John Skinner, Digabit’s CTO, offers a forecast of the latest technology driving innovations in Documoto including eCommerce functionality, channel service and publishing.
2. Who has ordered from Amazon in the last
year?
Let’s take a poll
3. Customers today expect an effortless experience
Why is there no Amazon in Manufacturing,
that identifies my needs and offers
convenience at fair prices?
4.
5.
6. Amazon is an effortless experience, but it’s designed to
sell widgets, not complicated equipment parts
A typical billion dollar equipment manufacturer will
maintain hundreds of thousands to millions of parts.
Supply availability, combined with change, and improvements
introduces complexity in finding the “right” part the first time.
Parts Sales for Equipment Manufacturing
7. Getting to the Effortless Experience
www.digabit.com7
Authoring
Automation and
Accuracy
Combining PLM, ERP and
Services data seamlessly
3D visual display
Channel Service
Driving Channel
Adoption
Increased dealer
management system
integration
Leveraging telematics and
IoT to provide proactive
service
Selling
Amazon-like Shopping
Convenient, easy to use
Combining accessories
and complex parts in an
easy checkout
8. Efficient
Authoring
A parts book isn’t just about callouts and diagrams
Integration with the most common PLM software
Retrieval of service information at the part level
Workflow support
Native DITA support for non parts information such as Owners
Manuals
9. Efficient Authoring
You don’t design in 2 dimensions, why author that way?
True 3D publishing without the CAD licenses
More accurate 2D exploded diagrams for printing
10. Effortless Service Channeling
Dealer Management System (DMS) integrations
Real-time inventory analysis for the manufacturer
Real-time pricing
Integrated with service tickets and invoicing
13. Effortless Service Channeling
Leverage Telematics and IoT
• A machine reaches 200 hours of service:
• Based on that, the FSRs and dealers are sent the needed
service bulletins
• Service kits have been added to a new shopping cart
• External systems are notified of the milestone
• Dealers can now proactively notify their customers of
needed service
14. Effortless Selling
Sell parts on your website and fulfill through your dealers
Shop-a-tron replacement
Moto Anywhere
• Light weight web control
• Simplified parts search tool
• Robust catalog APIs
Embed on a dealer’s website for local sales
15. Effortless Selling
Order Management
• Confirmation email for status changing of an order
• Order history and status (with ability to duplicate a past order,
mark as processing, shipped, etc. by Admins)
• API to support management (delete order, mark as
processed, shipped)
16. Effortless Selling
Guest checkout with dealer funneling
Wear parts, consumables, accessories and whole-good
sales
• Single page view to support “widget” sales
• Variations of a product (color, size, etc.)
• Multiple image views
• Specification sections
• Reviews
17. Effortless Selling
Dynamic checkout experience
Ability to add dropdowns, lists, boolean selections as part of
checkout
Example: “Order Type: Standard, Rushed”
Example: “Terms: Net 60, Credit Card”
Integrations
Payment gateways
Shipping and taxation
Promotion management
Why?
Its easy to find what I need.
It steps me through the process of ordering widgets like an iphone case.
It remembers my buying habits, my addresses, my billing preferences.
It is effortless.
Amazon makes
In a nutshell, THAT is a little more simplistic than
that
Amazon is effortless. But its designed for widgets.
You all know better than I that the creation, distribution and maintenance of parts catalogs for your equipment is challenging.
You have hundreds of thousands of parts that change suppliers and configurations.
Likewise your engineers are busy improving design.
To make matters even more challenging, its difficult to impossible to follow the equipment through it’s lifecycle to understand it’s “as-maintained” state
But just because your selling environment isnt as simple as Amazon’s, doesn’t mean we can’t make great strides in becoming effortless.
In 2016 we are going to focus on three components of our product line:
Authoring: Making it easier to create, distribute and maintain content
Channel Service: Enabling efficient selling regardless of whether you sell through a dealer network or direct to consumers.
