COE 2015 Focuses on Experience

"Creating the best product will no longer win the marketplace today," said Scott Berkey, CEO of Dassault Systèmes' SIMULIA brand and newly appointed Managing Director of Dassault Systèmes’ North American business during his COE Annual Experience and TechniFair keynote in Charleston, SC, April 26-30. "We need to create the best product, but then communicate it to our customers in the context of experience."

Berkey was making the case for Dassault Systèmes' 3DEXPERIENCE platform to some of the company's most dedicated customers. COE, the host of the conference, was known as the CATIA Operators Exchange when it began 31 years ago with a mission to "lead and serve an independent community that drives innovation and productivity utilizing the Dassault Systèmes suite of Product Lifecycle Management products."

A photorealistic version of the Living Heart, visualized in Dassault Systemes software. (Image courtesy of Dassault Systemes.)

Berkey used the opportunity to highlight the the Living Heart Project, which is using Dassault Systèmes 3DEXPERIENCE platform to create and use simulated 3D personalized hearts in the treatment and diagnosis of heart diseases and medical device development. The project brings together multiple products from the company, including SIMULIA’s Abaqus multiphysics simulation technology, SolidWorks CAD and 3DEXCITE rendering. The 3DEXPERIENCE platform allows the 45 member organizations participating in the project to collaborate on its development. Learn more about the project here and here.

Phillipe Laufer, CEO of Dassault Systemes' CATIA brand: we're changing CATIA bc economy is changing. #COE2015 pic.twitter.com/npJMdlEagY

— Desktop Engineering (@DEeditor) April 27, 2015

"Today, we believe we're in the experience economy," Berkey said, calling 3DEXPERIENCE a "business experience platform to enable you to create delightful experiences for your customers."

If the word "delightful" makes you think of another company's goal of delighting its customers, you're not alone. Apple's business approach was restated by CEO Tim Cook shortly after Steve Jobs' death: "We are going to continue to make the best products in the world that delight our customers and make our employees incredibly proud of what they do."

Two engineers in their 20s and early 30s I spoke to at COE Annual Experience and TechniFair were onboard with the goals of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. One even went so far as to call it "cool." However, they expressed concerns about a complaint often directed at Apple: a closed ecosystem. The 3DEXPERIENCE platform makes it easy to share information among Dassault Systèmes' products, but does that mean it's more difficult to do the same with competing companies' products?

Dassault Systèmes has made it a point to address that concern.

"The inclusiveness of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform based on V6 Architecture is a choice of being 'open by design,'" the company wrote in a press statement last year. "It enables industry leaders to integrate design and engineering data from competitive CAD/EDA environments to manage the manufacturing BOM (bill of materials) integrated to their legacy ERP (enterprise resource planning) and MES (manufacturing execution system) technologies."

Using multiple design engineering applications is the norm for many organizations. Even those who standardize on CATIA, for example, often work with partners who use applications from different vendors. Phillipe Laufer, CEO of Dassault Systemes' CATIA brand, pointed out 3DEXPERIENCE's open architecture during his keynote following Berkey's. He showed examples of Dassault's EXALEAD information discovery tool being used in 3DEXPERIENCE to collect data intelligence from CATIA as well as software from other vendors. He also demonstrated a path to 3DEXPERIENCE for companies already using CATIA V5. With V6R2012X and the upcoming release of V5, now called V5-6R2012, 3D Models created in CATIA Version 6 can now be sent to V5 and modified there, retaining their core features. Watch [lightbox full="http://www.3ds.com/products-services/catia/products/v6/v5-collaboration/#player1151750#vid1"]this video[/lightbox] for more information.

Dassault Systemes' Daniel Pyzak: 3D EXPERIENCE has open protocols to connect to any format- CAD, PDM, ERP, etc. #COE2015 — Desktop Engineering (@DEeditor) April 27, 2015

It's hard to argue with the idea behind 3DEXPERIENCE as a whole, especially when leading companies like Apple and Starbucks are commanding premium prices for the experiences they create. Dassault is betting that more companies will want to emulate that success via a platform designed to support the "experience economy." The challenge to convincing companies now is the time to make that shift may be more cultural than technological.

Bell Helicopter's Jeff Cloud presents on how co. replaced old systems (some 40 yrs old) w Enovia, SAP. #COE2015 pic.twitter.com/o9hwbnvV8p

— Desktop Engineering (@DEeditor) April 28, 2015

Watch the video below from the 3DEXPERIENCE Forum that took place in November to learn more about Dassault Systèmes' plans from the company's president CEO Bernard Charlès.

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