EPLAN : An intelligent technology innovation

“EPLAN is synonym for innovative strength, continuity, progress and investment security in the strong business group. We demonstrate the success of consistent practice orientation with International presence for over 25 years with more than 50 Sales & service centre to provide worldwide supports spanning six continents. EPLAN Innovation encourages efficient engineering to optimize the design & engineering process of our user for further better & Best.”

Mr. Ramji Singh - Country Head, Rittal India Pvt. Ltd - EPLAN Software Division

Q. EPLAN Software & Service is an Indian arm of Friedhelm Loh Group, & became one of the leading providers of extensive product software solution range to the computer aided engineering segment, how did your company managed this bounteous growth?
EPLAN is an intelligent CAD/CAE software used for design, Engineering and documentation of electrical controls and automation, Fluid, Process plant, P& ID, panel design in 3D environmental on single platform to get cross linking between each other. EPLAN Innovation provided interdisciplinary Engineering without limits. Major advantage & return of investment by using this intelligent tool is reduction up to 70% of the design time, Man-Hours and produce error free drawing & reports by automatically generating all related documentations. After financial crises, everybody has started concentrating to implement high level of technological products & solution to manage the growth with same infrastructure, improve their quality to survive in a highly competitive world. Eplan software solution is one of high technological product to support & contribute to all Engineering companies in same direction. Impact of this effect has increased the demand of such tools drastically after financial crises and started getting very good response from the market to proceed further to implementing such kind of intelligent tools. It help us our company to manage this bounteous growth.

Q. What is the overall outlook of EPLAN Software & Service, also brief us about company’s global & domestic presence?
EPLAN Software & Service is subsidiary of Rittal International within the Fried helm Loh conglomerate based in Germany and we deal in specialized CAD/ CAE software for Electrical, Fluid, Instrumentation, P&ID, Cabinets design in 3D. EPLAN Software & Service GmbH & Co, based in Monheim, Germany started in 1984 with a vision to provide compressive design & Engineering solutions in the world of automation. During the past 25yrs, we have grown into a multinational corporation operating in 54 countries with over 20,000 loyal customers and 75,000 installations worldwide. The German based Software provider has demonstrating the success of consistent practice orientation with international presence over 25 years. More than 50 sales & services centre provide worldwide support spanning over six continents. EPLAN is a synonym for innovative strength, continuity, progress & investment security in this strong business group. Eplan India operation started in the year 2000 with sales & support team with head office at Bangalore and regional & area offices in Mumbai, Faridabad, Chennai & Pune. We have our current user base of 350 customers & around 1000 installations in Indian market. German based software solution provider has been demonstrating the success of consistent practice orientation with local direct present for over 11 years. Eplan India take care of promotion of software solution, training, education, Pre & after sales support, consulting services, customize solution & related activities for our range of available Engineering solutions for Indian market.

Q. How about EPLAN’s initiatives in computer aided engineering segment? Which are your focus areas?
EPLAN Efficient Engineering tool provides user friendly software solution with advance features to match with latest technology. We regularly upgrade our software for more user friendly, adding new features also takes care of latest systems to use our software due to this our CAD/CAE software solution is become market leader with majority market share in most of countries including in India. Our Major focus is on all the companies related to Factory & Process Automation Companies, Consultants, Engineering companies, system Integrator, all type of machinery manufactures, EPC contractor, building automation etc from all industry vertical like Power & energy, Automotive, Machine tools, Metal & steel, Cements, Crane & marine, ship building, Material Handling, textile, switchgear mfrs, Food & brewage, pharmaceutical etc.

Q. What are the market opportunities for your products in India? How do you plan to position these products?
Engineering level in India is still at lower end as compare to other country, still most of customer is on drafting tool but financial crises has opened the eyes of everybody to survive in highly competitive world. Scope of our product & solution is very high & expecting very high growth every year. EPLAN Efficient Engineering provided interdisciplinary design & engineering without limits, we position our self as a one of very high level of Engineering & design solution to play one of very important role in control & automation related to Electrical, Fluid & process plant engineering to all different industry vertical to expedite their projects & improve their quality. EPLAN innovation is faster, accurate and available worldwide.

