One thing leads to another in this bloggers world. I was thinking about my local buddies machine shop example in my recent SW 2014 End of Life Convention post and wondering why the compelling message of SE over SW had never reached his shop or the companies he has to work with. So I decide to look up director of marketing and publicity for Siemens and lo and behold this is the first page that pops up.
I had to laugh as there right in front of me were my last two updates for Siemens publicity. Must be time for another one I thought. An additional thought I had is why why is this needed once again and after five years things still stink although not as badly? Who is responsible today for this continuing saga that has its tentacles choking the life out of the online potential of Siemens PLM and whose philosophy seemingly stretches way back into those bad old UGS days. I clicked on this link and for the first time I find out who I think is responsible for the current state of marketing and PR.
http://www.prweb.com/releases/siriusdecisions/roi_award_winners/prweb10703409.htm
Three names are mentioned there. David Taylor, Chris Kelley and Jeff Nercesian. Judging by the titles they own I am of the opinion that they are responsible for the state of Siemens Marketing and PR art, such as it is and at least as it relates to Solid Edge. Seeing them at the PRWeb site was pretty surprising to me since I have scant regard for the poor way Siemens represents itself on-line. So I decided I would look to see what their competing software companies did on-line and see just how they stacked up. I might be right, I might be wrong about how well they are doing so I went to look so I could have a real world basis for my opinion. What will follow is going to be a bit lengthy but it is required in order to lay the basis for my conclusion. Which is that Siemens has the industries poorest on-line presence. I went to various web sites for their competitors using IE 11 to see what each company did and how they wanted to present themselves to prospective customers with a 24″ monitor size. So let us start.
Dassault begins with their corporate splash page.
A great looking page. (And I really like the special Freudian touch where they show the user whose on-line cloud stuff just blew up heh-heh). Next is the splash screen for SW.
Pages are either fully populated or mostly so, content is centered and the overall color selections and themes are pleasing. Links are easy to find and use. Surprisingly for all the blah blah about 3DExperience immersive Total Lifestyle the Dassault stuff after a few layers did revert to some basic looking pages. I guess they figure that by then this is OK to do.
Even so it is centered and the colors and layouts are pretty decent.
Next up is Autodesk.
Full page with compelling graphics and what is there not to like. Visually impressive and it makes you want to look further. So let’s do just that.
Clearly someone who cares what you think of them is in charge here. Now what is true here is true for the rest of the examples I am going to use. Dedicated people who know what potential customers see online helps to steer customers towards their products. It shows polished professionalism that connects I believe in the viewers mind as being representative of what he can expect in the software.
Next up is the software we never seem to hear about much, PTC Creo.
Not bad at all is it? Lets click a link and look a bit further.
Pretty ho-hum really but at least someone was professional enough to have it centered and the PTC splash page is compelling enough to drive an interest level to overcome the ho-hum on the second page in.
Next up is Delcam. Every time you go there the main picture changes.
Pretty cool and it gets a lot better. When you click-through to PowerShape you get this.
The pictures cycle automatically with attractive appearing messages or high quality renderings.
Up next is CAMWorks from Geometric.
I like this page too with good color selection, centered graphics and a series of five pictures that cycle through. If you click-through you get this.
Even the secondary layers of this website while not loaded up with stuff is still worthwhile and attention-getting.
A stroll to the Vero site yields the following.
There are TWELVE cycling pictures on the splash page. The second page in is not so exciting but go three in to get to a specific category and once again you have rotating content. Here is Alphacam for instance. A series of five cycling pictures are here.
What comes up next was the real surprise for me and it was the quality of the websites of three Siemens VAR’s I am familiar with.
Swoosh Technologies has a splash page that has cycling pictures and messages. While it is full-page left to right it is a partial page top to bottom. The Siemens clone color scheme could use a makeover but I really like content that changes while you watch. It is of the three VAR’s the closest to Siemens web page quality.
What follows when you click-through is kind of drab by comparison but even then content is centered and changes as you watch to some degree catching your attention.
Ally PLM is next. The main splash page is fully populated with something and as a bonus you have a series of five pictures that cycle automatically.
When you click-through to the SE page for instance while there are no cycling pictures the screen is once again fully populated and the written content is not just a rehash or CTRL-C CTRL-V of official drab and dreary Siemens stuff. It is content written for Ally and for this page and designed to convey why you should care.
Up next is Saratech. I am going to show two screen captures from their main splash page. They have so much going on in their page that with my slow ISP connection it takes a bit to load but when it does there are things happening everywhere.
If you click-through to the SE page for example you get alternating messages in a bar that crosses the page that draws your attention to salient features Saratech wants you to consider. They compel you to regard different aspects of the products they want to sell you and give you visual prompts to drive you there.
OK, we are done having fun now and let us venture into the world of the Siemens PR and Marketing departments.
This is the Siemens PLM main splash page and it incorporates four changing things shoved up into the corner as is true with all the other pages here. Done like someone just wanted to hurry up and finish something they really did not want to be bothered with. Shoved over into the corner and tons of wasted space that could have served some sort of purpose. What you see is what you get and you have to use pull down menus with somewhat unintuitive click-through links to go further. But wait, there’s more!
So we go to the SE splash page. Shoved up into the corner that evidently is the only layout option available to Siemens.
I try to analyze things as I go through content on-line when I am seeking answers to questions I have. Questions like why is the website quality second-rate for Siemens compared to every other CAD software company I show here and sadly even when compared to two of three Siemens VAR’s. I don’t know what the pecking order is here with these three individuals and I guess it really does not matter. They are all responsible and culpable for the second-rate public face presented to the world of CAD CAM of the companies I reference here and the evidence is irrefutable. This whole regimen of neglect and in my opinion contempt towards potential customers and actual customers goes back a long way. In fact it is what started my presence online almost five years ago prompted by my disgust for Bruce Boes and how publicity was handled back then. I could not fathom how people employed by a company to market that same company would act the way they do. This was true five years ago and it sadly is still true today. Manifesting itself with pages that clearly are there only because someone grudgingly felt they had to do something and they lavished the project they disdained accordingly with attention and care.
In spite of my thoughts that say if these Siemens guys do not care much, have not cared much for years and I can’t make them care and so why should I bother even thinking about it, I do care. I like to think that something I write can influence these individuals or Siemens to reassess what they are doing. And if it does not help create some change for the better at the very least I will have the satisfaction of having three posts describing the mediocre Marketing and PR right there on the first Google search page for the world and these worthies to see and think about. You guys may think you are hot stuff but I think you need to find a job that you actually care about or find a way to care about the one you have now.
Machined Audio Horn Lens 