Skepticism is to be expected in people considering becoming customers of Capital. Software vendors’ promises are regrettably things many software vendors fail to keep. That’s the source of an inclination to mistrust. Succeeding in overcoming this barrier means proving that with Mentor promises made will be kept.
Justifiable mistrust – things to watch out for.
Electrical design tool implementation project “horror stories” are figuratively not literally creepy unless they are scope creepy. Watch out for a lack of a plan, a poor plan, or a plan which is not tailored to your specific needs as a customer. That’s how it starts. Starting off a deployment project exposed to risks in this way it will be no surprise if your tool vendor has to be summoned for a crisis meeting some time later. And if there is not a recurring series of meetings at which concerns can be aired. That’s another warning sign.
So, when you find as a customer you opening up insights into your business to software partners who are not overly interested it may be frustrating. If those people furthermore want to talk about something else other than your issues, then you may be dealing with a supplier you should consider changing.
Who could be impervious to this salesman’s patter?
Reciprocity and reputation
When we define a project to deploy Capital we ask customers to assign appropriately experienced people, with relevant skills for a requisite time. If you are assigned to you inexperienced staff who are part-time on your project, distracted by alternative commitments to other customers you’d have reason to complain. Because that’s what an unreliable software tools partner would do.
Sometimes the past performance of vendors that purport to compete with Capital is a difficult act to follow. I have seen demonstration of capability in Capital dismissed as “too good to be true, therefore it must not be true” based on tough lessons of previous disappointments. Capital has tremendously rich functionality as-installed and with adjustment of options/preferences etc. more functional repertoire is revealed. Also there is very good extensibility potential beyond the “out of the box” behaviors where customers really do need to go in the direction of customizing.
It is all too commonplace for sales prospects and new customers to assume problems will attend using the functionality which actually never will. Why are they so pessimistic? Again what I have found is that the memory of other software vendors’ consulting and API plugin work being disappointing. Cost overruns happening, custom software precluding a path to upgrading/updating experience leads to a “once bitten, twice shy” reaction.
Let me just run through a few basic functional highlights of Capital which I have seen greeted with flat out disbelief although there are customers’ world-wide who do this in the Capital tools every day.
- Cavity component automated selection and validation for a 500 wire harness on 120 derivative variations of a design in minutes on a standard laptop PC like the one I’m writing this blog post on. As an encore a manufacturing process model-based cost analysis of the same 120 complex BoM data set in about half an hour.
- Generation of wiring diagrams from a platform topological design for a global car’s one continent model all variations preparing outputs for service documentation in one working week using one engineer. Previously this took between four and five weeks using six people drafting diagrams
- Fuse and wire size validation reporting for an entire vehicle by sweep across one consolidated design
- Just under 50% reduction in cycle time to prepare a harness design for manufacturing assembly at the first pilot effort.
It is normal when we demonstrate the software capable of these impressive productivity gains for people to be skeptical and need to be stepped through exactly how it works for their own circumstances. In steps, you can build up your knowledge of how the tools work, how they work with your data and in the context of your design processes. That will encourage your confidence and motivate you as you gather from evidence of the fit to your needs a compelling, tangible, quantifiable business case.
Credibility
The quality of the evidence you pass on for review impacts the quality of the decision you make to go or not go with new software tools. The test is more severe for Mentor when previous vendors have disappointed you. That’s normal. Even when disappointment from previous vendors is years in the past, the memory still hurts. I have to say that in this team I am happy to be part of, we are comfortable with being held to a high standard. We have very high standards too as you would expect of people with ambition to stay best in class in what they do.
A call back from your suitor is polite after you were taken out to dinner.
Mistrust is something that when I see it is disappointing, because it usually means prior experience with another vendor went bad. There’s a need to start rebuilding confidence before moving on to tackle the business and engineering process issues Capital software helps so well with. Just a little extra time – and maybe it was for the best after all. A happy relationship with a best in class vendor is worth waiting for.