At our recent ENOVIA Product Strategy Forum event at the DSCC 2011 conference, we discussed an idea to just deliver a license limited to searching for objects, viewing object properties, downloading checked in files, and/or navigating the bill-of-material.  This product would be a lower cost alternative to the existing ENOVIA Live Collaboration (CPF) license.  When we talk about providing a reduced capability set with our customers, the topic of “casual” users also often comes up.  Basically, the term “casual” implies that the user’s time connected to the ENOVIA system will be limited in some manner regardless of what capabilities are provided to the user.  In other words, it is a term that I often refer to as controlling “frequency of use”.  However, there are many opinions of what “casual” use should actually mean.

For a CATIA designer, a large portion of their workday is spent in front of their workstation actually using CATIA.  So, for a CAD author, “full” usage may mean 30 hours per week, while casual usage is less than 10 hours per week.

However, for our collaborative business processes for non-designers, the targeted roles seldom use ENOVIA during the majority of their workday.  For instance, even the most engaged project managers probably spend only 10-15 hours per week managing their projects with ENOVIA Program Central, checking project deliverables, and updating status.  So, in this case, what should the casual definition be?  I believe that similar conclusions can be made for product managers using ENOVIA Requirements Central or even product engineers managing the bill-of-material with ENOVIA Engineering Central.

I believe casual usage gets even more limited for the users in the company that just need to search ENOVIA to find some information.  Typically, these users are in and out in less than 5-10 minutes probably 10-20 times per week at most.  If this assumption is correct, then “full usage” would be expected to be 3 to 4 hours per week.  If so, what would casual usage for this scenario have to be?

As always, I am really looking for your opinions on this topic.  Do you also feel that there is lower “casual” usage for the non-designer roles, or can a single definition really apply?  It is important to reach a common consensus of what casual usage really means for different roles in the enterprise.  Your feedback will be valuable in understanding all dimensions of this problem.

Thanks for your time.