Anyone looking to challenge US software vendor Autodesk in design aids had better look at the China market first.

It would appear that nearly all architecture firms in the country are equipped with Autodesk's CAD (computer-aided design) solutions, and the expertise in running them, to bid for big projects.

As an industry solution provider, a senior executive of the Autodesk building solutions division (BSD) tells China Business Weekly, "we have more seeds than any other international software company."

By "seeds", what Jay Bhatt, vice president of Autodesk BSD, is referring to is that client companies that have bought Autodesk solutions are likely to have recurrent demand for upgrades, add-on applications and training.

It is no small success when compared with other software vendors in the same market.

"This," says Cui Xiaoping, one of the first value-added resellers of Autodesk CAD software in China, "is a company with tremendous strength that also hit a tremendous fortune."

Building houses, Cui explains, is different from many other industries in that there will hardly be a saturation point. There is demand for not just more houses, but also houses with ever-more sophisticated functions.

Bhatt agrees, saying that part of Autodesk's business success lies in having developed a must-have for everyone. Unlike ERP (enterprise resource management) or CRM (customer relations management) software, which a company can choose to have or not, CAD technology is "non-discretionary," he says, because every engineer will have to use the design-aid software and none of them is using a pencil any more.

Especially in China, as Bhatt notes, where the building industry is contributing to the overall economy, in terms of GDP growth, twice as much as the world's average.

Selling modernity

Modernization was exactly the concept that the company was campaigning for when it first came to China, when many architects and engineers, if not all, were still working on traditional drawing boards. Hence its almost immediate popularity with the Chinese building industry and the government's industry agencies.

But more recently, the later versions of AutoCAD have marked a great leap forward to a completely new territory, from 2D to 3D. On top of it, the company has also come up with its AutoCAD Revit Series, a platform for the various professionals in a building project to share information with each other, to model and to perfect (including revise) their designs.

It's not jus that architects no longer have to use pencils - their work can be stored in digital files, and passed on, with the extension of the life cycle of the building, from the present owner to future generations.

That way, newly-hired maintenance workers no longer have to spend days looking for just a valve if a paper file of the system is lost. Extensive modifications can also be done based on the data.

For a country like China, where millions of new houses were erected in a hurry based on hurried designs, and need changes to be in line with new practices and new regulations, the idea of life cycle management can offer the best assurance that today's building will not be a white elephant tomorrow.

Selling green

In the building industry, new practices and new regulations more often than not are about saving - saving energy and saving costs. In other words , to be "green."

So in 1998, the US Green Building Council (USGBC) first established energy and environmental standards, and has since been trying to promote a "green building rating system" called LEED, or leadership in energy and environmental design.

LEED, as the industry media report, can reduce a building's negative impact on its surroundings by as much as 50 per cent, for only a slight increase in cost. Although a voluntary system, the very concept of being "green" has been appealing enough that, by the end of 2004, there were some 1,700 buildings across the United States applying for LEED rating.

Green architecture is to become mainstream in the coming years, experts say. There will be more buildings automatically adjusting their shades with the sun and employing natural breeze, such as from a nearby river, to cool and refresh it's the interior.

For example, the Freedom Tower, designed on Autodesk software for the former World Trade Centre site in lower Manhattan, will draw about 20 per cent of its electricity supply from its own combination of solar- and wind-power generating equipment.

In the meantime, in China, due to increasing imports of energy resources as a result of rapid urbanization, the government has been placing greater emphasis on the idea of sustainable development.

Design lessons from the developed economies, such as moving into a new office environment can affect staff attendance by 15 per cent, and adaption of natural light makes both shoppers and students happier, will be quickly digested by Chinese architects.

It is here that Autodesk claims to fit in perfectly. "We're already there," says Bhatt. The autodesk solutions not only just build 3D images based on requirements and data input from various engineers, but can calculate the cost for building each partt. So 3D is no longer a tool for just viewing, but for architects to do analytical work - to calculate and rationalize each partt, every window pane, every piece of stone, in sunshine, and in rain.

Selling numbers

But Autodesk CAD is popular not just because it provides a useful tool. There are other companies selling CAD software or similar solutions. Autodesk has been differentiating itself from them by selling volume, or in other words, seeking "a broad base of customers," according to Bhatt.

Willingness to adjust prices to suit the local market is the key. Autodesk doesn't want to, as some other companies do, set a US-based price and apply it worldwide. If anyone expects the Chinese and Indians to pay as much as the US price for computer software, he wouldn't be able to generate much sales and could lead to piracy, Bhatt says.

But thanks to its local pricing policy, Autodesk has been able to build considerable business despite the high piracy rate. It can control the problem and can at least hope, with its partnership with the government, to "dim" the piracy picture.

Asia is now smaller than a quarter of the company's total revenue. 

In the last financial year, China was already the No 1 growth factor in the company's business, helping its worldwide revenues go up 30 per cent year-on-year to exceed US$1.2 billion. This was followed by its announcement of over 19 per cent growth in sales in the first quarter of this year.

Such performances, certainly, are not music to the ears of other vendors in China.

(China Daily 07/25/2005 page7)