How Do You Justify Using a CAD Manager to Your Senior Management Team?

Having worked in CAD design for many years, we have had many conversations with clients who are having to justify their request for a CAD Manager to their senior management team. There has been some resistance to this position as a lot of people think of CAD management as an overhead, and so feel that cutting it is an easy way to save money. However, we cannot stress enough how important this position is, how much business sense it makes and why it is vital that this CAD job is preserved. In this article, we will give you a brief overview of the value of CAD management so that if you are struggling to sell the position to your bosses, you have some conversation starters to go in with.

Prevent Problems

The management of design is a crucial process for any business as a good CAD manager will be able to help you prevent problems before they occur, rather than having to run around and fix them after they happen. A CAD manager will work as an in-house consultant who will be able to take a good look at your existing CAD processes and point out everything that isn’t working. They can then produce a plan to speed up project completion, cut the amount of waste, do more with your existing staff and therefore increase customer satisfaction.

We know from experience that many companies go months without checking their CAD systems, and this can mean that when something goes wrong, it can be quite expensive and cause problems within the organisation. A CAD manager will carry out regular checks of the design CAD system which will save you money and time in the long run.

Deal with Challenges

A CAD manager has a million, and one task to deal with that are quite complex, but this can take the heat of someone else in this company. For example, CAD Managers should deal with 2D CAD Drafting, 3D Modelling, data management, rendering, and information exchange. If you don’t understand all of these complex tasks, then your CAD designer can help you to do that and also advise you on what might be best for your company.

Cloud computing is the buzz word of the moment, and many CAD tools and applications are now offered through a SaaS (software as a service) model which means they are accessed via the internet. The benefits of these applications are that they are more affordable to maintain and can support remote workers more easily. Getting your CAD manager involved in your cloud-computing strategy right from the beginning will save you lots of problems later

Savings

Most people reading this article will probably consider all the things we have already talked about as overheads. Most companies will, therefore, be telling their CAD manager to cut overheads. If you are thinking along these lines then perhaps you would be better looking at it from another angle. Investing in new CAD software and adopting new technologies such as cloud computing and BIM using your well-trained CAD workforce will save you money in the long run, so you need to work with your CAD team to make this happen.

As stated before, any manager worth their salt will be able to tell you where there are inefficiencies within your company and how you can best fix them. They should be able to suggest a way to get more done in fewer hours but to do that they will probably need to put new procedures, new standards and new ways of working in place. The senior management team can help them by enforcing the proper use of procedures and standards at the start of every project, in order to ensure there are fewer errors at the end of the project and so less reworking needed. This is a fantastic way to show what a positive effect a CAD manager can have on your business and how worthwhile the overhead actually is.

In our experience, companies that have CAD managers on board, and have a proactive plan end up making fewer errors, have less reworks to do, and get more from each employee than those companies that don’t. Trying to save on overheads by cutting the position of CAD manager may save you some money in the short term certainly, but you will end up paying out more, in the long run, fixing the problems that your manager could have prevented.

Your CAD manager will probably turn into one of your greatest allies when it comes to growing your business. Spend some time with them to show them how their efforts can help you to save money, and offer them all the support they need to become a better manager. The time you spend doing this will boost your bottom line results immensely and more than justify the original outlay.

If you want to talk to an experienced CAD company about better ways your company can do this, how your users can learn more, how to coordinate your vendors, how to better communicate with your clients and how CAD can enhance your operational efficiency, then please give us a call. You can call us on 0161 427 0348 if you are based in the UK or +971 4 556 1988 in the UAE. Or just send us an email to office@thecadroom.com