By Randall S. Newton
Bentley Systems has launched a marketing campaign with the lofty goal of convincing AutoCAD users to switch to a MicroStation-based platform for their AEC work. The move is in direct response to the Autodesk policy of retiring older releases of AutoCAD from ongoing support. Because of the direct-attack nature of the offer—something we haven’t seen from Bentley in years—the “You Deserve Better” campaign has attracted more media attention than normally given to a CAD vendor’s sales drive—and not all the attention is complimentary.
“We can’t blame Bentley for launching its program,” writes David Cohn in CADCAMnet. (CADCAMnet and AECnews.com are both owned by Cyon Research) . “There are certainly disaffected Autodesk customers out there looking for alternative software solutions. But the cost to switch is too high. Not only do Bentley’s fees surpass what an AutoCAD customer would pay to simply upgrade to the current release, it doesn’t even begin to factor in the hidden costs of training, lost productivity, and fees related to replacing any add-on software or customizations. … Come on, Bentley; you can do better.”
Writing in his weekly newsletter UpFront.eZine, CAD pundit Ralph Grabowski focuses on the cost as well, saying, “… the answer is along the lines of ‘you’d have to pay me to switch,’ because the cost of switching is high.”
In a guest commentary at CADwire.net (also owned by Cyon Research), Open Design Alliance president Evan Yares sees things in a different light. “Combine [AutoCAD upgrade deadlines] with Autodesk’s intentional removal of read/write support for older versions of the DWG file format in newer AutoCAD releases, and you have a real mess.” Yares argues that Bentley is meeting a marketplace need, partially because Autodesk has violated a trust with its users that extends back to its early years, when co-founder John Walker promised that users would always be able to upgrade their software.
Missing the Point
Several other publications have also reported on Bentley’s campaign, usually focusing on the costs. I think they are all missing the point. Yes, Bentley is trying to stir up disenchanted AutoCAD users, but every CAD firm has some disenchanted users. Yes, it does cost quite a bit to switch from one platform or vendor to another. And, yes, Autodesk has to some degree abandoned its “always upgradeable” policy. (If you read the fine print on their offers, it’s not that bad if you miss the formal upgrade deadline.) The real question for AEC firms considering the Bentley offer is: What type of CAD environment is a good fit for our firm today?
Autodesk and Bentley have evolved in very different ways. Today Autodesk is the retail solution; Bentley is the enterprise solution. Nobody walks into a dealer (or goes online) to buy one or two copies of MicroStation, but this is still quite common for AutoCAD and (especially) AutoCAD LT. Most certified AutoCAD third-party developers are selling retail add-ons; most certified MicroStation third-party developers work for companies who own hundreds—if not thousands—of copies of MicroStation. While the majority of new AEC projects use AutoCAD and/or AutoCAD LT as the primary CAD platform, the majority of large projects use MicroStation, especially outside North America. If Autodesk and Bentley were databases vendors, Autodesk would be selling Microsoft Access and Bentley would be selling Oracle 10g.
Autodesk CEO Carol Bartz often refers to the competition as selling scaffolding systems to pick apples, while Autodesk sells the ladder. She’s thinking of PTC and Dassault Systemes as well as Bentley when she uses that analogy, but no matter; it doesn’t fit. Autodesk customers might be picking apples from one particular tree, but Bentley’s customers are picking cones from a forest of redwood trees.
Most of Bentley’s customers are working on multiple, multi-year projects. They have to upgrade on their schedule, not on the vendor’s schedule. When Bentley releases a new version, the company realizes it will be years before a majority of their users move to the new platform. (I once interviewed an executive from Bentley’s single largest account, a European power utility. At that time, his company was two releases behind, and let two more go by before they started to upgrade.) While there have been several revisions to the AutoCAD DWG file format (the exact number is a matter of CAD geek debate), there has been exactly one update to the MicroStation DGN file format. Platform stability, Bentley’s customers keep reminding the firm, is of paramount importance. (The new DGN file format is actually a “superset” that encompasses both DGN and DWG, allowing MicroStation to treat DWG as a native file type. Details at the AECnews archive article “Bentley Releases MicroStation V8—The Most Significant Version Ever”.)
Three Target Markets
So, given the differences between the Autodesk and Bentley “typical” user, who exactly would be interested in Bentley’s “You Deserve Better” offer? I see three market segments where this campaign makes sense.
Before writing this article, I interviewed Tony Flynn, Bentley’s chief marketing officer. “The Bentley user base is larger firms,” Flynn said, “and we've done very well by them. Now these firms are telling us that they want their smaller partners to consolidate on the Bentley platform. ‘They slow down our supply chain’ they tell us.” So, subcontractors who are using AutoCAD, but delivering to MicroStation-using firms, are one target. If the relationship is important enough to the sub, making the prime contractor happy—and thereby guaranteeing long-term revenue—is worth the cost of switching platforms. For these companies, Bentley offers special classes and learning materials on making the transition, and offers an interface “switch” to change the standard MicroStation GUI into something more comfortable for former AutoCAD users. (Think of AutoCAD as a piano, and MicroStation as a pipe organ. "The keys look familiar," the AutoCAD user says, "but what's all that other stuff?")
Bentley has many customers who use both Bentley and Autodesk products. The total number declined after the release of MicroStation V8 in 2001, with its ability to read DWG as a native file type, but there are still quite a few out there. That’s a second logical target market. Why support two CAD platforms when one of them handles all necessary file types?
I have been in a number of private conversations between CAD journalists and Bentley employees in the last two years, where the same criticism is voiced over and over: “We don’t see your marketing, we don’t see your advertising; what are you doing?” The answer, when one can be given (some of the accosted are not in marketing, and just have to shrug their shoulders in reply), is that Bentley has been focused almost exclusively on increasing their penetration into existing accounts. In fact, Bentley is a poster child for the Account Development school of marketing. Bentley’s transition from market development to account development is the subject of Chapter 4 in “The One to One B2B: Customer Relationship Management Strategies for the Real Economy” by Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D. (By the way, that’s Mr. Peppers and Dr. Rogers, not the other way around.) Dell Computer is another case study in the book.
By running the “You Deserve Better” campaign, Flynn says, Bentley feels comfortable enough to re-expand their market development side of the operation. “In years past we were focused on growing our business to our existing users, but now we are now very interested in expanding our base.”
This new foray into market development is especially important to the third logical target market for Bentley’s “You Deserve Better” promotion—Asia, especially the rapidly growing markets of India and China. “We are moving forward with regional seminars, sales calls from our regional account managers, and using our e-sales team [telemarketing],” Flynn says. “Asia is especially important to us in this regard. There is plenty of opportunity there, and we have found e-marketing works especially well in Asia.” The “cost of switching platforms” criticism is a non-issue in exploiting the Asian market, where in many countries CAD is still a new technology. There is also increased sensitivity to piracy issues that work in Bentley’s favor.
This marketing campaign shouldn’t be viewed as if it were a “20% off until Christmas” temporary promotion. “You Deserve Better” will be Bentley’s dominant theme at least until next May (and the next international Bentley user conference) as the company systematically moves across the globe and through their accounts, seeking opportunity. “We are taking a one-step-at-a-time approach to this,” notes Flynn. “We've gotten off to a surprisingly good start—the reaction we are getting is very positive.”