We’re pretty sure that most of you know LinkedIn.com. Not only it provides a lot of professional and business opportunities, it is also a wonderful way to connect and share experiences in a private or business point of view.

We launched the PLM MarketPlace group on LinkedIn last week. Already more than 50 people part of the PLM MarketPlace (VAR Sales Reps, Referenced Partners people, DS staff…) joined. We noticed an impressive buzz effect! For those of you still not part of it, you should join very quickly (before we reach the limit of 10 000 members .

I must clarify something: the aim of this LinkedIn group is only to allow enthusiasts of the PLM MarketPlace including some customers to share experiences and to eventually get connected with new (business) partners. In the near future, we do not exclude to promote it actively to final customers… but it depends on the shape we (you) give to this group!

Remember that www.plmmarketplace.com is THE place where you do business, log opportunities, get special offers, talk about business privately with Referenced Partners, monitor your sales, etc… All this is covered by the Channel Partner Agreement you have signed.
So, ready for this new “2.0 adventure”?

Anthony

… in a wonderful place called EuroDisney Land Paris, a team made of people running a DS program called “PLM MarketPlace” was looking forward to meeting you…

It’s time to mark your agendas! The European CATIA Forum (ECF) 2008 will take place in Paris on Nov 26-27.

This event is the opportunity for you to meet partners and experts but also the PLM MarketPlace team (hum… as a matter of fact, we are also partners and experts…)! We will have a booth located in the Agora and, in partnership with our fellows of the Software Community Program, we would love to meet you and discuss on business topics.

Take a few minutes to visit the booth (we’ve got plenty of exciting goodies out there!), don’t hesitate to share your impressions and ideas about the PLM MarketPlace, Referenced Partners you’d like to see on it, specific business issues you may have, etc…

This ECF 08 is really a fantastic opportunity to give a human face to the PLM MarketPlace and to talk easily about what really means to you. If you want to have a one-to-one session with us or people of the Software Community Program, don’t hesitate to send us an e-mail (sales.plmmarketplace@3ds.com)!

Well… gotta leave, Minnie Mouse wants to meet me to set up the whole thing!...

Anthony

Our Software Partner Intercim extends the value of V5 PLM product and process design to the shop floor. Their flagship product, Pertinence Suite, enables users on the shop floor and across the supply network to better collaborate on process definition, manufacturing execution, and quality management.

Their innovative Manufacturing Execution and Manufacturing Intelligence softwares are reputedly easy to deploy and are already implemented on the most advanced programs such as the 787 where 10, 000 users leverage daily the power of Intercim’s solution. Intercim has more than 100,000 users worldwide within accounts such as Airbus, Boeing, EADS, Honeywell, Pratt & Whitney (Aerospace & Defense ) or Sanofi Aventis (pharmaceutical). The suppliers of these accounts represent a great business opportunity for our DS VARs.

The company is headquartered in the United-States with operations in Europe; don’t hesitate to call them when your prospects are requiring MES (Manufacturing Execution Systems) solutions.

PS: Intercim will also provide an extended PLM-MES integrated solution with the V6 platform featuring

• 3D Work Instruction Delivery
• 3D Data Collection
• 3D Part Nonconformance Management
• Change Order Management
• 3D Work in Process (WIP) and as-built Digital Mock Up (DMU)

Jacques (on behalf of Intercim)

There is no magics in getting this free access: we are introducing our cross-links program. You just have to choose a label and publish it on your website with a link to www.plmmarketplace.com to qualify.

Just tell us when it's done and we'll publish a link to your website in our much thought after resellers list. This label will become overtime the visual identity of our extended business community. It will be one more reason for prospects to trust your commitment to provide complete Solutions for users.

If you are a Sales Representative, please make sure your management is aware of this program: Your Company joined PLM MarketPlace with a free account for a limited period of time. With the crosslink program you can continue to resell our catalog at no cost for the coming years!

Jacques

Those of you who already have logged one or more opportunity in the PLM MarketPlace surely know our famous ....

[march 2009 edit: this business confidential post was removed after pushing private discussions of the PLM MarketPlace blog to its new public position]

Blogging at Dassault Systèmes is quite a new experience and we are proud to be part of it. For you as well maybe… This blog is not only ours but it is, above all, yours! We want it to be interactive, based on experience and thoughts sharing.

