In a flurry of product announcements at the IFS World Conference 2012 in Gothenburg, Sweden, last week, IFS announced the launch of it reliability-centered maintenance (RCM) toolkit. Based on IFS’ long experience and heritage in asset-intensive industries, the solution is optimized for any industry that implements complex or capital-intensive assets and is delivered through a flexible cloud-based model. Read the rest of this entry »

While day 1 of the IFS World Conference 2012 in Gothenburg, Sweden was mostly about mobility, day 2 expanded into some other interesting themes and topics. IFS has long positioned itself as a single-instance global enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution alternative to SAP and Oracle. The realm of corporate social responsibility (CSR) presents notable challenges for organizations due to the intricacy of global and local laws and regulations and the difficulty in navigating them. In his keynote presentation (which he mostly repeated in his subsequent presentation to the press/analysts), IFS CTO Dan Matthews pointedly stated that CSR is difficult to manage at a global level. Read the rest of this entry »

Part 1 of this blog series talked about the major (blockbuster of a sort) announcements at PTC’s PlanetPTC Live 2011 annual user conference, which was held in mid-June 2011 in Las Vegas, Nevada, US. These announcements were as follows:

1. General availability (GA) of nine PTC Creo 1.0 design applications.
2. Showcasing the Windchill 10.0 product lifecycle management (PLM) suite.
3. The acquisition of MKS Inc. and its flagship Integrity platform for embedded software lifecycle management.

But there were a number of other announcements that were seemingly not that earth-shattering. Still, these announcements indicate the ongoing PLM/computer-aided design (CAD) market trends and will likely have significant implications on other product development software market players’ moves.

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This year, product lifecycle management (PLM) vendors have put many interesting initiatives on display to PLM buyers. These initiatives include the possibility of generating more synergies between enterprise search and PLM, more intuitive decision support in design and engineering, connectivity between direct modeling and history-based modeling in computer-aided design (CAD), social product development in the cloud, etc.

Although most of these initiatives need more time before we can really testify to their value—i.e., the execution of these visions is the challenge that vendors are facing—I believe the PLM industry is shifting from functionality-driven to vision-driven. Read the rest of this entry »

As Dassault Systèmes Customer Conference (DSCC) 2010 moved to day 2, use of the word “innovation” continued its popularity at various sessions. However, I’d like to refrain from using this hot keyword and move to “sustainability,” one of the outcomes of innovation, and discuss it from a role perspective.

This thought was triggered by today’s ENOVIA Brand Overview session by Michel Tellier, Chief Executive Officer, ENOVIA, Dassault Systèmes. During this session, ENOVIA V6 offerings were presented from a roles perspective by discussing what the solution was capable of for each of the following four roles: program manager, engineering manager, mid-market manager, and supply chain sourcing manager. Of course, there are more roles for PLM solutions, but these selected roles together provide a quick but quite representative look of what ENOVIA is about. Compared with ENOVIA V6’s lengthy and hierarchical functionality list at this link, this roles approach is a more effective way of communication. Read the rest of this entry »

The Dassault Systèmes Customer Conference (DSCC) 2010 kicked off on November 9th, 2010 in Orlando, Florida. It is the second time that Dassault Systèmes has hosted the customer conference collectively for most of the company’s brands at a single event, with a geographic focus on the Americas (the European Customer Forum [ECF] 2010 is the European equivalence taking place in two weeks).

When I had a little time to reflect after the busy first day came to an end, the key word that popped into my mind was “innovation,” the most frequently used keyword today, and which appeared in multiple sessions in conjunction with different adjectives. Read the rest of this entry »

Part 1 of this blog series talked about the historical background of the JRocket Marketing Grape Escape(TM) event. Grape Escape has become a June fixture over past several years, after the high traveling season to major vendors’ events subsides and before everyone takes their summer vacations. It is a signature event that showcases the intimate analyst relationships (AR) and event expertise that JRocket Marketing’s president and founder Judith Rothrock delivers to her software vendors’ client base by giving them exposure to a selected group of industry analysts.

Part 1 also analyzed the news announcements by Jeremy Roche, CEO of FinancialForce.com, followed by the testimony from its customer Wi-Fi Alliance. Part 2 analyzed the Grape Escape 2010 news announcements from Meridian Systems CEO John Bodrozic and SYSPRO US CEO Brian Stein, followed by these vendors’ customers (Walt Disney and Lee Spring, respectively).

Part 3 analyzed major news coming from UNIT4’s Agresso product line, as presented by Shelley Zapp, CEO of UNIT4 North America, and followed by the company’s higher education customer, Augsburg College.

Read the rest of this entry »

Part 1 of this blog series talked about the historical background of the JRocket Marketing Grape Escape(TM) event. Grape Escape has become a June fixture over past several years, right after the high traveling season to major vendors’ events subsides and before everyone takes their summer vacations. It is a signature event that showcases the intimate analyst relationships (AR) and event expertise that JRocket Marketing’s president and founder Judith Rothrock delivers to her software vendors’ client base by giving them exposure to a selected group of industry analysts.

