A discussion on how consumers within the B2C market are driving the expectations of engineers within the B2B world, and how many manufacturing companies need to improve to meet these expectations or risk loosing market share. Many leading manufactures that have realized this are now and are looking to drive increased online lead generation and sales.

1. E
ngineers are also consumers. This
inescapable fact was not so important in
times gone by when engineers would specify
components either direct from individual suppliers
or from weighty catalogues that were protectively
filed on a shelf above the drawing board.
While the web has made the whole research,
specification and purchasing process significantly
quicker, the online business experience of the
engineer has fallen well short of the consumer
experience. And an additional factor is that mobile
devices and the communications infrastructure
might, we complain, make us ‘always at work’,
there is also an element of us also being ‘always a
consumer’.
Consequently, the same people who can
download a remastered prog rock album (we are
talking about engineers here!) in a couple of clicks
are starting to expect this level of functionality
within their CAD environment. But, according to
Colin Johnson, managing director of CADENAS
Solutions UK, expectations are not being met. He
said: “What I find with UK suppliers websites is
that they don’t really quite measure up to the
expectations that we have as consumers. What I
think manufacturers [suppliers] need to realise is
they should be looking at their own websites as if
they were the engineer. There is a subtle difference
- as consumers we find and research information
through choice. For engineers, it is their job.”
As a trend, despite the slow take up in some
quarters that Johnson describes, it would appear
inevitable that online information will be required to
be instantly available. “Some of the distributors
are already catching on and realising they need
some form of an e-shop type functionality or to at
least be able to select and choose the right
information on a product,” said Johnson.
But is that going far enough? Is it supplying
what engineers actually need? Not so according to
Johnson: “When you think about an engineer who
is researching and designing, most now use a 3D
CAD tool. And when they’re researching, they
need to be able to configure, tailor and select and
download content in 3D, the reason being because
they want to be able to incorporate that into their
designs. Without that 3D content, they have to
remodel it themselves from the data sheets. It is
time they don’t have.”
The notion of having 3D files available to email
when engineers ask, as many companies do,
shows a lack of understanding of how engineers
are developing their designs, claims Johnson. “By
the time he gets to picking up the phone and
speaking to a company, he’s a long way down the
sales cycle already; he’s done a large proportion of
his research. Actually, if you haven’t got the tools
and the 3D content already on your website, he’s
probably moved on to a competitor who already
has.” The argument follows that the decision to use
a component is made much earlier in the design
process and that decision may well be influenced
by the ready availability of a 3D CAD file.
Consumersdriveengineers
expectations
The way that engineers are specifying components is undergoing a rapid and radical transformation.
www.cadenas.co.uk
Colin Johnson, managing
director of CADENAS
Solutions UK

2. VISION
2O2O
According to a survey by CADENAS if an
engineer was looking for a particular product and it
wasn’t available in 3D format, 75% said they
would choose an alternative supplier. In coming
years that last figure is only go to rise. Another
interesting figure is that 87% of engineers, who
download the 3D CAD of a part, end up purchasing
it and including it in their final design.
It is a business need that CADENAS
endeavours to satisfy with its online catalogue that
features the 3D CAD files from around 700
suppliers. Although new to the UK the company
has actually been around since 1992, launching its
first Electronic Product Catalog three years later
and in 2014 achieved 100,000,000 CAD file
downloads, now running at a rate of 15 million
downloads a month. All main 3D (and 2D) file
formats are supported including Creo, Inventor, NX
and Solidworks, and this includes all previous
versions not just the current one.
Johnson claims that this immediate availability
of useable models supports another emerging
trend – that of customisation. It is something that
consumers are increasingly looking for, possibly as
simple as changes of colour or materials, but again
it applies to engineers who are looking to tweak
performance for their customers. “In the design
environment the trend is more and more, to have
the ability to configure and customise designs
online. This is where we can help, where it’s not a
unique design, with the ability to configure options
and variants to tailor the actual end product.”
This is not just relating to individual parts but
can be applied to a whole system. “The engineer
can provide the requirements of the application,”
said Johnson “We can look at all the options and
variants and within minutes you can get full bill of
materials, full quotation online price and the actual
PDF custom quotation.”
Having immediate and free access to 3D CAD
files is a progressing and inevitable trend. It is hard
to imagine any area of information provision where
such a trend is not replicated as that consumer
expectation rapidly filters through to the business
and technical domains. There are obvious big
advantages for the engineer, but are there
disadvantages as well? Is there a risk that
expertise is undermined or lost. Often the supplier
has more to offer than just products, they provide
invaluable application experience and knowledge.
“Absolutely, there will always be a place for
that face-to-face customer interaction,” added
Johnson. “In more complex design projects then
the partnership approach between engineer and
suppliers can be critical to success. But even in
these cases, when the relationship is set up
engineers can use a system like ours for
repurchasing or when they are working on
fundamentally the same product but making small
differences to it when they no longer require that
personal touch.”
A platform such as CADENAS represents a
breakthrough in the way that the business world
has caught up with the faster moving consumer
sector, but having got there we are now more likely
to see B2B and B2C developing more in parallel.
Johnson said: “For example, I see in the future the
ability to combine both images and material
information and use that in order to search and
interrogate catalogues. So not only will you type in
your text, you combine both a 3D scan with
material information that you’ve picked up, and you
aggregate that together to be able to search.”
Johnson concluded: “If I could pick one trend
for engineers it is that they can now realistically
expect their expectations to be realised.”
3d cad
CADENAS Solutions UK
CADENAS is a leading software manufacturer in the areas
Strategic Parts Management and parts reduction
(PARTsolutions) as well as Electronic Product Catalogs
(eCATALOGsolutions). With its customised software solutions
the company acts as a link between component
manufacturers and their products, and the buyers.
With its 300 employees in 17 locations worldwide, the name
CADENAS (Spanish for ‘chains’) has stood for success,
creativity, support, and process optimisation since 1992.
25,3 %
74,7 %
No
Yes
Will you choose one supplier over
another because they have 3D
CAD data for you to download?
86,6 %
11,1 %
2,3 %
Yes
No
Indifferent
When you download a 3D CAD
part into your design will this part
be purchased?