Survey says … Results of the Automotive Industries' online software survey

Automotive Industries, Dec, 2003 by Brent Haight

Both companies have made training and support for its programs a priority.

Autodesk begins with a money back guarantee for all of its products, something Gilmour says is "kind of interesting in the software business.

"One of the things we do is back our product with allowing people to get their money back ff for some reason they are not happy. From there, we also offer a number of services, both through our dealer channels and directly through our subscription program.

"For example we have what we call Autodesk Training Channels," says Gilmour. "Those are educational institutions and private companies that we work with to get them trained and authorized to train our product. They offer courses in all of our products.

"All of our retailers that actually sell our products to the end users are trained in our products as a requirement, so in order to sell our product they have to take training.

"We also have a subscription program which customers can subscribe to. It has a number of value points. One of the key points is technical support. We offer e-mail and phone-based technical support based on the level they want to get to with guaranteed response times in those areas. We also offer what we call e-learning exercises, which are things that people can download off of our subscription website that are basically online type exercises that would teach the user about a new feature or a particular feature of a product."

An everchanging auto industry and shorter development time only adds to the ongoing struggle for adequate CAE training.

"The entire automobile industry has evolved," says Deshays. "Cars are perceived more and more as fashion items to the consumer. Consequently, that means that OEMs have to build smaller volume in terms of production to remain in line with changing consumer trends.

"The auto industry now requires standardization of parts, more process automation and reuse of knowledge, development tools and facilities. The development time is greatly reduced. That's where a product like our Generative Car comes in.

"Engineers need a tool in order to quickly develop vehicles and components based on previous development. This is what we are doing. We have specific solutions on body design, chassis, powertrain and so on."

"We realize that the designs that are built from our product may start in the design department but they are used throughout the customer's process," says Gilmour. "Not just the designing but also the manufacturing and the maintaining and even the depleting of those resources afterwards. We are constantly looking for ways to improve our products to help share those designs throughout the cycles that people will actually use the information for."