Q. What is your marketing strategy for Indian market?
Planning to start tied up with external training agencies to provide educational training & certificate and promote our education licenses to different institutes, training centre to increase the awareness of our solution from the basic level means each & every student should come out from his institutes with basic knowledge & certificate about our solution to explore further after stating his professional career as well as it will help us to increase competence level of Eplan solution in the market.Plan to organize different marketing campaign like road show, PR & Media, Important shows/fair, workshops, training, mailers, presentations etc to promote our solution in unexplored Industry vertical, geographical area & customer base.

Q. Can you please elucidate the contribution of R&D in the success of the company?
Strength & major investment on our R&D is key factor of our continuous success. Our team from Professional services worldwide is continuously feeding the data to our online system about new technical development, requirement and improvement in existing solution as per regular customer feedback & requirements from worldwide. Our R&D team is continuously works on all valuable feedback to incorporate in our solutions to fulfill & satisfy our customer requirement to improve further our solution to optimize design & engineering process of our customer further better. Our R&D provides new upgrade to software regularly which is more user friendly with lot of new features also takes care of latest systems to use & run our software solution.

Q. Brief us about the quality policy for the business?
Efficient Engineering solution to our valued customers is our quality policy, Eplan Innovation optimize Design & engineering process faster, accurate and available worldwide with direct Sales & support. Our policy is to be with our customers on time this provides all possible required services on time for proper implementation of our solution.

Q. Can you brief us more about EPLANS’s latest versions & its applications?
Our Latest version is EPLAN 2.0 SP1, it has been launched at beginning of year 2011 with more than 1000 new features compare to previous version also it is compatible with current operating system and server. We would like to highlight some of important features like New Symbol libraries for Power engineering, extended reports for terminals, new implementations of graphical elements like trimming, chamfering, cutting off, channel oriented operation in PLC, wonderful features in Revision Management, P&ID as a add on module etc.

Q. What do you think are the strengths of computer aided engineering software solutions industry & how it is positioning itself against the global market?
The strengths of CAE solutions are:

• Workflows are more structured due to stream lined engineering
• Maintenance with a CAE system is simpler
• On completion of design, it takes care of all the Documentation which is very important and useful during cross checking, installation & commissioning.
• The design is much simpler due to because of the Macros, Symbol libraries, and created databases and also CAE cuts off much time in cross referencing, device tag numbering, wire numbering etc.
• It provides interdisciplinary design & engineering without limits
• This kind of intelligent tools reduces design time, Man-Hours drastically and produce error free drawing & reports because it generates all related documents automatically.
• It helps to manage continuous Industry growth with limited infrastructure & man-power as well as improve response time to complete the project.

To stay in this global & highly competitive market, CAE is becoming mandatory & necessity of each & every Industry vertical. Hence in the era of a fast and furious world every industry has to stay with updated to the technologies to compete and move ahead.

Q. Please highlight Global perspective of CAE software solution industry and what is the differentiating factor?
Practical implementation of CAE software solution provides global perspective as well as open the door to associate with them work as a long term partner. It helps everybody to work & standardize on common platform & allow everybody to be on same page to establish strong, healthy & effective communication channel.

Q. What are the key technological trends that are driving CAE software solution industry?
As we all knows that all our customers does the Investment on any CAE software solution to use for life long and it is very necessary to provide effective, user friendly & advance technological product solution also we should win the trust of customer to be with them for life long to educate, train & support them.
It is possible with Continuous investment on R&D for product development to improve the level of engineering, continuous education about new development, training, consulting & service support for proper implementation to use the full strength of CAE solution to get faster return of investment. These are key trends that are driving CAE software solution Industries

Q. According to you what is the forecast for the computer aided engineering software industry?
All emerging market like India, scope & demand of CAE is very high, still we are at preliminary stage to adapt & implementing such kind of tool. Forecast to grow all related supplier at least 45-50% to next five year.

Q. According you what are the factors affecting to your business?
Our direct presence in Indian market for sales & support, local present in different part of country, strong user base, highest market share, Better support from our principal, R&D and excellent support from all our users to get more & more references effects our business to grow further.

Q. What are the issues you need to address that are related to computer aided engineering software industry?
We should focus & invest more on education about CAE to basic level, need to increase the competence level in the market so that all related industry should get more skilled people easily with some basic knowledge. Higher management of each industry should make this solution as a one of mandatory & necessity to them and make the provision to invest for such kind of tool in every year budget. Even after implementation of such toll, They should invest, budget every year for training, consulting, education for proper implementation as well as upgrade their software to latest version, renew the software services to use full strength of solution to get faster return of investment. Higher management of each & every industries should make this mandatory to follow every year.