all stakeholders. Procurement no longer needs to ask engineering for the latest revision. Manufacturing no longer receives PDFs that do not match the current assembly model. Change impact becomes easier to understand because the system provides an always-current view of parts, revisions, and dependencies.
Reviews frequently mention this as a practical advantage—not an abstract “digital thread,” but a visible improvement in the daily work of engineering, purchasing, and operations teams.
CAD Integration: A Foundational Requirement for Modern PLM
The third major theme—and arguably the most consistently referenced in reviews—is CAD integration. In the review dataset, CAD connectivity appears in several measurable ways:
- CAD Model Integration was mentioned in many reviews, highlighting the ability to create or import product structures from CAD models.
- CAD Options (CAM/CAE) in many reviews reflecting the importance of supporting downstream engineering workflows beyond CAD alone.
- CAD-to-BOM Conversion appeared in many reviews confirming that automated transformation of CAD assemblies into structured BOMs is a core value driver.
CAD is the natural source of engineering truth. If PLM or BOM tools do not integrate seamlessly with CAD, engineers are forced into manual data cleanup—exporting, formatting, restructuring, and reconciling differences between CAD and downstream information. This adds delay, introduces errors, and increases cognitive load.
Many reviewers explicitly identify CAD integration as the reason they adopted OpenBOM and the reason the system became part of their daily workflow. One review captures the experience:
“What I like best is its ease of implementation and how smoothly it integrates with the tools I use. The interface is user-friendly and support is reliable.”
CAD integration does not only remove manual work; it improves structural accuracy. Engineers can trust that the BOM they see reflects the assembly model. Procurement can trust that quantities and part references match the design. Manufacturing can trust that changes propagate without waiting for manual exports. These are technical benefits that translate directly into operational reliability.
Another reviewer highlights the impact of CAD integration on team collaboration:
“OpenBOM makes it easy to manage and share BOMs in real time. It improves collaboration, reduces errors, and integrates smoothly with CAD tools.”
CAD integration is not a secondary feature; it is the bridge between design intent and organizational execution. The large volume of reviews that mention CAD workflows shows how critical this capability is to companies across different industries.
Practical Usability: A System Engineers Can Actually Use
Another pattern in the reviews is the emphasis on practicality. Engineers value tools that solve immediate problems, support their workflow, and do not require extensive training or configuration. One reviewer summarized this succinctly:
“Great BOM tool with real-world usability and cloud convenience.”
Customers consistently highlight ease of use, intuitive interface design, and the ability to adopt the system incrementally. This stands in contrast to traditional PLM systems, which often require significant training, consulting involvement, or process reengineering before delivering value.
What 700+ Reviews Mean for Prospective Buyers
The quantity of reviews matters. PLM is not a category where software typically accumulates hundreds of public evaluations. Most PLM systems are deployed by consultants and used by large enterprises with long lifecycles and low turnover of tooling. Few end users ever write reviews, and even fewer provide detailed descriptions of what worked or did not work.
In this context, a dataset of more than 700 reviews offers several advantages for prospective buyers:
- It reveals consistent patterns that are statistically meaningful. When dozens or hundreds of reviewers independently mention spreadsheet replacement, collaboration improvements, or CAD integration, those themes become reliable indicators of value.
- It demonstrates relevance across industries. Reviews come from hardware startups, robotics teams, consumer products, industrial equipment, electronics, and more.
- It helps buyers understand deployment expectations. Many reviews note that adoption was faster or smoother than anticipated, which is not typical of traditional PLM systems.
- It exposes both strengths and practical limitations. Because reviews come from real users, buyers can identify how OpenBOM behaves under real-world conditions.
For teams evaluating PLM tools, this dataset functions as a community-generated knowledge base.
The Value Proposition as Reflected by Customer Feedback
The reviews consistently describe OpenBOM’s value proposition in practical terms. Customers explain that the system provides a unified environment for product structures, part metadata, and manufacturing information. Instead of disconnected spreadsheets, file-based exports, or manually maintained BOMs, teams work with continuously updated relational data.
Users emphasize the ability to maintain engineering BOMs, manufacturing BOMs, planning views, and other xBOM structures without rigid templates or custom coding. They describe better traceability of revisions, improved visibility across teams, and easier identification of changes.
CAD integration is often described as the foundation that enables this consistency. Automated extraction of assemblies into structured BOMs eliminates the manual steps that usually introduce errors or delays. Once data is in the system, the multi-tenant architecture supports real-time collaboration and version-safe updates without IT overhead.
None of the reviews describe abstract transformation goals. They describe reduced manual work, fewer errors, improved accuracy, and better communication across engineering and operations. These outcomes reflect OpenBOM’s design philosophy: flexible data modeling, continuous connectivity, CAD-driven workflows, and a cloud-native foundation that simplifies deployment.
Conclusion: What the Industry Can Learn
The G2 Winter results and the volume of OpenBOM reviews reflect more than the growth of a single product. They indicate a broader shift in the PLM landscape. Engineering teams increasingly expect tools that are easier to adopt, capable of integrating directly with CAD, flexible enough to model complex product structures, and collaborative by design.
These 700+ reviews form a valuable public dataset for understanding how modern engineering and manufacturing teams approach product data management. For organizations evaluating PLM or BOM systems, the patterns in these reviews offer practical insight into what works, what problems are being solved, and how cloud-native product data tools are reshaping expectations.
Anyone researching modernization of engineering workflows, CAD-to-BOM processes, or cross-functional collaboration can learn a great deal from these real-world stories. They show the direction the industry is moving—and what engineering teams now expect from the tools that support their daily work.
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Best, Oleg
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