The key to scaling up a 3D printing service: syncing engineering, sales and clients

In 2017, MakerOS, based between New York City and Detroit, launched its version 1.0 collaboration platform for digital fabrication companies. At the time, Mike Moceri, the startup’s founder, had realized from first-hand experience that dealing with multiple clients while managing the workflow of projects presented many efficiency challenges. Yet, no solution to meet these challenges existed on the market. As a result, he decided to develop a software that would allow fabrication and engineering service providers to centralize all their activities (communication, project submission, invoicing, etc.) in a unique centralised online portal. This central online portal is MakerOS. In September 2020, the startup announced the release of version 2.0 of their software platform. So, what is the value of syncing sales, engineering and clients when running a fabrication or engineering service? What benefits can you expect?

Increasing collaboration facilitates scaling up?

Almost all fabrication and engineering services have a process in place to receive new projects and a process to produce those projects. In the sales pipeline, a company will have a visual snapshot of where prospects are, showing the sales team how many deals they can expect to close in a given time period. These deals represent projects that need to be assigned to production. However, sales pipelines and production workflows are rarely synced, and a company might use two different software to keep track.

Therefore, if the sales team is looking for project updates, they will most likely need to ask someone from the engineering team directly or vice versa, which you can imagine, is not ideal. Additionally, pricing is tricky when these two teams are not working closely together, and mispricing becomes a common mistake in fabrication and engineering services, which can lead to losses in profit.