In a previous installment, we discussed how the technical people, those that need to make a technology work, such as engineers, find that having your CAM integrated with your CAD is not as important as others may make it seem.
What about the size of the company, surely the larger the company the more important an integrated solution becomes, right? Well, actually that is not the case. The slide below, also credited to Cyon research, shows that larger companies, those over $2 billion in sales, actually find in integrated solution to be less important.
Larger companies care less about integrated products
One reason for this is simple. All products have strengths and weaknesses. No one product is best at everything. When you are a large corporation, with sales in the billions, even a small improvement in productivity in a different package can save millions of dollars. Often overshadowing the small amount of IT or other work involved.
Or in other words, it comes down to needs and wants. Companies Need to be productive and efficient to remain competitive. Although they may want a single solution, or a single vendor, the need to be competitive is most important. Innovation often comes from smaller companies doing certain things faster. It’s hard to fit that innovation into large full scale integrated products.
Software modules like Direct Translators have become so reliable that the ability to utilize different products, from different companies, to best meet the needs of different design and manufacturing divisions can now be commonplace.
What do you think? How large is your company? Is a fully integrated CAD CAM package a need or a want?