Part 1 also analyzed the news announcements by Jeremy Roche, CEO of FinancialForce.com, followed by the testimony from its customer Wi-Fi Alliance. Part 2 analyzed the Grape Escape 2010 news announcements from Meridian Systems CEO John Bodrozic and SYSPRO US CEO Brian Stein, followed by these vendors’ customers (Walt Disney and Lee Spring, respectively).

Part 3 will analyze major news coming from UNIT4’s Agresso product line.

Read the rest of this entry »

A recent press release from Dassault Systèmes about its newly signed strategic relationship with BMW in the area of sustainable innovation caught my attention and made me think of its meaning. As usual, I went to Wikipedia but found that this term didn’t exist. The closest term I could find was eco-innovation, which is related to sustainable innovation but not the same in my opinion. So here’s my own definition: sustainable innovation refers to the methodology and practices that lead to the increased capacity to endure within the environmental, societal, and economic surroundings that an organization operates through optimized and valuable changes that…okay, okay, I have to stop here since confusing you is not my objective. Let me simplify it: sustainable innovation means: 1) innovating toward sustainability; and 2) sustainable process for innovation. If this is still not clear, bear with me. I’ll provide a little more explanation. Read the rest of this entry »

Part 1 of this series analyzed the phenomenon of the rise of the service economy: the increasing importance of the service sector in industrialized economies. Especially in a sluggish market, service delivered after the initial sale of a product is what can truly differentiate competitors.

In fact, after-sale service is quite difficult to replicate. Thus, while durable (hard) goods orders decline and product-based margins diminish in maturing and commoditized industries, service margins remain healthy. When consumers or businesses focus more on maintaining what they have vs. purchasing a new product, after-sale service (or aftermarket) can have a substantial impact on any company’s revenue, profitability, and customer loyalty levels.

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Part I of this series analyzed the opportunities (as well as the related strings attached) stemming from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), a.k.a. the Economic Stimulus Plan. The inspiration came from my attendance of the Deltek Insight 2009 user conference last May, where Deltek decided to fill a market need and interest by convening a separate “track” that was entitled “Stimulus & Beyond (Navigating the Brave New World).”

Part II of this series then analyzed why Deltek believes it can help government contractors and architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) firms, as well as other public sector organizations in their endeavors to obtain ARRA funds (i.e., the opportunity part) and duly report on them (the strings part for transparency and accountability). Part III then expanded on the construction industry’s current challenges, its outlook, and market trends.

Although Deltek inspired this series and while the company caters to AEC firms, its focus and software capabilities are in the design or planning stage of an infrastructure object. But the entire infrastructure lifecycle management (ILM) encompasses the following phases that denote yet another three-letter acronym (TLA) – “PBO”:

• Plan: Manage project pipelines, site development, entitlements, etc.
• Build: Track budgets, contracts, changes, schedules, scopes, and quality
• Operate: Direct asset management, work orders, and maintenance management

Read the rest of this entry »

Part I of this series analyzed the opportunity as well as the related attached strings stemming from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), a.k.a. the Economic Stimulus Plan. The inspiration came from my attendance of the Deltek Insight 2009 user conference last May, where Deltek decided to fill a market need and interest by convening a separate “track” that was entitled “Stimulus & Beyond (Navigating the Brave New World).”

Part II of this series then analyzed why Deltek believes it can help government contractors, architecture, engineering & construction (AEC) firms, and other public sector organizations in their endeavors to obtain ARRA funds (i.e., the opportunity part) and duly report on them (for transparency and accountability). But what about the construction industry’s current challenges, its outlook, and the market trends? 

Read the rest of this entry »

If you haven’t read the blog post ERP Vendors, Are You Green Enough? that I wrote a little over a year ago, I recommend you read it first. After you’ve checked it out, I assume you’ll understand that I used a flawed and extremely simplified approach to “confirm” my impression of the correlation between the size of enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors and the greenness of their offerings (see below for further explanation). About a year later, I used the same method to go through the same seven ERP vendors I had looked into the last time, and this time my focus was the growth of the green counts. My “conclusion” is that, on average, these ERP vendors have become 71 percent “greener” over the time span of roughly one year. Let me show you some data:

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“Clearly there will be winners and losers in the transition to a low-carbon economy, and investors should be concerned about companies who are not able to provide the information they require.” – Carbon Disclosure Project Global 500 Report 2008 (also known as CDP6)

To today’s enterprises, greenhouse gas (GHG) emission—amongst various sustainability issues—is one of the highest priorities. Some companies, as I have seen, have set up strategies to address GHG emission issues. At the operational level, companies are modifying accounting systems to report GHG emissions and to accommodate carbon trading; implementing energy management systems to reduce energy consumption; and optimizing supply chain management systems to increase transportation efficiency— to name just a few approaches. Read the rest of this entry »