The Company is currently implementing the medium-term business plan, which is a six-year period plan from 2015 to 2020 (first phase: 2015 to 2017, second phase: 2018 to 2020). The medium-term business plan is based on these basic strategies: "Provide value unique to Cybernet," "Focus on automotive field," and "Strengthen cooperation with partners." Target figures for the final FY2020 are consolidated net sales of 30 billion yen (15.39 billion yen in 2014) and consolidated operating income of 3 billion yen.
The company achieved over 8.0% of consolidated operating income ratio in the first phase of the plan ended in FY 2017. For the basic strategy "Provide value unique to Cybernet," the domestic sales of Multi-domain Solutions (to be explained later) development on which the company focused grew from 12.7 billion yen in FY2014 to 14.6 billion yen in FY2017. With regard to "Focus on automotive field," rate of sales in the automobile-related field in the domestic sales grew from 12.0% in FY2014 to 16.4% in FY 2017. As for "Strengthen cooperation with partners" aiming at the expansion of the Vendor Business, the number of sales partners increased from 81 to 123 companies (increased by 52%) and OEM sales towards partners increased from 450 million yen to 550 million yen (increased by 23%) (since OEM sales are almost equal to the operating income, their impact in terms of profit is huge).
【Second phase (2018 to 2020) - Rise of the top line accompanied by improvement of profitability- 】
The Company is aiming at double-digit growth and an operating income margin of 10% for the Distributor Business and Consulting Business and double-digit growth and an operating income margin of 20% for the Vender Business. In addition to expansion of existing businesses and new businesses that began in the first phase (2015 to 2017), the Company anticipates contributions from new businesses that will be launched in the second phase (2018 to 2020). With respect to the existing businesses, the Company will grow from 17.3 billion yen in FY 2017 to 22.6 billion yen (average growth rate of 9.4%). With respect to the new businesses that began in the first phase, it will increase "1D CAE + 3D CAE Multi-domain Solutions," etc. from 0.7 billion yen to 3.4 billion yen. As for the businesses that will be launched in the second phase, it will grow the "Extended Multi-domain Solutions by MBSE (to be described later)" to the scale of 3.9 billion yen.
Basic strategies
To offer value unique to Cybernet
In the second phase of the medium-term business plan, the Company will continue to promote "1DCAE + 3DCAE Multi-domain Solutions," which are becoming increasingly popular, and will expand "Extended Multi-domain Solutions by MBSE" to contribute to improve development efficiency. MBSE is a development method to manage the entire development process on a formula model basis across multiple disciplines. With "Extended Multi-domain Solutions by MBSE," the Company will be able to build a solution that will cover the entire process from 0D, the preliminary stage of 1D, to validation. The Company's strengths are, in addition to the technology of its subsidiaries, years of technical support and consulting experiences of CAE and MDB. In the long term, it plans to build MBSE platforms and initiate a platform business. Regarding technologies that are insufficient to build the MBSE platforms, it is intending to establish partnerships or implement M&A using surplus funds of about 10 billion yen.
Focus on automotive field
In the field of automobiles in which development of Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems (ADAS), EV, and Connected Car is advancing, technical challenges are welcomed. For this reason, the Company will provide solutions in various technical fields. Specifically, the fields include sensors, controllers, structural function design, and information/communications. Especially in the sensor field, development of fusion sensors that combine functions of multiple sensors has also begun. As the number of sensors in vehicles increases, the car safety will improve. However, the number of sensors that can be installed is restricted within a limited automobile space. For this reason, fusion sensors are attracting attention, and "Extended Multi-domain Solutions by MBSE" is indispensable for shortening development time and reducing development cost. The Company will also focus on proposing "Optimus id8," optimized design support software that automates and integrates the analysis process in each field in order to effectively utilize internal resources and shorten the development period.
Strengthen cooperation with partners
The Company will work on building sales and support systems globally and locally and promote OEM. Specifically, it will build a global agency network in North America, Europe and Asia to expand the subsidiaries' businesses and build a domestic agency network to increase sales of new products in Japan. It will also work on strengthening partnerships with overseas consulting companies that have expertise in CAE solutions.
Meanwhile, as for OEM, although it had been focusing on OEMs targeting the companies in the same industry, it will also put emphasis on the end-users by expanding OEM to the field of IoT (Digital Twin). More and more manufacturers are seeking profit-making opportunities not only in sales of their products but also in a maintenance and follow-up service, which leads to a possibility that CAE can be used for both development and maintenance. As part of this, the Company is focusing on the Digital Twin field. Digital Twin creates a platform using IoT and CAE, and analyzes causes of failure and malfunction in advance. Digital Twin is a concept or system that reproduces physical events into a digital field and predicts and analyzes causes of failure and malfunction in advance. Preliminary analysis of causes of failure or malfunction using IoT predicts occurrence of faults and malfunctions based on sensor information. In parallel with this, Digital Twin reproduces the same environment as the actual usage situation on a computer and carries out preliminary analysis of the causes of failure or malfunction.
