Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/599730
November 2015 • The PCB Design Magazine 15 GOOD IN, GOOD OuT: BAY AREA CIRCuITS DISCuSSES DATA STRATEGIES We're eliminating the room for error there. We put a lot of pressure for accuracy on the front end of the process but if our account manag- ers do their job correctly, there shouldn't be any other breaks in the chain along the way. Matties: how many customers a month do you manage, roughly? Paper: In addition to our larger enterprise cus- tomers, we have a growing base of customers who purchase from our online store. They don't represent as much in revenue, but in terms of numbers of customers and transactions it's sig- nificantly higher. Matties: i'm just curious because you're talking about how everyone does it differently and it's not standardized. if you're doing, say, 400–500 jobs a month, that's a lot of extra work on you guys to just sort it out in the front end. if you don't do that right everything that follows be- comes problematic. Garcia: Our online sales growth really forced us to take a close look at automating the front end. We saw that for this to work right we were going to have to have it automated. From the moment an online order is received we capture pretty much everything at the front. The order enters itself into our CRM system and it just continues to move. Like Brian was saying, en- tering it all at the front is where the data starts so there is a document trail. Then for the sales team it gets flagged if there's something wrong with that data, and they don't need to go into secondary software. It tells them right there if there are any issues. Again, we're just trying to keep a document trail, and we have specific documents that are automatically generated for several depart- ments. That way everybody has familiarity with what the report looks like and what should be there. We're trying to take the human element out of it. Matties: how do you work on getting people to come in with the right documentation, the netlist and all the other pieces that you would require? do you reject orders if they don't send it? Garcia: We don't reject the orders per se, but we're trying to educate the customers on the risk. For example, "Here's the best way to do it. If you don't do it, then make sure you un- derstand the consequences that this could hap- pen." We just try to educate them on why it's a good idea and what could potentially happen if they're not providing us with us that data. Matties: how much additional work does it take from your customer's side to provide that informa- tion? Garcia: The netlist is one of the simpler things for a customer to provide. It really should feel like low-hanging fruit for them. They're already working with the design in their application. I think fab prints are probably tougher for some customers to create. We've seen some custom- ers that have started small and they're starting to grow. They should be growing to that stage where they're providing us with the fab print/ fab notes and haven't quite gotten there yet. I don't know if it's just because they haven't evolved to that point, but it's something we'd like to see out of more customers. But netlist, I feature interview