Over the years Digabit has invested millions of dollars in our authoring suite to help manufacturers build and maintain service bills of materials with accurate drawings.
Examples of these investments include our web service APIS that enable your IT groups to build custom publishing automations.
Auto Hotpointing linking the BOM to the drawings, and Advanced part supersessions based on tags.
Now Digabit is taking these advancements even further with integrations into the most popular PLM and PDM systems, as well hooks into CMS systems.
As Engineering Change Notices (ECNS) are approved, Documoto will take feeds from the PLM systems such as Windchill, Team Center, ePDM and automatically build or update catalogs based on business rules you create.
Is your Publishing team building advanced owners manuals with structured content via tools such as Oxygen or Xmetal? Documoto will natively support DITA topics and automated publishing of that content
CAD is moving to the cloud. There are several companies that revolutionizing CAD development with the power of cloud computing. An example of that is OnShape. Have you heard of them? They recently received $80mm in funding. They were started by some of the original engineers from Solid Works. They offer full CAD modeling through a browser and smart phone.
With new technology changes, publishers no longer need to rely on expensive engineering talent to build exploded views for printing. They can now build aftermarket catalogs with service level views of your assemblies without CAD licenses or expensive equipment
Currently documoto supports real-time inventory and tiered pricing structures via integration with the Equipment manufacturer’s erp system. But, the parts person behind the counter at your local dealer wants a parts lookup system that is able to also show them their warehouse stock and location.
When the service tech is performing a work order, he wants the parts look up system to automatically feed the order.
When the person behind the counter is building an invoice, he/she wants a new invoice to be created automatically from the picklist.
Increasing our DMS integrations ensures the dealer channel has all of the information they need to do their jobs and helps you the manufacturer build the effortless buying experience.
I am in the midst of a never ending remodel of my house. With that, I have become intimate with the internet of things.
My thermastats recognize when I come home, and change temperatures in each of the rooms I frequent the most. They anticipate my moves.
When my neighbor needs to borrow a tool, or more likely my kids forget something, My garage doors can be opened with my phone.
I can even preheat my oven from my work computer.
Just as the Internet of things is becoming common in our consumer lives, so is telematics in the equipment manufacturing space
How many of you are leveraging Telematics in your equipment now?
Can you describe the initiatives you are doing?
Just how big is IoT becoming?
Amazon has announced its largest expenditure in IT infrastructure since their advent of Amazon Web Services. Its called AWS IoT and its designed for manufacturers to connect their equipment to applications.
With the advent of telematics and IoT, proactive service is now achievable!
We are building a stock pool delivery network that will allow your customers to buy parts from your websites and have them fulfilled through the dealer channel.
In the day of convenient ecommerce, where we take order management for granted, manufacturing has yet to catch up. This is primarily because there is no efficient intermediary between your erp system and the public web. Our order management section of the ecommerce module will correct that.
How many of you offer your customers the ability to purchase parts via a credit card either online or via the phone?
For those that have customers that not only purchase via PO, but also via credit card, we will integrate with the most common gateways
We all know shipping calculation can be tricky. Calculating shipping on a 300 pound hydraulic boom is a bit harder than an iphone case. Often, manufacturers use the expertise of “Bob and Sue” to help determine costs. We will help you automate that.
For those customers without telematics, we will create a simple, inuitive experience that based on input from them such as serial number, mileage, hours used, geographical information will gather the necessary documentation and spare kits accordingly.
How many of you have attempted to repair a piece of equipment and have gotten frustrated by poorly designed 2d manuals?
Got two gears that look the same, have the same general size, but one has a ridge on the back that is not easily seen via a drawing?
Technology advancements allow us to stream lightweight, secure 3D images without the need for engineering level hardware at your customer site
Before I pass the podium over to Eric to show you some of the ecommerce work, I wanted to talk a bit about mobile.
How many of you have initiatives around mobile devices planned or in progress?
Are they commerce related? Service related?