Mr. Manu Parpia, Vice Chairman and Founder, Geometric	A+  A-

Mr. Manu Parpia

Mr. Parpia holds a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from McGill University, Canada; an MBA from Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, USA; and a Diploma in Finance & Accounting from England. His areas of specialization include international marketing and business development, business strategy and commercialization of technology.

He is an Advisory Board member of Alchemy Capital Management and a Charter Member of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), an association with a mission to spread and support the culture of entrepreneurship. He Chairs the Mentoring effort at TiE, Mumbai

Q:Having been one of the early drivers of PLM and engineering services outsourcing, how do you see the engineering services and PLM technology solutions space evolving in the next few years?

A: The PLM and engineering service landscape has changed from the early PDM days. With the very definite recessionary trends that have emerged in markets around the world, customers require greater efficiencies from products, both from engineering and PLM standpoint. Therefore, for service providers the ability to innovate, both in terms of business model and technology, becomes very critical.

Today global engineering is emerging as a key value driver. Global engineering has always been relevant from the perspective of giving companies an option of levers that they can choose, whether it is cost or time or talent. What we are seeing now is that all of the value levers of the global engineering paradigm now will be called upon simultaneously. It’s no longer this is a ‘must-have’, and that will be ‘good-to-have’; instead it is ‘We need all of them’. I think that is one of the major evolutions. The demand on service and solution providers is significantly going up; demand in terms of expectations is already rising with customers asking for ‘more from less’ or the ‘same from less’.

Secondly, companies will be looking at sourcing not just the execution capability from their service providers, but also their ability to innovate. Customers now increasingly look at this in aggregate; not just the execution of services but also essential components of innovation that they can assemble into the final solution to be taken to the market.
 

Q:What according to you are some of the constraints faced by this industry today? How are you impacted as a company and what are you doing to combat these?

A: The large markets for us are in the manufacturing space, with a strong exposure to the automotive industry. We naturally have been impacted by the slowdown in this sector. However, for the last two years, we have been very consciously adopting the global engineering service delivery model. What we are actively doing is, leveraging the significant knowledge assets that we have as a company, and combining these with a service offering to create a value proposition around assets and services. Our objective is to deliver scalability and repeatability of solutions to customers, thus giving us an edge to manage commercial pressures that the current economical environment is putting on us. So I would say, combining this rich repository of knowledge assets with the global engineering service delivery model, we are creating a significant opportunity in the current scenario.

As a part of our diversification strategy, we have started penetrating into new industry verticals such as oil & gas, fashion and high tech and leverage adjacencies. We have build offerings and competencies, with a view to address business problems and extend the benefits of global engineering to these industries.

Q:What would you say are the newer growth opportunities for the industry?

A: As companies look towards streamlining their product realization cycles, we anticipate a greater need for convergence between the product development and the manufacturing worlds. This need for tighter integration of engineering and manufacturing processes throws open a whole new arena for solutions.

This provides Geometric a unique opportunity for vertical diversification. For e.g., the process and batch-manufacturing industries have traditionally used manufacturing technology solutions; but with the increase in integration between PLM and MES platforms, the concepts of product lifecycle management can be adopted by the batch process industry as well to handle issues around product traceability and other regulatory environments.

From the discreet manufacturing side, the ability to achieve tighter integration between engineering data and manufacturing data to achieve a single view of product realization information through PLM-MES integration is an example of an emerging opportunity. Further downstream, the incorporation of efficiencies through capital asset management represents a growth driver. To summarize, the evolving triad of PLM, MES and EAM, and the integration of their associated processes represent a growth opportunity from a technology and process standpoint; and each one of these pillars can be used to drive vertical diversification.  

Q:With the advent of ‘design anywhere, manufacture anywhere’ philosophy, how does Geometric help its customers’ meet their global engineering and manufacturing needs?

A: As mentioned earlier, in terms of helping our customers meet their global engineering and manufacturing, we intend to leverage the two pillars of our value proposition. One is the fact that, we have a globally standardized set of offerings and competencies around our engineering solution proposition, and a service delivery model that allows customers to tap into the same competency sets across our locations. What this means is, customers can benefit from our offerings and competencies delivered from multiple locations concurrently. Geometric is one of the few companies that can boast a truly global service delivery model of this magnitude in the engineering services space.

Secondly, adding to this value proposition is the strong deployment and use of knowledge assets and tools developed in-house to improve productivity. One of the best examples of this is our products DFMPro, which helps designers with the manufacturability of their designs through a set of automatic checks and guidelines. This reduces the number of design iterations, and the need for the design and manufacturing team to work in close proximity.

So for customers seeking to ‘design anywhere, manufacture anywhere’, the anywhere question is very clearly answered through our service delivery model, well-defined processes, and innovative point-productivity products and technologies.

Q:How do you foster an environment of innovation and growth within the organization?

A: Starting as a R&D division, Geometric has a strong foundation of innovation and product development. In fact, we launched our first drafting software on the UNIX platform as early as in 1987. Over the years, Geometric has invested in IP creation through technologies, which are licensed to ISVs; and productivity engineering tools that address certain white spaces in the PLM technology framework.

Innovation continues to be the biggest imperative for our company and, in fact, the industry as a whole, as we move into more mature engagements with our clients. However, I believe innovation cannot be restricted to only our service offerings or products and solutions. It must be imbibed in every dimension of our work. One key area, I’ve already mentioned is innovation in the delivery model employed. Innovation should also be in the way we approach our customers, the application of our competencies to the current vertical industries as well as alternate industries, the way we structure our businesses internally, how we build competencies as a company, and in every possible way we can manage and stay ahead of the competitive curve.

This thrust towards innovation has been in the very DNA of our company, and we have been creating a complementary atmosphere of learning and thinking organization with a strong passion for customer delight.

Q:A number of global IT companies are looking at emerging markets like India for engineering and outsourced services. What are Geometric’s plans for these emerging markets?

A: Many companies have looked at the Indian market, as a spillover market, where, if there was an opportunity, and if there were resources, then it was to be tackled. Geometric has in the past looked at this market in a similar manner. However, we are now clear that the Indian market represents an opportunity; not only in terms of business, but also presents an opportunity to build up skills in sectors, which are globally applicable. We have therefore, identified two or three target segments within the Indian market, and are now working towards making breakthroughs, which we believe will enable us to launch globally competitive offerings, in the next two years.

Updated on: 05 Oct, 2009