In an age where connectivity and the internet of things are enabling new business processes, Dassault Systèmes is looking to move a step further and help deliver compelling and connected experiences

by Olivier Ribet, Vice President High Tech Industry

At Dassault Systèmes, we’re no longer talking about ‘internet of things’, but rather about the ‘internet of experiences’. Why? Because we believe that the business of every industry is rapidly transforming from ‘delivering compelling experiences’ – which defines the age of experience we have spoken of for three years – to ‘delivering compelling and connected experiences’, capable of enhancing people’s lives.

Although the objects or ‘things’ we own have ears (recording devices), eyes (cameras), voices (speakers), and some even have touch, this silicon nervous system does not send all of its information to a single brain, but rather to far too many brains: company platforms, city platforms, government platforms and individuals’ platforms, which in the end makes my experience cumbersome rather than enjoyable. Applications (both business and consumer-facing) that are single-device, single-purpose, and run on closed systems do not enhance our lives. They can even be gimmicky.

The real challenge will be to ‘connect’ those brains. This is why Dassault Systèmes is developing powerful solutions for the internet of experiences that permit manufacturers, communication providers and users to see, analyse, dashboard, program and optimise their ‘things’ from within one simple, visual environment. Our solutions enable companies to track and understand customers specific behaviours in order to offer meaningful and personalised experiences.

The internet of things, as it is being built today, is an internet of smart things that don’t always live up to their name. When companies that build the ‘things’ fail to meet customer experience demands, the internet of things is destined to stumble and fall. On the other hand, businesses that take an ‘experience thinking’ approach genuinely enhance people’s lives. They are reaping the rewards of the internet of experiences.

In the high tech industry, our customers work with us on enabling what we call High-Tech 3C Experiences: the ‘Connected’, ‘Contextual’ and ‘Continuous’ experiences:

• Connected: it becomes common practice for companies to embed sensors, actuators and network connectivity in their products, thus realising the potential of connecting products, nature and life.
• Contextual: as a result of this constant connectivity, the product can dynamically adapt its behaviour, the content it exposes, the services it offers, and realises the promise of an individualised and highly customisable experience.
• Continuous: companies want to keep a constant contact with their customers to grow loyalty and repurchase, in order to deliver the promise of evergreen delightful experiences.

Ultimately, this is all about connecting, contextualising and continuously delivering the necessary software, applications, content and services that make the overall experience of the end user delightful and efficient. This covers everyone from designers, machine operators in manufacturing plants to individual consumers in their car or in their kitchen.

The internet of experience continuously enriches and improves an evergreen experience, in which products learn from its environment and from its usage and adapt accordingly. It enables the simple and seamless connection of smart objects – be it large industrial equipment or small smart medical devices – to other objects. This makes it possible to create a swarm of connected objects and to develop a true ecosystem in which the value of services delivered constantly improves.

Furthermore, the internet of experience is also enabling the rapid evolution of an economy in which people own products and objects to an economy where they use them, based on their needs, on-demand. It allows the development of new value added services, and a larger footprint for brands and companies who can then reach out to new audiences and markets, while also ensuring a very strong traceability of product usage. Companies can continuously learn, adapt, enrich and develop new content, services and a next generation of products. This is achieved by tapping into the intelligence gained from the large set of data coming from real time usages.

Working with our customers and partners, Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE platform truly bridges the world of ‘digital/virtual’ and the world of ‘physical/real’. It allows continuous experience value creation, leveraging the power of the model-based systems engineering capabilities. It is also the only multi-scale, internet of things-aware environment that enables the system modeling and the simulation of connected experiences concurrently and seamlessly.

A notable example is Miele, who are aiming to change the experience of owning a home appliance through connectivity. As part of the KogniHome project, Miele – in collaboration with universities and other companies – is investigating how intelligent applications can be of benefit in the kitchen. The aim is to create an ecosystem that helps create a greater level of comfort and spontaneity for consumers.

Dassault Systèmes’ uniqueness is to provide virtually-enriched experiences and reality-enriched design. On the one hand, we provide access to 3D data and bill of material in the context of product usage; on the other hand we allow better product design based on insights gained from real usage. With sharing one platform, companies can invent (virtually validate ‘internet of experience ready’ design), run (digitally augmented operations), learn (real time experience optimisation) and improve (accurate data enriched simulation).

To find out more, visit our High Tech website or read the Compass Mag article ‘Beyond the IoT‘.