Our main concern remains to help you do more business with our Referenced Partners and Customers. Consequently, almost all the topics will be business-oriented and deal with products, program offers, case studies, returns of experience, etc… We will also talk about any subjects you may want to consider because, again, this is YOUR blog! From time to time, we'll let our Partners talk about their products and, why not, start a one-to-one discussion with you!

This looks great but at this stage, we need to clarify some points concerning the new powerful communication tool. The PLM MarketPlace blog is moderated just because we want it to be clear and on topic, this means that negative contributions such as profanity, racial and ethnic slurs, and rude behavior like disparaging personal remarks won’t be tolerated nor published. This does not mean that you cannot publish an opposite point of view or disagree with a peer! But all we want is to ensure and maintain a cool atmosphere around here…

Another important thing regarding this blog: it is a not a DS support platform! We do not have the time nor the skills to answer questions dealing with technical issues. However, if your questions involve an opportunity in the scope of the PLM MarketPlace, don’t hesitate to share it with us!

Enjoy!

Anthony

PLM requirements of our customers are fullfilled by 400+ highly sophisticated solutions (provided by DS), as well as 400+ complementary applications (provided by our Software Partners). This is nice for major accounts, but sometimes represents too many possibilities for the Small and medium Business. This is why DS developped CATIA PLM Express and DELMIA PLM Express to make decisions easy in this segment, and simplify VARs Sales Reps' lives when providing packaging advices to customers.

On PLM MarketPlace, customers can browse today 130 customized solutions provided by 25 referenced partners. So we wanted to have a similar approach to simplify the process of selection, because some partner products are sometimes completely unknown by their potential buyers. This is why we have redesign the discovery experience and implemented a visual and intuitive search engine based on user industries and roles such as Style, Manufacturer or Robotics Planner. With this natural approach customers will discover our catalog without having any pre-existing knowledge of referenced products, and we'll capitalize on our Industry and PLM Express visuals. Of course, customers may still search by keywords, referenced partner / product or domain / sub-domain.

Customers are getting easy access to detailed information (as on our corporate website), but on PLM MarketPlace the benefit for you VARs is that we are pushing them to give contact informations in order to generate leads for partner products.

Any comments on this new catalog discovery?

Jacques

This week your PLM MarketPlace team is at a major e-commerce event hold in Paris. This is quite new at Dassault-Systemes, but it is starting to be a very popular event among our Marketing & Sales Community.

In such event we are grabbing best-practices about e-business that will have direct impact on our website's business performance. Based on such approaches we have continuously redesigned our website in order to be better found by search engines and to generate traffic to our showcase. We have also started to extend our cross-linking program to the VAR community and published part of our catalog to be discovered by final customers. At this point, prices and other sensitive information remain confidential, available only to you VARs in this private section.

The direct impact for the VAR community in terms of business is that we now have a public catalog where prospects can request a quote. When doing this, customers give their full identity which is then managed by us as a lead provided to both Referenced Partners and you VARs.
More to come

Jacques

In this enhanced version of PLM MarketPlace we want to make business easier for all Sales Representatives and Application Engineers from our VAR Community, as well as reach new Customers with our DS VARs.

As an example, we are introducing here a visual navigation in order to easily find offers from our Partners. The benefit is that without knowing anything about the Solution or Software Company you are looking for, you are able to describe it in terms of usage by a user profile in a specific industry.

The same approach is even more fruitfull for customers and prospects not familiar with our ecosystem Solutions. We are going in the short term to communicate to potential customers via online-marketing, in order to generate customer awareness about Partner Solutions. More important, this will also guide prospects to leave their coordinates and provide leads to you. Of course, these leads will be managed via the geography CMP organizations in order to smoothly support all local particularities.

This user-centric approach is supported by many web2.0 technologies like Partner-ranking by VARs, blog, tag-cloud, RSS and so on. But for us this is not a goal in itself. Our goal with PLM Marketplace is always to leverage these technologies so that our Partners (DS VARs and Referenced Partners) make money. With this blog approach, we want also to get your feedback on many domains while concentrating on domains that generate revenue.

In the coming days there will be more about usage guidelines for this blog, processes to secure your commissions, presentations of the new business management tools and many more.
We hope this new release will be a valuable business enabler, don't miss this opportunity to secure your quarterly targets.

Jacques.