The present and the future of Tekla and Trimble

In May 2011, Tekla’s future opened up to new potential with the announcement of Trimble’s offer to acquire Tekla. Now, approximately half a year after Tekla became part of Trimble, we can look back on the first steps and catch a glimpse of Tekla’s future.

Smooth combination under way

“After some confusion at the very beginning, our integration is moving along very smoothly,” says Risto Räty, Executive Vice President of Tekla. “Our priorities are clear. The first step has involved aligning our business processes with those of Trimble’s. As we are a part of a listed company based in the US, we have shifted to the US GAAP accounting standards, and it has increased our workload. There is still some work to be done, but overall, I can say that we are business compatible.” At the moment, the two companies are moving on to working on business synergies and product development roadmaps.

Räty points out that apart from the temporary workload, the integration has gone very well. Considering the past collaboration between Trimble and Tekla, this was the expectation. “There have been no cultural conflicts. We see strong synergies that match the expectations of both parties,” Räty says.

Positive outlook for Tekla’s customers

The benefits of the integration for Tekla’s customers are taking shape. “Especially larger customers appreciate the comprehensive solution of the software provider. With Trimble, our solution will expand and grow more credible, which will benefit our new and growing customer segment in particular, the contractor segment. Overall, our customers see that they are being served at least as well as before,” says Räty. “Parts of our solution will not disappear, and our focus has not changed. Rather, with Trimble, we have more resources to develop our software further.”

The future of Tekla

Tekla is the largest software business company among the Trimble companies, and according to Risto Räty, it has and will have a significant role in the organisation. “As Trimble has no prior software businesses of this size, we provide know-how and experience of the international software business. Strategically, it is important to Trimble. A second strategic focus is BIM, and we are of course an integral element of Trimble’s BIM portfolio.”

Rowecord wins Steel category in Tekla Global BIM Awards 2011

Manskun Rasti (Skanska Finland head office) is the winner of the BIM category in the Tekla Global BIM awards 2011. A jury of international experts chose the winners for each category and Skanska’s project Manskun Rasti was acknowledged for the most complete use of BIM from the beginning to the end of the project. Among other things, extensive use of the BIM model and collaboration between project parties were praised, as well as the use of IFC for combining the models.

The winner of the Steel category is the Peace Bridge located in Derry, Northern Ireland, modelled by Rowecord Engineering. The Peace Bridge stands out for its shape and complex geometry. Urban Superway, a highly complex engineering road construction project in Southern Australia by Bianco Precast, was selected as the winner of the Concrete category. The Holmenkollen Ski Jump in Norway by Cowi and Lecor Stålteknik received a special recognition from the jury. The winner of the public voting was the Jaypee Nigrie Super Thermal Power project by L&T MHI Boilers in India.

Read more about the Tekla Global BIM Awards 2011 winners on the model competition website.

Tekla BIMsight 1.3 released

Tekla BIMsight version 1.3 was released on October 27 and the product is still free! Version 1.3 continues to offer new tools to make design coordination more effective. The biggest new features in version 1.3 are color management, note sharing, support for layers, and support for different units. Read more from the release notes.

You can also read reviews about the product here.

Make sure you remember to update to the latest version so you can enjoy all the new features!

Tekla BIMsight wins Gold Batimat innovation award 2011

Tekla's software solution for model-based construction collaboration was selected as the most innovative product for the construction industry at the Batimat exhibition in France. With more than 2700 exhibitors and over half a million visitors, Batimat is one of the biggest construction exhibitions in the world.

Read more on our website.

Legal proceedings in suspected software theft

Tekla has launched legal proceedings against steel detailing company VM Informatics in connection with wide-scale software piracy, following a raid on VM Informatics’ offices in New Delhi, India. Together with ITCA investigators and police, Tekla discovered that VM Informatics was knowingly using unlicensed Tekla software. During the raid the company was found to have eight illegal copies of Tekla Structures installed and in use on its computers.

VM Informatics faces prosecution in the High Court of New Delhi for unlawful, unlicensed use of Tekla software and has stood trial at the end of November 2011. “This investigation and the evidence it uncovered represents a significant victory against piracy in the Indian sub-continent.” says André Corniere, director of the steel segment. “Along with piracy weakening the competitive strength of legitimate customers, we are also investing a great deal of resources each year to improve Tekla’s product, which is why it’s important that those who profit from illegally using our software are identified and prosecuted.”

Software piracy is a major concern for commercial software developers, retailers, and distributors worldwide. Software pirates not only survive by cheating software suppliers of their intellectual property but also create hostile market competition for licensed customers. Tekla is committed to ensuring the protection of its software users' rights, Tekla's rights, and the rights of other software suppliers. This is done by allocating resources to global anti-piracy campaigns and tracking down pirates and other parties involved in making or distributing illegal copies of Tekla software in partnership with Business Software Alliance (BSA) and IT Compliance Association (ITCA).

Customers say: Tekla software increases quality of work

The annual Tekla Building & Construction customer satisfaction survey was conducted again. Thanks to everybody who participated and gave feedback! In total we received 1,826 responses, for response rate of 10.6%. Both Tekla Structures software users as well as purchase decision makers gave valuable feedback about different topics, such as communication with Tekla and the business benefits gained by using Tekla software.

The overall satisfaction with Tekla is good: 90.1% of customers are very or somewhat satisfied and the number of very satisfied respondents has grown from last year.

“I personally love Tekla, I am proud to be a Tekla Admin at my company.”

Respondents find that the most important business benefit of using Tekla software is the increased quality of work. They also feel that Tekla software saves time and improves their company’s processes. These business benefits were the same ones mentioned in the 2010 survey as well.

“Tekla software helps the customer to do innovative things and saves time, all of which eventually makes the company more profitable.”

Technical support has been the most used communication channel during the last 12 months. When asked about satisfaction with Tekla’s communication channels, respondents are most satisfied with face-to-face meetings and consultation, events, technical support and training. All channels get quite a good rating. However, Tekla Extranet, social media and Tekla Website didn’t get as good results, but the good news is that we are currently working hard to create better online solutions for our customers in these areas.

The results of the survey have already been distributed at Tekla headquarters, area offices and resellers so that they can do local result analysis and prepare action plans based on the feedback.

Tekla Structures Deployment User Study

Tekla wants to learn more about your experiences in taking a new version of Tekla Structures into use: what are your reasons for upgrading, what kind of version information is valuable to you, how do you distribute the software in your company and what are your thoughts on downloading the version. Your input will help us enhance the distribution process of Tekla Structures.

Please answer this survey and share your experience in taking a new Tekla Structures version into use. Answering the survey will take about 15 minutes. The survey will be open until January 2, 2012.

Link to survey and different language versions.

User Feedback Program

Along with Tekla becoming part of Trimble, beta testing became history. This fall, Tekla has introduced a new concept for collecting feedback for the development of Tekla software: the User Feedback Program.

The scope of the User Feedback Program is more wide-ranging than traditional beta testing activities: in addition to software testing, the User Feedback Program includes a user survey about deploying Tekla Structures, as well as more focused usability studies.

During November and December, dozens of customers have put the software to the test and given their feedback and suggestions for improvement in the User Feedback Program. “We have received really valuable feedback. We have used the Tekla Extranet discussion forum as the main feedback channel, and I think this kind of a transparent channel encourages the participants to be even more active,” says Kanae Kubota, the project manager of the User Feedback Program.

The User Feedback Program will last until the end of 2011, but a new program is starting up next spring.

Tekla UK Christmas opening hours