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August - 2015 issue

Head to Head with the Big guns- CAD & PLM

By Vignesh.A

Innovation is a constant in today’s fast changing IT landscape. The demand for quality, low cost combined with mass customization is creating significant challenges for manufacturing companies. We at CIOReview receive a host of mails from vendors pointing out different questions; one of the most popular is how to tackle prominent vendors in the manufacturing and engineering ecosystem.

Although it might be a hard task to match with the brilliance that these behemoths have to offer, just by retrospection on what methodologies companies used in the past can lead to a few hints on how to accomplish the same.

The first step is to focus more on core geometry modeling, more specifically to try and develop new modeling paradigms and simplifying the design interaction by new user interface and experience. Today, a handful of independent companies offer 2d/3d viewing technologies. The game changer will occur when this segment focuses on viewing technologies for web and mobile devices.

Secondly, although data and data process management was an unknown field, these areas today provide clear value proposition and many vendors still find it a confusing propaganda to handle the problem. We all know that the Data domain was an unknown space for CAD vendors with core technological roots in geometry and design. Therefore many companies tried to attack or complement CAD business by developing products and technologies to manage or process data, and they are the ones who have come out successful in today’s scenario.

Another aspect is how the PLM and CAD vendors of yore focused on the main markets while the lesser known markets were left underserved. This is where startups expanded by concentrating on lesser known markets and gradually came up to become giants today. The method can also work for developing software for specific data management needs. It also goes without saying that focusing on the SME/SMB market is still a good tactic.

The last aspect is the well known query of how to disrupt business models, easier said than done! Due to the demand for lower costs, the opportunity to disrupt vendors by providing lower cost is an attractive idea; however dealing with the complexity which is not always technological can be a bit of an issue. The cost of sales in PLM is high; The Cloud has the potential to lower cost of solutions by shared multi-tenant software models.

Do let us know what has worked for you the best.

Vignesh Anantharaj
Managing Editor
vignesh@cioreview.in