Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Onshape is a computer-aided design (CAD) software company that was founded in 2012. Used by engineers and designers in more than 170 countries, the company’s industry-leading 3D CAD platform has been used by its customers to log over 5 million hours of projects. Learn more at Onshape.com
With this challenge, Onshape's project team knew they had to deliver an exceptional user experience their customers would embrace. As David Katzman, Vice President of Strategic Accounts and Business Development explains, “One of the challenges of bringing a new product to market after 25 years is that we face a very entrenched market. So, one of the big obstacles we need to address is onboarding, or bringing people up the learning curve as fast as possible so that they can use our software effectively.”
To complicate the scope of this project, the company had years of training content scattered across different platforms, and the team was using multiple databases to log customer information. Collectively, these two scenarios made it impossible for the company to track and maintain a cohesive customer education program.
With much at stake, the Onshape team knew they needed to find a solution that could help them:
David Katzman,
Vice President of Strategic Accounts & Business Development
Katie Huffman,
Training & Content Manager
In May 2017, Onshape launched its new learning center, which featured free self-paced online training courses to the delight of thousands of users around the world.
Since deploying the new training ecosystem, the Onshape team has already been able to
Thought Industries has given us great insight into how our customers become educated and understand Onshape's key differentiators. In turn, they become spokespeople for us just in learning about how awesome Onshape is.
- Improve Customer Engagement: While issuing product releases every three weeks, the Onshape team is able to keep their customer community actively engaged and eager to learn new ways to leverage the 3D CAD software. "Thought Industries has been great at adding new functionality to the platform that keeps pace with our own release cycle. This really helps us push our customer engagement and learning initiatives," explains Huffman.
- Drive Customer Retention and Advocacy: Having a comprehensive customer training process hosted on a single system helps the Onshape team create happy customers. As Katie Huffman elaborates, "Thought Industries has given us a lot of insight into how our customers become educated and understand Onshape's key differentiators. In turn, they become spokespeople for us just in learning about how awesome Onshape is."
Katie Huffman
Training & Content Manager, Onshape
6 Liberty Square #6099
Boston, MA 02109
1-866-206-4011