Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1411055
SEPTEMBER 2021 I PCB007 MAGAZINE 25 down to smartphone dimensions. Seven years ago, when we created our current e-commerce platform, we thought, "People are not ever go- ing to use this device (smartphone) for quot- ing and ordering circuit boards; we can see the need for as small as the tablet format." at turned out to be a shortsighted decision on our part. Now with the cloud and improvements in everything else mobile, you can just as easily use this device as you would with a laptop, tab- let, iPad, or whatnot. We're going to transition our online platform to a much easier-to-consume platform, meet- ing customers where they are and giving them a great experience with which to do it. We're also developing a program to help automate the front-end quoting portion of the web plat- form, improving the experience, accuracy, and time required to get your PCB quote. ere's enough technology, knowhow, and horsepow- er with the cloud to allow that level of experi- ence more economically and more accurately than it was ever before. Johnson: Regarding online quoting, obvious- ly that helps with the skilled labor and band- width in the CAM department. Does that im- prove the customer's experience? Does it give the customer more control? Stevenson: It will give the designer more con- trol and more accuracy up front. It speeds up their process and it reliably translates their design file into an accurate quote. I think the most benefit comes from the purchaser's standpoint, where they're not the expert on the design and maybe they are requested to input all the parameters of any given circuit board into a quote form and expect to come out with an accurate representation. is al- lows them to say, "Boom, here you go." You only have a few selections to make decisions at that point. e goal is to speed up their process, increasing the accuracy, hopeful- ly there'll be less discrepancies now between the design files and the order form, allowing more of those orders to go through with less holdup and fewer delays. Johnson: You put in a new ERP system; tell me about the one you had and then about the one that you moved to. Stevenson: When I started 15 years ago, we had a rudimentary homegrown set of systems that controlled the manufacturing floor, tooled data and customer data that were, I think, even written in visual basic by our production man- ager at the time. ere were multiple systems and websites, and none really seemed to talk to one another very well internally. It was effec- tive for where we were in terms of sales, but it was not scalable. From a customer standpoint, that was invisible to them, and it was internal- ly where the disconnects occurred. At the end of the day, it was not stable or secure by today's standards. For many reasons, we needed to upgrade that system. We began that process and soon the sunstone.com website came into existence (2006), that combined PCBExpress® and PCB- pro® together into one website. We started merging a lot of that into a single set of data- bases, where things could all logically see each other. ough they were still in separate data- bases there was at least one overarching point that was able to see and interact with all the databases. It was still homegrown, it was more scalable but not ultimately scalable, and more securely written in a much more modern code base than we had at the beginning. There were multiple systems and websites, and none really seemed to talk to one another very well internally.