A leading player in the 3D software market since 1981, Dassault Systemes? solutions provide a 3D vision of the entire lifecycle of products from conception to maintenance to recycling. The company?s customers are as varied as the products they produce?from running shoes to rocket engines, and everything in between. ?Yet they all share a common reality?complex market forces and business challenges in a fast-changing global economy,? says Bernard Charles, president and CEO of the French maker of design software. ?We are proud to help them address these challenges with our digital tools,? he tells Ankita Rai in a recent interaction in the capital. Excerpts:

You joined Dassault Systemes in 1983 and became president and CEO in 2002. Tell us more about your journey at DS and a few milestones.

I started my career at Dassault Systemes in 1983 where I led teams to develop new technologies. In 1986, we founded a dedicated strategy and research department, and subsequently in 1988 I was named president of research and development. In 2002, I became the president and CEO of the company.

One of the key developments at Dassault Systemes, which marked a milestone in my journey, was the launch of the CATIA V4?an innovative architecture as well as a new momentum to meet customers? needs. I have been fortunate to witness the company?s evolution including the development of the Version 5 architecture and the introduction of the V6 online collaborative platform. The development of a product lifecycle management (PLM) portfolio with innovative brands such as 3DSWYM for

Social Innovation, 3DVIA for Lifelike Experience, CATIA for Virtual Product, SOLIDWORKS for 3D Design, among others, have been other interesting milestones in this journey.

I have seen and experienced Dassault Systemes becoming the world-leading supplier of PLM solutions. We intend to leverage the power of 3D to help companies from across industries to develop, simulate, and optimise the complete lifecycle of their products, in order to help preserve the environment and gain competitiveness.

Dassault Systemes is a company that is not fairy well known, yet its products are used everywhere. Do you intend to keep it that way?

Would you have asked it three years back I would have said I love that aspect. We are more secretive than anyone can think about, but our products are known world-wide. However, we are getting strong signals from our customers that they want us to be known not just our products. We are working on it. We are going to be more visible and will invest on this. You will see Dassault Systemes advertisements in business newspapers and televisions.

Dassault Systemes has preached business change to customers for decades with its PLM concept, but the company is also constantly adapting to changing conditions in the engineering marketplace. Tell us more about the transformation and new areas of focus.

Dassault Systemes customers are as varied as the products they produce?from running shoes to rocket engines, and everything in between. Yet they all share a common reality?complex market forces and business challenges in a fast-changing global economy. We are proud to help them address these challenges. Their accomplishments show that innovative people working together with the right tools can turn product dreams into reality. Helping them realise these dreams is our mission and our passion. At Dassault Systemes, our customers are our partners and we constantly adapt to the changes to serve them the best.

Thus, it is important for us to change, while we work the change in our customers? business and innovation processes. That is how we are preparing for our customers next level of challenges, which the evolving world is throwing at them. To put in words, our new area of focus is to use digital universe to harmonise product, nature and life. For this, we have to constantly innovate, change and not just mere replicate products.

Adoption of PLM solutions is increasing in India. Is it also increasing in the government sector?

Product life management solution is increasing significantly in India. Public sector is one of the biggest adopter of our solutions. We are actively involved with various government projects to drive project management and other solution domains. We are also working in contributing to the creation of a conducive environment for PLM education in the country.

We are also looking forward to play a significant role in the modernisation of the country especially in the Indian automobile, aerospace & defence, consumer goods & retail, consumer packaged goods & retail, energy, life sciences, among others.

What is 3D Experience and why is it considered the next step after PLM?

PLM has emerged as an approach that has the potential to radically change the way companies develop products from ideas. Businesses are shifting towards sustainable development and Indian enterprises are following the same trend. Our clients are using our 3D applications, digital mock-up capabilities and PLM business applications to design, create, produce and cooperate to provide the best products and services to customers or consumers. By adopting this new technological wave, our consumers are innovating by delivering experiences to their consumers? and all this in a sustainable manner, since that is an issue close to our heart, and extremely important for the health of our planet.

Our clients are creating the best consumer experience for their products (a vehicle, an aircraft, a consumer good product) or services.

3D experience universes provides sustainable innovations capable of harmonising product, nature and life.

What value proposition is it going to bring in for businesses?

Dassault Systemes is continuously striving to make the power of its widely recognised 3D creation solutions accessible to a larger audience, empowering designers with intuitiveness while enhancing their creativity. We empower new users to leverage 3D to express ideas, using innovative online apps that exploit high quality 3D content.

Through our 3D applications, digital mock-up capabilities and PLM business applications, we help our customers design, create, produce and cooperate to provide the best products and services to their customers. In fact, we help our customers in creating the best consumer experience for their products or services. That?s the biggest value add we bring to the table.

The 3D Experience platform will enable our customers to create and experience virtual universes, which will help drive their innovations harmonising product, nature and life.

From a sales perspective, what is the importance India in your overall global strategy?

India is a key market for Dassault Systemes. India is a fast growing economy, which has an increasingly larger role to play in the global economy. The Indian market presents for Dassault Systemes a very interesting opportunity. There are sectors at various stages of maturity from a usage of technology and a global competitiveness perspective. There is also an opportunity for companies to leapfrog to new generation technology without going through some of the intermediate stages that companies in other parts of the world would have had to.

From a sales perspective, India has become a very large engineering services player now. So a lot of engineering services players are our customers, such as automobile OEM companies, aerospace development companies etc. In addition, we have a significant amount of our global R&D is based out of India.

What is your future business strategy for the Indian market?

We started in India many years ago. With the increase in complexities in Indian companies and corporate ambitions of collaborations, they require digital tools. Yet, digitalisation has not been completely adopted by the Indian market. Our focus areas in India are the energy, infrastructure and automobile sectors. Our prime strategy is to help them bring most innovative ideas to life. We intend to strengthen the Indian market and push technology to new limits.