PennEngineering is a global leader of industrial fastening solutions headquartered in Danboro, PA, with manufacturing operations in the U.S., China and Ireland. They make specialty fasteners, including nuts, studs, standoffs, panel fasteners and other hardware. The company was founded in 1942 with a single, revolutionary product: a self clinching fastener that secures to metal in one piece, without the need for additional loose hardware.
Fasteners are imperative to just about any item that requires industrial design and construction. They can be used in almost any application or market. Penn's target markets include consumer electronics, medical devices, marine and military projects. The company ha grown since it founding, expanding well beyond its mainstay self-clinching fastener, to include hundreds of different types of fasteners un the PEM®, SI®, ATLAS®, STICKSCREW®, PEMSERTER®, 3V® and QRP™ brands. Design engineers comprise the largest part of PennEngineering's target audience. They regularly request detailed specs that including CAD drawings to insert into their detailed and complex project designs.
CHALLENGE:
Improving the customer service process for fulfilling individual product spec requirements.
For almost 70 years, PennEngineering enjoyed steady, global growth, expanding through new product development and corporate acquisitions. The company enjoyed a steady stream of qualified leads coming in from many sources, including its presence on ThomasNet.com, through direct searches and through search engines.
Many of these requests included the need for part drawings and CAD models. The company was already using Thomas Industrial Network's Navigator platform, a web solution that allows customers to download CAD drawings and models or insert CAD models directly into their work as needed. However, the technology to obtain complete print or sales drawings for a cataloged product was not in place yet, and the engineer would have to contact PennEngineering's technical support group. This process was way too time consuming for both Penn's technical support team and the user. Penn sought a way to save time and costs for both parties.
"We've always wanted to meeting our customers' and prospects' needs quickly, but the process of providing product drawings was less than optimal," said PennEngineering Director of marketing Leon Attarian. "We needed a better, more efficient way to do this." Attarian sought a way to replicate the manual CAD process online, so his prospective customers could get the drawings they needed on their own terms, without requiring the precious time of PennEngineering's staff.
SOLUTION:
Thomas Industrial Network's new WebCAD technology gives PennEngineering's customers instant access to product drawings.
Marketing Director Attarian immediately knew where to find a solution. He'd collaborated with Thomas Industrial Network to better service his customers many times before, including in the 1990s, when sharing CAD drawings on CD was considered avant-garde. It made sense to turn to a trusted and proven partner, with whom they had already been working to drive qualified traffic to their website.
Working closely with a team of design engineers and experts at Thomas Industrial Network, Attarian implemented a significant upgrade to WebCAD, resulting in a much more powerful and robust solution. In addition to a complete library of 2D and 3D models and drawings, now prospective customers can also download sales drawings with complete product specifications. A search feature was also installed, which can drill to a specific product within PennEngineering's online catalog. Customers can quickly find precisely the part they are looking for out of thousands of unique items.
On the website, prospective buyers can search through thousands of technical drawings of PennEngineering's items by part name, category or part number. From there, engineers can self serve, compare choices side-by-side, find and download the exact parts they need in the 2D or 3D format they require, insert them into their designs right away, and immediately assess the fit. The technology is especially attractive because it is CAD vendor agnostic. Users can choose the CAD system of choice from a dropdown menu that includes AutoCAD, SolidWorks, Inventor and others. Then all they have to do is hit "go" to download a model of the part directly into their design.
RESULTS:
Record numbers of new business inquiries are handled efficiently and accurately
Since embracing ThomasNet's WebCAD, PennEngineering is logging more new business inquiries month after month, in the form of CAD downloads from their website. In fact, the volume of CAD downloads and inserts nearly doubled within seven months of implementation and continues to increase in volume. Company sales reps verify the technology's success, with a slew of new business leads since going live.
It's no wonder that customers enjoy the instant gratification of identifying just the right product drawing and the real-time ability to manipulate it to their needs. The technology instantly lets customers be more productive and has the added benefit of minimizing the risk of errors that can come from manual drawings. It has provided multiple efficiencies for PennEngineering as well. Thomas Industrial Network's WebCAD technology allows the manufacturer to provide consistent product information to all of its global customers in a common, branded format.
"No matter where you're working, CAD is a universal language for engineers," Attarian said. "It transcends language barriers and needs no translations."
This consistency helps the manufacturers protect their intellectual property from being explainted, which is a key concern, especially for leading brand manufacturers. Each CAD download comes with a detailed bill of materials that include everything from the manufacturers name to part specifications and measurements. For complex projects with multiple manufacturers and distributors with different roles, this simplifies the purchasing process and ensures everyone involved is able to facilitate the correct order accurately, the first time. It also ensures PennEngineering is credited as the source for the fastener.
Another important benefit to PennEngineering is that it frees up the manufacturer's highly skilled resources to focus on other strategic initiatives for clients. These initiatives might be driven by data about customer preferences and collect through WebCAD usage. The company can now measure the acceptance of new product introductions and identify the design trends through the number of downloads. They collect the name, title and company information of prospective buyers before permitting downloads, allowing them to build a new business development list.
"In addition to solving our customer service issues and helping us field a record number of inquiries, Thomas Industrial Network has given us an incredible database of information," Attarian said. "This will help us drive other initiatives at the company that require the use of this massive amount of product data specifications. With this tool, the data is already in place and easily accessible for other projects. All of this translates to helping us better compete and grow in the future."
Another key element of the upgrade to WebCAD is the ability for PennEngineering to push content to its authorized distributors. They, too, can incorporate WebCAD into their own websites, allowing htem to offer the same information Penn does within the framework of their sites. WebCAD also has an administrative tool that allows Attarian and his team to modify it and create customized reports to measure activity and effectiveness.
"We we add new products or modify specifications, the distributors will also benefit," Attarian said. "These changes will be made automatically to their PEM® product offerings as well. This also strengthens our global branding initiative."
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