Pandemic has changed growth projection for many organizations including the OEMs. Dassault Systèmes is no exception. SME Channels spoke to Tanuj Mittal, Director Sales, Customer Process Experience – India, Dassault Systèmes to understand his perspective in this situation. An Excerpt.
What is your understand of market sentiment?
Last year, when this all started, we were unprepared. And this came as a surprise and there were a lot of learning which happened in the last 3- 4 quarters, Our ability as an ecosystem and as an organization was at a testing point. But over the years, we along with our customers and partners, learned how to handle these kinds of situations which were a surprise. So, the first three months of this year have been very good for us that is when this second wave hit us, and we have a little disruption. But business is not stopping. There is a little gap in demand from the end consumer and everybody’s utilizing this time to prepare themselves to cater to that demand as and when comes up.
So, overall, it is positive. I think the worst is behind us and I personally think and is positive that the subsequent waves will not be that negative for all of us. So, business wise we are on a good track.
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“If you discount the two months of wave two, I think we have a lot of catching up within the next six months.”
Tanuj Mittal,
Director Sales, Customer Process Experience
India, Dassault Systèmes
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From market point of view, I think automotive industry is not doing great. So, which are the verticals driving your revenue these days -particularly for this month 2021?
As an organization, we work primarily in three sectors – Manufacturing, Life Sciences & Healthcare and Infrastructure & Cities. So, automotive falls under manufacturing itself, but then in terms of business, you see, the focus of each of the organization is shifting, this is what we see currently. For example, earlier the stress was too much on R&D and development but now the focus has gone to digitalization. So, how to keep producing with a lesser manpower and optimize the sources and how to keep a track online and digitally for all the manufacturing activities is the focus. Similarly, for life science and healthcare industry there is a lot of push both from government and otherwise in terms of fundamental research related to pandemic and how do we mass produce the lifesaving drugs and equipment required for the citizens. You can see in the stock market, all the companies related to this segment have kind of doubled and even more than that in their stock price. For the infrastructure and cities, thanks to a lot of initiatives by government, although there was some interim disruption in the projects, but then the overall projects remain intact, and government is still very positive and infusing money and intent in terms of growing the sector.
We have solutions like 3DEXPERIENCE twin, Digital twin, etc., which helps you not to be present on site physically. You can still manage remotely. So, for us, the sectors are growing.
For any optimistic projection you have in December, and where do you want to invest? How do you want to see this market?
If you discount the two months of wave two, I think we have a lot of catching up within the next six months, but we are on force to grow as compared to what we did in 2019 and 2020.
How are you coping with the WFH environment?
I think technology plays a very major role in business continuity. From Dessault Systemes perspective, our cloud solutions are something which is helping customers to stay in business during these times. So, our offerings in terms of software and solution are available on cloud and those who prefer to work from home with a limited IT infrastructure can still leverage all these technologies to do their business. We and our partners – together – are trying to support our customer to stay relevant and progress.
With challenges comes opportunities, what is your focus on skilling or reskilling?
Skilling is an inherent objective, what we have for our partner ecosystem. This is a continuous exercise irrespective of pandemic situation or otherwise. There is a very structured and methodical way where we help skill our partners for the technologies which we offer to our customers.
During the pandemic and lockdown, learning was the first thing which everybody embarked upon, because you were not able to meet people in business.
The other thing that we are seeing is delayed payment cycle during pandemic. Are you giving them any kind of credit line?
That way we are lucky that our partners are financially very strong organizations. We did not came across a situation where our partner ecosystem requested for financial assistance. Yes, from end customer’s perspective, there were delays in terms of order execution but apart from that those who did decide to go forward with business along with us and partners, payment was not an issue.
Many companies have created vaccination program for their own employees. So how has been your journey during this time?
We strictly follow the government guidance. When it was mandated that everybody should work from home, we created this infrastructure for each of the employees to help them work from home. In case the employer is in need of some assistance, regarding medical or financial, we have a structured approach in terms of managing the request. We have a COVID help desk within the organization. And we have a lot of social security schemes to help our employees because we follow “Employee first Policy”. We have this social security scheme within the company, which takes care of any financial help of an employee.
How was your last financial year and any expectation you have set for this year?
You will agree that last year was very difficult for all the organizations so our projections were similar and we had to tweak our projections to stay relevant. But this year, we are very positive and we want to catch up with whatever we missed last year and grow beyond what we have done in 2019
What is your message to your customer and partners?
For our customer and for our partner, we strive each day to be of utmost support to them, and help them during this pandemic times. And this is what we will continue to do as we move forward. So our aim is to go together, whether it is customers or partners, we have to make sure all our thinking process strategies, their business outlook, everything in design in such a way that all of us need customers and partners we grow together.