Strategies by Business Domain, Global Strategies and Strategies by Application Area
Under the basic strategies, the Company will implement the Strategies by Business Domain, Global Strategies and Strategies by Application Area.
Strategies by Business Domain
The Company will increase the highly profitable Vendor Business and Consulting. As for the Distributor Business, it will improve sales by its expanding sales territory while reducing the sales component ratio. It will increase the sales component ratio of the Vender Business and Consulting, which accounted for 32 % (5.8 billion yen) in FY 2017 to 36% (10.8 billion yen) in FY2020 and reduce the component ratio of the Distributor Business from 68% (12.2 billion yen) to 64% (19.2 billion yen). In the Distributor Business, it will strengthen its relationship with vendors, pursue added value by Multi-domain Solutions and technical support, and expand its sales territory.
For the Distributor Business, it will focus on Asia where there is much room for business expansion. In terms of market, it will focus on the automotive field where demand for ADAS, EV, and Connected Car can be expected and IoT field including Digital Twin(※1). It is intending to differentiate itself through development of MBSE.
※1 Digital Twin:Reproduces physical events into a digital field and predicts and analyzes causes of failure and malfunction in advance
Global Strategies
While expanding business in Japan, the Company will work to increase the ratio of overseas sales. the Company will expand the businesses from 10% (1.8 billion yen) to 14% (4.2 billion yen) in North America, from 4% (700 million yen) to 6% (1.8 billion yen) in Europe, from 7% (1.3 billion yen) to 11% (3.3 billion yen) in Asia. The CAE market share by region is 40% in North America, 30% in Europe and 30% in Asia including Japan, and in the case of the Company, there is large room for overseas business expansion.
The Company will acquire sales agency rights and develop the Distributor Business by expanding its sales territory to Asia, ASEAN and India. In North America and Europe, it will cultivate local sales partners or strengthen partnerships with consulting companies through alliances and capital tie-ups, and expand subsidiary products with a focus on OEM. In Europe, it will especially focus on the German market. Meanwhile, in Japan, it will make efforts to provide products of the subsidiaries using OEM and promote the MBSE business by strengthening collaboration among the Group companies. It will also strengthen collaboration between CAE Solution and IT Solution (security, asset management, big data visualization, etc.).
Strategies for Application Area
The Company will expand CAE solution sales from 14.6 billion yen in FY 2017 to 24.5 billion yen in FY 2020. For MCAE, the Company's mainstay area, it will work to increase its sales from 6.5 billion yen to 9.5 billion yen. It will work to expand the products of ANSYS in Asia by strengthening cooperation with the sales subsidiaries in China and Taiwan. It will also strengthen sales of mechanism analysis software (analyzing motions) which it began handling in January 2018. Because the Company can work closely with the ANSYS products for the mechanism analysis software to analyze movement, it will develop mechanism analysis solutions targeting the users of the ANSYS products. For optical design, in order to increase its sales from 3.4 billion yen to 5.2 billion yen, it will try to expand into the automobile field (analysis solutions for head lights) that the Company entered full-scale in the first phase of the medium-term business plan. They will also work to increase EDA sales from 500 million yen to 900 million yen by promoting customers to replace their competitors' products with their products. For MBD, it will expand its sales from 3.1 billion yen to 6.0 billion yen. it will promote OEM development of the model-based analysis software "1D CAE tool" in North America and Europe. Furthermore, it will develop MBSE solutions targeting automobile-related field in Japan. In other fields, the company will expand the sales from 1.1 billion yen to 2.9 billion yen. The 3D tolerance analysis software "CETOL 6σ" handled by its subsidiary Sigmetrix (US) will grow. It is a favorable factor that this software program became compatible with all 3 major CADs in the world in the second phase of 2017. The 3 major CADs in the world are "CATIA" of Dassault Systemes (France), "Creo Parametric" of PTC (US) and "NX" of Siemens AG (Germany). Until that time, "CETOL 6σ" had not been supporting "NX" of Siemens AG (Germany). With this effect, the sales of Sigmetrix in FY 2017 grew 30% YoY and the operating income margin exceeded 20%.
The Company will expand IT solution sales from 3.4 billion yen in FY 2017 to 5.5 billion yen in FY 2020. In IT Solution Services, in addition to the existing 3-pillar strategies based on "security, IT asset management, and cloud solution," the Company will provide CAE software on a cloud-basis. Currently, provision of CAE software on a cloud-basis is not common, but the Company believes that it will become popular in the future.
In Data Solution, it will promote the Medical Visualization Business as a new business in addition to strengthening the on-going project to link AR (Augmented Reality), VR (Virtual Reality) and big data with CAE. The Medical Visualization Business is a national project in collaboration with Olympus, Showa University School of Medicine and Nagoya University, which oversees AI, and it is developing the image processing software for colonoscopy. (It is aiming at commercialization in 2020).
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