Defense technology company, Anduril, is changing the way defense companies do business, using rapid prototyping to create custom skews of core product platforms for a wide range of customers.
With several core product platforms commercially available and many more in development in addition to rapid iteration fundamental to business success, Anduril was facing a documentation challenge.
Numerous flat PDF documents using screenshots from CAD software were fast becoming obsolete as products evolved. Worse, bottlenecks in the creation of the documents caused by dependency on mechanical engineers to provide those screenshots meant that updating these critical documents was an inefficient process.
With Envision, everyone from engineers to business development reps, can easily create documents which visualize the latest 3D CAD models, meaning no more delays in document creation and – crucially – no more stale data.
For Anduril’s business development reps, the ability to respond to product questions and requests from customers and prospects on the fly is critical. However, flat documents and screenshots are highly restrictive, limiting the responsiveness and precision of key sales communication.
Envision gives sales and business development teams the ability to show customers and prospects the entire picture by letting them pop 3D product models out of their sales documents and manipulate them so the audience can see exactly what they need to.
And with .evdocs published to the cloud, customers and prospects can interact with product models themselves (with access restrictions fully managed, of course). They can view models from any angle, and even isolate or hide individual components.
“This is what gets customers excited, it helps us to close deals, and it’s part of what makes us look very different from a traditional defense technology company.”
For Anduril, speed to market is everything and they are quick to seize on any advantage in a competitive marketplace.
“The advent of more rapid prototyping, soft tooling, 3D printing and other technologies makes it possible to change products in the early stages without massive financial impact. It’s obvious that this is the direction in which hardware manufacturing is going and Canvas Envision can support the new types of business models which will arise naturally out of these changes.