“Operational excellence in simple words is organizations making improvements to attain a competitive advantage.”
-Michael Sony (2019)
Implementing sustainable operational excellence in organizations: an integrative viewpoint
Companies using the 3DEXPERIENCE platform can be very different from one to another, but in most cases, they have one goal in common: they are seeking an edge the competition does not have or cannot replicate easily. Take Končar Generators and Motors – who designs and manufactures generators and motors for electric energy plants – and VisoPro – who focuses on the design and layout of infrastructure solutions. Both have adopted the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to gain a holistic, real-time vision of their business activities and ecosystem and get best outcomes. The 3DEXPERIENCE platform also allows businesses to go beyond operational excellence: it also creates the conditions for companies to transform relationships and roles across their business network.
Platform Companies
When we think about platform companies, some of the first names that come to mind are Amazon, Alibaba, GoFundMe and Netflix. At their core, these platform companies act as marketplaces where they facilitate exchanges between two groups – sellers and buyers. For Amazon and Alibaba, these two sides are for consumer goods. For GoFundMe, it is benefactors and fundraisers and Netflix deals in entertainment producers and viewers.
Platforms bring these groups together and orchestrate the resources offered by one and desired by the other. For instance, Uber brings together a community of drivers and their vehicles (the sellers) with individuals seeking rides (the buyers) by recruiting drivers with the proper credentials (driver’s license, vehicle registration, background check, etc.). For TaskRabbit, it’s about recruiting people with time and skills called Taskers for a given category (furniture assembly for example) with businesses or consumers who need help.
To be successful, platforms must attract participants – individuals or businesses. The more active the participants, the more valuable the platform becomes to all parties. For example, having a large number of potential buyers belonging to an auction platform for farm equipment dramatically raises the likelihood that sellers will find a taker for the specialized equipment they no longer need. In a recent series of farm auctions, a platform company attracted 160,000 bidders. The result: thousands of no-longer-needed tractors and grain bins found new owners and generated over $100M in sales.
As previously mentioned, platforms orchestrate and facilitate the exchange of goods and services. This can be as simple as describing the good for sale, listing its features and capabilities and offering it online for a given price. In other cases, a platform differentiates itself through sophisticated algorithms deployed to match resources and buyers. The algorithms used by food delivery platform Doordash need to take into account the location of the restaurant and the home of the person who ordered to optimize dispatching its resources (drivers) available for delivery.
Platforms also facilitate the transaction itself. In the example of Doordash, the driver no longer needs to process the transaction at the time of delivery; the payment is securely handled by the platform when food is ordered. This also allows the platform to act as a system of record, keeping track of the transaction details and buyer satisfaction. This is useful for bookkeeping, facilitating future transactions (like reordering based on users preferences and specifications) and determining whether the good or service has met buyer expectations. Finally, platforms can reward active participants with special status and benefits.
The 3DEXPERIENCE platform as a Business Model
Similar to all the examples above, the 3DEXPERIENCE platform – by virtue of the 3DEXPERIENCE Marketplace – offers the potential to change the way you conduct business with your business network: your partners and buyers. This is because the 3DEXPERIENCE platform functions as a business model. Through our unique position serving 11 industries , the 3DEXPERIENCE Marketplace connects ecosystems of qualified industrial actors in dedicated domains and professions. Its objectives are to connect these different actors together, facilitate collaboration and expedite transactions. In addition to connecting buyers and sellers, 3DEXPERIENCE Marketplace services are also integrated into Dassault Systèmes’ solutions. The result: a complete lifecycle loop from inception to design to creation to transaction.
The 3DEXPERIENCE Marketplace connects companies seeking external expertise in three areas:
Let us examine each one to understand their specific value.
Make – Marketplace for Manufacturing on Demand
This service offers several advantages:
- Access to a greater pool of expertise to help you innovate
- More flexibility with the option to add to your in-house engineering capacity
- Peace of mind from full traceability of all your exchanges with the service provider
- Reduced risk of errors as all participants collaborate using in-app messaging – no more convoluted email threads!
Conclusion
The 3DEXPERIENCE platform allows organizations to reach operational excellence AND go beyond by offering the solutions to transform relationships and roles across your business network. The 3DEXPERIENCE Marketplace connects business network actors from inception to design to creation to transaction, reducing friction along the way and allowing for new ways of collaborating, doing business and, ultimately, innovating.
Pierre is a Marketing Director at Dassault Systèmes. He has been working in the high-tech industry over the past 20 years. His experience spans development, consulting, product management, and marketing roles in small to very large companies. Pierre also holds a BCompSc and a MBA.