Dan Dunne
Dan Dunne, vice president of PLM & Support at Inceptra, recently became a member of COE’s Board of Directors as Value Added Reseller Director. We caught up with Dan to learn more about his new board position and discuss why the Value Added Reseller community is an important and growing part of COE and Dassault Systèmes.
When did you join the COE Board of Directors? What’s your experience been like so far?
I officially joined the Board at the COE event in April. It’s been exciting to learn more about how the COE organization functions and see what objectives are for the future.
What is a value added reseller (VAR)?
Dassault Systèmes has two primary sales channels for their software solutions. Very large organizations are part of the Business Transformation (BT) group and Dassault Systèmes works with those customers directly. For everyone else, there is a community of VARs that work with Dassault Systèmes to sell and support the Dassault solution set. The VARs support the supply chains for many BT companies as well as OEMs that are under the BT threshold.
VARs make sure the customers understand the tools they have through learning and optimization.
What’s your background with as a VAR?
I started doing this in 1994. I’ve spent most of my career in the VAR space, helping companies understand, deploy and optimize their use of engineering software solutions. It’s an interesting career path. I enjoy the challenges of sales, teaching customers and going head to head against other companies to prove that we’re better.
Why does COE feel this is an important area to have represented on the board?
The BT and VAR channel customers have distinctive business demands, technical needs and deployment timelines. Resellers have been involved with COE for a long time, but having this visibility at the board level will allow COE to include more topics that may be specifically relevant to the reseller customer base.
As COE transitions from a brand-focused (CATIA) organization to one that includes the larger Dassault Systèmes Platform (3DEXPERIENCE), there is a significant opportunity to help VAR companies understand how this can positively affect their businesses.
How do VARs offer additional features or services to end-users of the Dassault Systèmes suite of products?
Some VARs sell and support a specific brand, while others support multiple brands and the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform. In addition to the software solutions, we offer training, deployment services, technical resources and expertise for projects like automation, additional supplemental software applications such as Q-Checker, and hotline support (license and media management as well as technical support).
Does COE or Dassault Systèmes offer education for VARs?
Dassault Systèmes has an enablement program to help VARs learn about new products, solutions or new versions. With COE’s expanded focus, I think there is an opportunity for COE to supplement this enablement program across the Dassault Systèmes solution offering.
About Dan Dunne
Dan Dunne is vice president of PLM & Support at Inceptra, Dassault Systèmes’ largest reseller in North America since 2009. He holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Michigan Technological University. Dan has spent most of his career in technical roles within the Value Added Reseller community, helping customers and end users deploy, learn and optimize their engineering applications. His primary technical expertise is in Product Data Management (PDM) and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). Over the years, Dan has also worked with a variety of engineering design, analysis and simulation tools in a wide range of industries.
