I am always looking for tips and trick and cross industry information that I can apply to the firms with whom I interact.  I attended several classes but two of them stood out.

The event opened with an introduction to the event by Kanwar Anand.  His disarming nature and candid speaking manner makes you think he is chatting with only you.  He presented some lessons learned by KETIV about the impact of the economy and how they could apply to each persons firm or business.  Very practical and a lot of the listeners shared many of the same struggles over the past 18 months or longer.

The first was Optimal CAD Management presented by Javier Chavez.  Javier talked about creating deployment images and how you could set many of the standard settings that a CAD Manager would want to unify as part of the deployment.  He covered the CUI, Profiles, standard config files,workspaces and much more.  My compliments to Javier.  I have heard him speak before and he always does a great job.  He answers questions well and takes those question that are specific to only one person offline after the class.  He stays on topic and reviews what was presented at the end.

Another good class was “The Convergence of BIM and Digital Prototyping”.  It was focused on sharing components created in Inventor with those using Revit.  Rob Cohee of Autodesk discussed what he thought the top attributes of quality BIM content from the Revit users point of view.

Some of the things he listed included:

• Conveying Design Intent
• Appropriate level of Detail
• Adequate  number of items in a family
• Flexible use of Parameters
• Industry or Category Standards
• Good performance
• Usability
• Rendering Quality

He went on to discuss how the BIM Interoperability in 2011 addresses many of these concerns.  There is not a lot out there on this subject that I could find.

Good presenter that interacted with the audience well.  He polled the attendees to see what they were using, industry they were in, what kind of tools they were using and then used this info to make his presentation better.

Here are a couple of links on  the Interoperability tools in Inventor:

http://saarc.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/index?siteID=5967151&id=14530772

Check out his Youtube video’s – http://www.youtube.com/user/robcohee

All in all a very good event.  And my good friends at KETIV just keep getting better and better. (full disclosure – I use to work  with them)

Many of these have been used by presenters

1. Ask a few questions to see who is in the audience. See who is there. Owners, Engineers, Architects, new users, seasoned vets or others. You need to know who you are talking with. I have seen this done and it helps for future interaction with the audience.

2. Adjust your presentation based on who they are and what they want to see. I have not seen too many presenters ask what the people want to see. It might work if the presenter really knows the subject.

3. Don’t give the canned demo. Nothing is worse that seeing someone read from a script or show a product that they really don’t know. Get to know your tools before you show them to others.

4. Put the good stuff up front. Don’t make me wait through the slide show or the little improvements. Show me the best – first.

5. Interact with the audience. Ask them questions and get feedback. Let them interrupt you (within reason). The more you engage the audience the better you are at hitting their curiosity.

6. Take specific questions offline. Answer every question briefly and directly and move the long answers to the end.

7. End on time. Make your presentation and end on time so that those who have not seen something worth chatting about can move on. The ones that are interested will stick around. And they are the ones you want to talk to anyway.

These suggestions may improve your presentations and demos. But the most important thing is to know your product.

Good intentions or not all of these presentations either hit the mark or they do not. Here are some things that I think make them miss the mark.

1. They are talking to the wrong audience. Presenters cannot control who comes to their presentation so they may be shooting at the wrong target. They ramble on about certain features or tools and seem to have no idea if those attending even care.

2. They show too many slides before getting to the demo. This burns me. If I have not decided if the tool they are showing is going to apply to my firm or my needs, I have little need to find out how long the company has been around, or how many offices they have or how many users they have. Get to the demo

3. They take too long to demo the good stuff. Ok… the demo finally started… but they take forever to get to the good stuff. Don’t save the best for last – put it up front and make me interested in the rest.

4. They answer the wrong questions. By providing more information than I am willing to sit through they sometimes give me more than I want on the wrong subject.

5. They talk too long on the wrong subject. What they think is “killer stuff” may not be what I think is great. Not that I am the only one that matters when they are speaking, but some topics wander around and get discussed too long.

Granted, it is tough to hit everyone’s sweet spot. And maybe my sweet spot is not what everyone else wants to see. But I have seen the things above consistently for a long time.

Now that you have selected the vendors that you should be managing, lets take a look at what I think is the first step to managing them… Creating or enhancing your relationship.

Like any relationships you have in life they need to be nurtured. Your relationships (like spouses, kids, neighbors, friends, etc) need attention from time to time to make sure that they are working well. Here are some steps that can be taken to create or improve your interactions with your vendors.

Step 1: Meet face to face as often as you can. If it is the initial meeting then make it in person. Most vendors would love to have some face time with you. They can better understand an environment that they have seen. You also can then put a face with a name. Take the time to show them around the office. Introduce them to some of your end users. Show them where the equipment or software that you are buying is used.

Step 2: Go to there office, training facility or demo room. Take the time to go see them on their turf. Get out of the office and make a road trip. Seeing them in their environment will show you what depth they have in personnel, what kind of support they will have in making you happy.

Step 3: Have them contact you once a month – even if nothing is going on. I make sure that I tell each of my vendors to check in with me on a monthly basis. It may only be a 2 minute call, but I request it. Then I watch to see which ones actually call me. Are they paying attention to me and my needs? They are trying to sell to me. It should be on their shoulders to contact me regularly.

Step 4: Give them permission to sell to you. Let them know that you want them to keep you informed. Don’t let them badger you to death. Just let them know that they should let you know about software or hardware that will really impact your operation.

Step 5: Set out the ground rules. Whenever I meet with a new vendor I set out the ground rules. I go over step 3 & 4 and other items that I think they should know about me and my operation.

Step 6: Keep them in line. Don’t let them access others in the firm without your permission. I don’t want my vendor trying to bend the ear of my CFO trying to convince him of some crazy ROI on some tool that I don’t even want to use. make sure that you don’t let them wander the halls. All interactions with the firm will be managed thru you.

Vendor management is something that you should add to your list as a CAD Manager. Here are some ideas about VM.

Identify which vendors to manage…

First make a list of all the vendors you use. Write down everyone, big and small. Then go through the list and sort it by purchasing dollar volumn.

Take the top five and add them to your list of vendors to manage.

Now sort them by software seat count.

Take the top 5 and add them to your list. Remove duplicates.

Now sort them by productivity enhancement. It may be a small tool that does one thing that save tons of time.

Take the top 5 and add them to your list. Remove duplicates.

Now sort the list with the troublemakers, non performers, price gougers, con artists and “used car” salesman at the top.

Take the top 5 and add them to your list. Remove duplicates.

This is a good starting point for which vendors you need to manage