I've been trying to get PTC and other third party resellers to provide me with some sort of information to better understand this and haven't got much of anything. So far, I've figured out that for me, the overhead involved in managing the data in this way is just not worth the return. Not saying it isn't a valuable tool. I think it's great for large companies with many departements involved in the design, development, production, sourcing, etc.
It is pretty frustrating how little information one can get on processes and best practices for using it though.