How Dassault Systèmes Benelux can enhance the acceptance of its PLM software solutions in product design offices?

How Dassault Systèmes Benelux can enhance the acceptance of its PLM software solutions in product design offices?

Sazci, T.O.

Horváth, I. (mentor)
Schoormans, J.P.L. (mentor)

Industrial Design Engineering

Design Engineering

Master of Science Strategic Product Design

2011-03-28

Dassault Systèmes (“DS”) is a leading company focused on 3D design and Product Lifecycle Management (“PLM”) software. PLM is the process of managing the entire lifecycle of a product starting from its conceptual creation, through design and manufacture, to its service and disposal. PLM integrates people, data and processes with business systems and provides the product information backbone for companies and their extended enterprises. The solutions offered enable client companies to introduce innovative products of higher quality into the market in a time and cost efficient way. Although PLM software is very popular among large firms such as car manufacturers and airplane factories, DS aims at targeting smaller firms, especially product design offices, in order to increase the market share of its solutions. In a market where the competition is getting more aggressive each year, DS needs to elaborate a new strategy to render it better equipped against its competitors. DS is addressing 11 different industries worldwide. Since the company intends to cover the whole life cycle of products, it is important to consider all participants influenced by the offered PLM solutions, in order to enhance productivity. The small product design offices, which define the life cycle of products, are typically using PLM software programs that are neither complex nor efficient enough. 3D design is carried out by competitors’ mostly through lower scale and less complex software tools. The purpose of this project is to detect obstacles in utilization and to recommend the right course of actions to enable a better rate of acceptance for the PLM software. During the execution of the project, the marketing strategies and organization of DS and the content of the offered software solutions will be investigated in order to improve the acceptance and adoption of the PLM software solutions by small product design offices. The project will be elaborated from three different perspectives and will be based on market in the Benelux countries which is the problem owner’s area of responsibility. Below is the general outline with respect to the perspectives within the project: (i) The first perspective is the marketing strategy and product development policy of DS itself. The structure of the offered PLM Software and marketing related issues will be analyzed within the company. (ii) The second perspective is the situation of product design offices in the Benelux and their motives in choosing certain products and possible modifiers of their acceptance. It is known that the demand from these design offices depend very much on their role in and their relationships to a product design process. (iii) The third perspective is the value added resellers in Benelux which are the companies that sell existing software and add its own value by delivering services such as trainings, technical support, methodologies and customizations. The activity of these resellers in and their motivation towards the PLM system application will be the main concern. In the analysis of these three issues, the efficiency of communication and the flow of information between all these parties will be analyzed in order to understand whether the appropriate language is being used. The general objective of the project is to identify significant factors that have a major influence on the company’s commercial and technical activities. The project will start with a situation analysis to understand the market and its dynamics. The situation analysis will consist of (i) a market research (ii) a competitor research and (iii) an internal company research including the product portfolio and the business model. The second stage will be an extensive literature research on PLM software acceptance in the context of product design offices to understand and discover the influencing factors of acceptance. The next stage will investigate the design market in the Benelux countries. The number of offices active in the field, their domain of activity, and their involvement in different tasks of design processes will be analyzed. During this investigation a series of interviews will be conducted by focusing on the previously elaborated acceptance factors. Then, this information will be used to understand the dynamics of design processes, the needs of designers and their expectations towards comprehensive PLM solutions. The conclusions will be used to create a strategy to improve acceptance of DS’ PLM products in Benelux product design offices. This strategy will contain recommendations which may cover new product proposals, a new system, a way of understanding and a marketing strategy.

design
design offices
software
CAD
strategy
market

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Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2011 Sazci, T.O.