Gmail - Centric Integration and Automation

Common Integration Use Cases Between Gmail and Centric

1. Product Development Approval Notifications from Centric to Gmail

Flow: Centric ? Gmail

When a product specification, design change, or stage-gate milestone is ready for review in Centric, the system sends an approval email to the relevant stakeholders through Gmail. The message can include a summary of the change, a link to the record in Centric, and required action items for approvers.

Business value: Speeds up decision-making, reduces missed approvals, and keeps product development moving without manual follow-up.

2. Design Review Requests and Comment Resolution

Flow: Centric ? Gmail ? Centric

Centric can notify designers, product managers, and merchandisers via Gmail when a design review is needed. Recipients can respond with feedback or approval, and the response can be captured back in Centric to update the review status or trigger the next workflow step.

Business value: Improves cross-functional collaboration and creates a traceable review process for product changes.

3. Product Launch Readiness Alerts to Cross-Functional Teams

Flow: Centric ? Gmail

As launch milestones approach, Centric can send Gmail alerts to teams responsible for packaging, sourcing, marketing, and operations when required product data is incomplete or a launch task is overdue. Emails can include missing attributes, due dates, and links to the affected product records.

Business value: Reduces launch delays and helps teams resolve data gaps before products go live.

4. Product Data Exception Escalations

Flow: Centric ? Gmail

If Centric detects missing or inconsistent product information, such as incomplete materials, incorrect dimensions, or unresolved compliance fields, it can send exception emails to data owners or category managers. Gmail serves as the notification channel for urgent remediation.

Business value: Improves product data quality and reduces downstream errors in sales, operations, and channel publishing.

5. Stakeholder Distribution of Product Development Reports

Flow: Centric ? Gmail

Centric can generate and distribute scheduled reports through Gmail, such as product status dashboards, open change requests, launch readiness summaries, or portfolio progress reports. These reports can be sent to executives, brand teams, and regional managers on a recurring basis.

Business value: Ensures leadership has timely visibility into product pipeline health without manual report distribution.

6. Email-Based Change Request Intake into Centric

Flow: Gmail ? Centric

Teams outside the core PLM group, such as sales, customer service, or regional merchandising, can submit product change requests by email. Incoming Gmail messages can be parsed and converted into change requests, tasks, or comments in Centric for review and action.

Business value: Simplifies intake from distributed teams and centralizes product change management in one system.

7. Automated Follow-Up for Overdue Product Tasks

Flow: Centric ? Gmail

Centric can monitor overdue tasks such as sample approvals, specification updates, or packaging sign-off and send reminder emails through Gmail to assigned owners. Escalation emails can be triggered if tasks remain unresolved beyond a defined threshold.

Business value: Increases accountability, reduces bottlenecks, and helps teams meet product development deadlines.

8. Shared Communication Trail for Product Decisions

Flow: Bi-directional

Important product-related emails in Gmail can be linked to corresponding product records, projects, or change requests in Centric. This creates a centralized communication trail for decisions, approvals, and clarifications tied to specific products.

Business value: Improves auditability, reduces information loss across email threads, and gives teams a single source of truth for product decisions.