COE Asks the Experts: A Q&A with Brian Schouten and Joseph Lopez from PROSTEP INC

Brian Schouten and Joseph Lopez of PROSTEP INC offered a recap of the most recent Ask the Experts webinar and provided additional insight into how the COE community can continue to stay engaged with their work and others during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Over the course of the last decade, the COE community has helped Schouten and Lopez augment their connectivity to other industry professionals.

“We’ve been partners with COE for over ten years. I’ve personally been going to COE events for the last decade. It’s definitely a major event for us. We have a lot of customers that are part of this too, so we’re happy to engage with COE,” said Schouten.

With regards to their recent webinar, "Overcoming Complexities of Managing Simulation Data in Multiple PLMs with Dassault", Schouten presented a recap of important takeaways from the session. 

“What we wanted to focus on in the webinar was our overall capability for interoperability with 3DEXPERIENCE and CAD data. This something that 3DEXPERIENCE and Dassault have been touting for a while,” said Schouten.

“We’ve got commercial, off-the-shelf tools that allow you to perform different use cases—one of those being the SIMULIA integration so that you can set up 3DEXPERIENCE as your simulation data management tool and then integrate with your legacy PLM that might be from another vendor to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. It’s important to share that data back and forth. Normally there are complications and challenges in order to do this, so this is a pretty vital tool in the adoption and acceptance of 3DEXPERIENCE.”

Both Schouten and Lopez agree that webinars have helped keep members of the community engaged with various software developments as challenges brought on by the pandemic continue to arise.

“Our shift has been toward 15-20 minute webinars to engage people in a shorter amount of time. I think it’s really helped encourage people to join,” said Lopez.

“I think, for me webinars, have become a more important part of our marketing and customer engagement strategies. I also think keeping the webinars targeted and focused on a specific topic definitely help those who attend,” said Schouten.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, more and more people are leveraging online capabilities to connect with members of their professional community. PROSTEP had implemented online engagement tactics prior to the COVID-19 outbreak.

“At PROSTEP, we’ve really been focused on how we can engage more online, even before COVID-19. We had already been in motion to coincide events with digital marketing and webinars. In terms of staying focused, it’s part of the plan to market through all channels.”

With remote work becoming the norm for the foreseeable future, Schouten emphasizes the importance of maintaining community in order to stay motivated and productive.

“People don’t have that sense of office community that they used to have. Webinars are a great way to keep the community engaged.”

If you missed this Ask the Experts webinar, be sure to visit the COE webinar archive to access the full session and other webinars.

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