Product category:
Rendering, visualisation and styling software
News Release from: ICEM
Edited by the Engineeringtalk Editorial
Team on 09 September 2003
Surf's up following management buyout
At the end of its first full year as an independent company, ICEM has seen sales of its Surf software suite increase by up to 47% per quarter in comparison with the same quarters a year ago.
At the end of its first full year as an independent company, ICEM has seen sales of its Surf software suite increase by up to 47% per quarter in comparison with the same quarters a year ago Results for the company's fiscal year, ending 31st December 2003, are not due until early in 2004
This article was originally published on Engineeringtalk on 3 Apr 2003 at 8.00am (UK)
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However, Chief Executive Lee Cureton was able to announce figures for the 12 months since the company became independent following the management buyout (MBO) from its previous owner, PTC, at the end of August 2002.
"I am very pleased with the progress we have made in our first year of operation as an independent company", said Cureton.
"We have achieved and in many cases exceeded the ambitious targets we set, while the response we have received from our customers has been extremely encouraging".
Cureton emphasised that although much of the first three months after completion of the MBO was spent recruiting key staff, getting the new business up and running and finding and moving into the company's new headquarters, sales performance improved quarter by quarter compared with the previous year and product developments that were already in train came to market as planned.
In terms of software licences, the new company achieved in its first nine months of operation what had taken a full 12 months to achieve in the year before its independence.
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ICEM Surf licence sales were up an average 42% quarter-on-quarter from calendar Q4 2002 to calendar Q2 2003, with growth in the three months from January to March 2003 - the first quarter following the company's public launch - at 47% above the same quarter in 2002.
During the course of its first year the company also added Nissan Motor Corp in Japan as a major new customer and greatly expanded its software "seat" count in existing European customers, such as PSA Peugeot Citroen.
In the USA the company added jet-ski and snowmobile manufacturer Polaris to its customer list and won new commitments from existing customers such as Ford Motor Company and Lear Corp.
"The success that we have enjoyed in this first year has come about because we have been focused", said Cureton.
"We have focused on putting an effective marketing programme in place and on reorganising and directing our sales force and distribution network towards achieving our strategic goals.
Equally importantly though, we focused on communicating our business and product development plans to our customers.
That was key".
Part of this focus in the first year has been on improving and expanding the company's distribution and support network.
In addition to maintaining ICEM sales and support offices in the USA and the major European countries, the company has appointed a number of additional specialist distributors to cater for growing demand in countries such as China, Taiwan, India and other areas of the Far East and the Indian subcontinent.
The ICEM distribution and support channel is also being expanded in areas such as Scandinavia, the Middle East and South America.
Evidence of the importance of this aspect of the company's plans is that, during the first year, the distributor network accounted for some 30% of overall sales, compared with around 5% before ICEM became independent..
Among the new product developments that were released to the market as planned during the company's first year of independence were ICEM Surf Version 4.3, ICEM Viewer and advanced new visualisation tools.
Further major new product developments are scheduled for release later this year and in the first quarter of next.
An important enabler here is an expansion of the company's existing, highly skilled software research and development team in Germany through the recent addition of a team of specialist software engineers experienced in developing automotive design applications.
This has enabled the company to "fast-track" certain planned product developments.
Among these future product releases are the next generation of the company's flagship software, ICEM Surf.
Scheduled for release later this year, ICEM Surf Version 4.4 will see the software move to an object-oriented database architecture designed to provide users with a seamless transition to an intelligent surface modelling environment that protects their existing investments at the same time as providing enhanced modelling and data sharing capabilities.
Other developments scheduled for later this year include greatly enhanced facilities for the integration and sharing of surface model data with solid-modelling-based CAD/CAM systems and with companies' installed product lifecycle management (PLM) systems.
Meanwhile, the company's new software suite for use in the front-end styling and concept design phase of an automotive or product development programme is on schedule for its planned launch in March, 2004.
"Our overall product development philosophy and direction is towards providing more advanced ICEM facilities that fully support and enhance a customer's established workflow processes, within a PLM systems environment", explained Cureton.
"Increasingly over the coming few months, we will be announcing new developments that demonstrate that philosophy"..
In looking further ahead some two to three years from now, Cureton is confident of seeing ICEM growing organically some 200-300% on the company's first-year performance.
Much of this growth is expected to come from new application areas, including software developments that enable ICEM to more readily address some of the downstream vehicle body engineering issues.
For example, new, smart software tools could enable customers to use ICEM surface model data at the originated structural block of a new vehicle or at the CAE modelling stage.
However, apart from new application areas within the vehicle and product development workflow, the company expects to see growth coming from the fact that, while it develops best-of-breed software that addresses a specific aspect of the design process, that software will increasingly be seen by customers as a key element of the overall development process that fully integrates with their existing detailed engineering and PLM systems.
Meanwhile on the technology front, during the course of the next year or so the company will also have started work on how and in which direction its surface modelling and visualisation software developments should move in order to satisfy users' future needs in terms of working with virtual models, perhaps using emerging technologies such as holography.
"Based on our experiences and success over this past first year and by continuing to concentrate on developing and providing the automotive vehicle and product design and development industry with the tools it needs to do its job effectively and efficiently, I am confident that ICEM will continue to grow in the foreseeable future and to outperform our competitors as well as the marketplace in general", Cureton concluded.
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