Indian Premier League or IPL is one of the best sporting start-ups in the recent history, which created a “few billion USD” enterprise and teams worth multi millions in a very short span making it a lucrative business venture for every ambitious business man.

Cricket being the only secular religion in the subcontinent, the valuation didn’t raise any eyebrows. But what made people sit up was the success of IPL and its thumping success commercially. There was a complete change in the perception of the game – it was no more just an entertaining game but a lucrative business venture as well.

With the commercial value of IPL going up, branding became a part of the IPL league. Brands began dominating the sporting event, ICC tournaments and even umpires hat and blazers sported brands.

IPL is now racing towards being the super bowl of Cricket in the times to come.

IPL brought out certain fundamental queries on the game, is the game important or the format of the game? Is IPL becoming bigger than the game itself? With huge commercial success (ROI) coming its way, IPL would be perceived as being bigger than the game itself ! The emergence of mongoose cricket bat is one example.

We can draw some similarities between the IPL scenario and the manufacturing industry. The battle of supremacy between controllers and post processor – is the controller more important than the post processor or Vice versa? The response to the query may vary, based on the perception of the manufacturer, but the questions are always there to be answered.

IPL brought huge opportunities to young cricketers in terms of professional success and also the monetary gains. Many subsidiary business grew along with it from event management companies to product companies. The controller market brought path breaking changes and now market offers wide range of controllers to address the aspirations of the market and manufacturer . The cutting tools, coolants, compressors also brought many technological advantages, this cascade of supply chain brought complete generational shift in the manufacturing process.

The emergence of choice is leading to a situation wherein customers are buying controller specific machines than vice versa. In some of the specialised industrial segments like railways and aerospace manufacturing, even the OEM’s enquire with their suppliers about the controller specific machines. Some MTM controllers may have more lines of code than in cam software’s itself.

This has led to revolution based evaluation with CAM software’s. Manufacturer no longer look at the software which makes the right product in a short time, their focus is whether the product fits into the IT landscape. The CAM software’s may have engineering friendly features but the utility of the software depends on the quality of customised post processor. Post processor builds perfect tunnel between controller and the imagination of the programmer and makes programmer to drive the controller’s capacity. Like in IPL emergence of Hawk eye technology and stump camera have mitigated the human error levels to nil.

Post processors are customized by CAM software’s OEM itself or they provide post processor templates to manufacturer. Many CAM OEM’s

put specific efforts in educating, hence making the manufacturer to adopt to the customized post processor. But most of the CAM software’s doesn’t teach the manufacturer as how to customize the post processor. Is the customization done to help manufacturer to achieve the optimum result or is it pre sales test cut euphoria like 3rd umpire for every decision.

The way in which IPL allowed Indian and international players to capture the imagination of cricket lovers across the world, similarly manufacturing companies are also looking at controller and post processors which provide maximum monetization (ROI) while, new sponsor Make in India is eager to create Mexican wave and 3D printing as the cheerleaders.

World’s biggest democratic carnival will be on this summer with the largest secular democratic country ‘India’ going to elections. The 2014 carnival is already an ideal package of infotainment due to the emergence and popularity of 24/7 news channels, and social networking sites. Unprecedented growth of smart phones in this market has made every news and events available to Aam Aadmi (common man).

The last 3 central governments were successful coalition governments completing 15 years of coalition governance in Indian democratic history. It seems the Indian politics moved away from bipolar, tripolar, quadripolar fight forever.

Coalition governments are here to stay and every one has started to accept this change. One must be thinking how is this related to the industry we are in. Well, has the Coalition era begun in software product Market? partially, the coalition dynamics are becoming more relevant and visible in CAD for tooling segment. The electorate in CAD for tooling segment ie customers are having multiple CAD software’s in their IT assets along with manpower having multiple skill sets. Certain products have been able to establish niche market leadership at select verticals.

The emergence of independent CAD for tooling and ISV (Independent software vendors) products unfurled the coalition era across the 3DCAD system in MCAD. Few of ISV products have converted the unique domain functionalities into software features and at certain geographies ISV products have larger recognition and brand recall than the OEMs.

The CAD for tooling ISV solutions has got peer club with electrical, plant solutions, PDM, civil, architectural and cabling solutions to name a few.

CAD for tooling products comes at the last stage of NPD (New Product Development) but takes the first line of fire. These tools propagate the automation, hence reducing human intervention on redundant tasks. The fundamental question that arises here is – does the product actually do what it propagates or is it just a talking point similar to coalition politics ‘ playing to the gallery (i.e media)’.

The product needs to exist in multi and diverse IT environments. The market leadership will be with products which adhere to coalition realities. Following are some of the coalition compulsions (readers can substitute them with regional parties, national parties, article 370, common minimum program, corporate funding, Women’s reservation or any other terms of current politics):-

ERP/SCM (Supply Chain Management) – ERP’s exist with every organisation in one or the other form. The changes in CAD bring direct impact on BOM (Bill of Material). The product needs to provide options to integrate with ERP / SCM solutions with the least investment than providing flashy reports to generate quotes or RFP’s/RFQ’s and parking customer’s critical data at islands which is not integrated with any of enterprise applications.

PDM (Product Data Management) – CAD for tooling is either recipient or creator of most of the critical NPD data. The CAD data needs to be integrated with leading PDM tools, this will help customer to attain ROI rather than few automation features which just aim to reduce the number of mouse clicks.

ESP (Engineering Service Provider) – The popularity of the product with ESP’s will help the customers avail the on demand expertise during business crisis.

Product Ambassadors – Special category of people, who come with domain expertise coupled with software expertise, are known in the market as domain consultants or subject matter experts. These people enable the customers to train their employees at optimum price and nearest geography so, that customers get optimum ROI from the same set of employees.

CAE (Computer Aided Engineering) – No NPD is possible without using relevant CAE solutions. The CAD for tooling solution needs to provide direct CAD translations with leading CAE tools. This will help the customers to enhance their offerings and protect the IP.

Compliance- The product should adhere to compliance requirements of the industry. Customers cannot afford to have multiple solutions to manage the similar compliance requirements and complicating the entire process.

CAD partners or resellers- The products have acquired market share and dominance , only when their partners have become successful.

The product which shows disrespect to coalition dharma may remain like the communist ideology in a capitalist democratic country. Customers now seem to be waiting for disrupting technology to bring in a different perspective like the much talked about Aam Admi phenomena.

Disclaimer: Views expressed above are the author’s own.