May 17 Webinar: The Economic Impact of Altium 365

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

I recently spoke with Fabian Winkler, product marketing manager for Altium 365. He and guest speaker Casey Sirotnak of Forrester are co-hosting a free webinar on May 17 titled “Unveil the Total Economic Impact of Altium 365.” The webinar will include data from a Forrester case study that examined the economic benefits of using the Altium 365 environment, such as the number of hours saved per designer per year. I asked Fabian to discuss the focus of the webinar, who should attend, and some of the benefits of this environment that allows ECAD and MCAD engineers to collaborate seamlessly. 

Andy Shaughnessy: Fabian, how are you doing? Nice to meet you, even virtually. 

Fabian Winkler: Nice to meet you, too. And I am fine. Glad to be here. 

Shaughnessy: I understand you're presenting a webinar on Wednesday, May 17, that focuses on the economic benefits of Altium 365. What are some of the points you’re going to cover in the webinar? 

Winkler: Our guest speaker Casey Sirotnak will present the results from the Forrester study. For example, she will discuss how Altium 365 provides a high return on investment, as well as the net present value and where these numbers are coming from. And I will give a short overview about the Altium 365 platform, with two concrete examples of how Altium 365 can save you a lot of time. And last but not least, I will also discuss two new upcoming features for this platform. 

Shaughnessy: What are a few of the advantages of using Altium 365? 

Winkler: One example is Altium MCAD CoDesigner. With CoDesigner you can collaborate with your MCAD team. The normal way to do this is to export your PCB design from Altium Designer, then transfer it somehow to your MCAD colleague, who has to import it into his tool of choice, such as SolidWorks. Then he would integrate it into his model.  

In Altium 365, it’s a lot easier. The mechanical engineer can just open the panel in CoDesigner, and then enter his comments directly. The MCAD engineer can just pull the report onto his side without getting out of his workflow—just open it and import it. The benefit here is that design data will now be imported natively. And that allows them to do several things. For example, the MCAD engineer can add cut-outs to the box, or he can add keep-out areas, or he can even move critical components such as connectors which have to match what is aligned with the front panel. In the end, he can just push it back to the ECAD engineer to complete the electrical design. This way, both worlds can work together without getting out of their tools. 

Shaughnessy: Shifting gears, what are some of the things that you all learned from this Forrester study?  

Winkler: It’s easy for me to show our customers how they can benefit from Altium 365. But it's very difficult to describe the benefits by the numbers; how much time are customers actually saving with Altium 365? How much are we getting back from using astrophysics labs? This is where the Forrester study helped us to understand these numbers.  

For example, as we explain in our email invitation for the webinar, you can save 159 hours per designer from design cycle efficiencies in the first year, and 65% fewer designs require alternative component sourcing. Plus, you can save 50 hours per design annually with a more effective production cycle. I think these are some pretty impressive numbers, especially if you think about 159 hours saved per designer per year. If you calculate this with a 40-hour week, you’re basically saving one month of work. 

Shaughnessy: And these savings are primarily because you don't have to keep jumping from the ECAD environment into a separate MCAD environment, right?  

Winkler: Yes, ECAD and MCAD have the opportunity to work together in one environment. Also, the procurement team can take a look at the BOMs, and you also have the ability to include supply chain information. So everyone can see if a component is obsolete or not recommended for your design, or it’s just not in stock. And your procurement team can just place a comment in the web viewer , and it will show up in both Altium Designer and Altium 365 for the design team. 

Shaughnessy: After the whole supply chain fiasco during the last couple of years, being able to access supply chain information while you’re working in this platform is a definite benefit. 

Winkler: Yes, and we continue to make investments into the supply chain area. I still think this topic will have a big impact on infrastructure as well. Because no one wants to experience that supply chain pain again. We are improving this, and we will tease some of the upcoming new features in the webinar. 

Also, many of us began working from home during the pandemic. And with Altium 365, you have all of your design files and your library in one place. And you can easily access this area without needing a VPN. And due to our commenting features, you can work together even if you're not in the same room, because you can also use comments for review purposes.  

Shaughnessy: Your co-presenter, Casey, is the project lead at Forrester. I see that she specializes in studying TEI, total economic impact. Did she conduct this case study?  

Winkler: Yes. Here is the process: First, Forrester interviewed five of our customers. And from these five customers, they created a custom composite company, basically mixing together data from these five customers to represent our customers. For that custom composite company, Forrester was able to figure out the benefits, the cost savings, and much more, from using Altium 365. 

Shaughnessy: It sounds interesting. So, who is your target audience for this webinar? Who should attend? 

Winkler: Basically, everyone from electronic designers and team managers to executive management and anyone else who is involved in designing electronic products, such as your procurement team. Manager will learn about time savings and cost savings from increased productivity, and designers will learn how they can improve their workflow, how they can make their work easier, and how to collaborate better with their ECAD or MCAD coworkers. 

Shaughnessy: What would you say is the main takeaway from this webinar? 

Winkler: The main takeaway would be, of course, that you should try Altium 365. Give it a try. It can make your work easier and save you a lot of time. The collaboration is a lot more fluid, so that you have a real workflow process without going out of your tool. 

Shaughnessy: Thanks for speaking with me, Fabian. 

Winkler: Thank you, Andy.

Registration information for the event can be found at altium.com/webinars.