Going back ~ 15 years, I became the "Pro/E Administrator" here. At the time, we had essentially no standards, mapkeys, etc., etc. and were using Versions 15, 16, 18 and 2000i all at the same time in the same building. Every Friday was reserved for "aligning the data" which meant laboriously undoing all the problems of the week - and no design work was allowed. Horrible, obviously.
Today, mostly because of others on my team, especially Frank and JP, we now routinely have on the order of 40 Engineers and Designers working on the same assembly at the same time - with essentially no issues. This is all due to: Top Down Design, Large Assembly Management, standardization of templates, smart Drawing Formats, smart repeat-region tables, careful attention to Parameters / Attributes, good libraries of colors, textures, etc, good libraries of purchased components, super-users in every functional area, formally-documented Windchill PDMLink procedures and training, etc., etc.
Contractors who come here invariably remark about our standards, best practices and work processes.
My only recommendation from above is that yes, investment (ongoing) in this type of thing is hugely important and has the potential for great payoff. What you are doing is the right thing. The opposite unfortunately is also true - if you don't invest time and effort in this area, chaos inevitably results. You basically cannot turn a high-powered system (Windchill + Creo, etc.) loose to users without some significant planning and admin attention and effort.
