Human beings might have proven themselves to be good at a host of different things, but when push comes to shove, there remains an awful little that we do better than growing on a consistent basis. This progressive approach, on our part, has enabled the world to clock some huge milestones, with technology emerging as quite a major member of the group. The reason why we hold technology in such a high regard is, by and large, predicated upon its skill-set, which guided us towards a reality that nobody could have ever imagined otherwise. Nevertheless, if we look beyond the surface for one hot second, it will become abundantly clear how the whole runner was also very much inspired from the way we applied those skills across a real world environment. The latter component, in fact, did a lot to give the creation a spectrum-wide presence, and as a result, initiated a full-blown tech revolution. Of course, the next thing this revolution did was to scale up the human experience through some outright unique avenues, but even after achieving such a monumental feat, technology will somehow continue to bring forth the right goods. The same has turned more and more evident in recent times, and assuming one new partnership ends up with the desired impact, it will only put that trend on a higher pedestal moving forward.

DigiFabster, a cloud-based SAAS quoting automation and e-commerce solution for advanced manufacturing companies, has officially announced collaboration with Materialise, a global leader in 3D printing software and service solutions. According to certain reports, the stated collaboration is geared towards connecting DigiFabster’s automated quoting and eCommerce solution with Materialise CO-AM, an open software platform, to manage the additive manufacturing (AM) production process more effectively. You see, traditional order processing is a lengthy task, a task which is so often struggling against the problem of data scattered in separate locations. Such a problem, like anyone would guess, increases administrative overhead and forces service bureaus to bear unnecessary costs. To solve this whole conundrum, both the companies will, for starters, bank upon DigiFabster’s eCommerce portal, automated quoting, costing, and payment automation solutions. Given the presence of automation capabilities, these solutions should be able to accelerate operation, save time, and cut back rather significantly on the costs. Talk about Materialise CO-AM platform, it essentially gives manufacturers cloud-based access to a full range of software tools that allow them to plan, manage, and optimize every step of the 3D printing process. On a more granular level, it delivers at their disposal an uninterrupted access of complementary solutions from Materialise and third parties, including CO-AM partner solutions for design automation, mass customization, automated labeling, and various post-processing technologies. In case that’s still doesn’t sound convincing enough to you, then it might be worth the mention to how the company’s platform also empowers AM users to connect and manage technologies from different machine builders over one platform.

“It’s time to prioritize customer experience in B2B, especially when it comes to enabling AM service bureaus,” said Pieter Hens, Senior Partnership Manager at Materialise. “Integrating DigiFabster’s solution into CO-AM closes the gap between front-end and back-end.”

Not just technologies, though, Materialise’s CO-AM platform further facilitates the streamlining of order data into CO-AM’s Order Management System (OMS). This OMS, on its part, works together with Magics, Materialise’s leading data and build preparation software. Interestingly, it’s the Magics software which ensures that all data and build preparation is automatically version-controlled within CO-AM. Hence, whenever parts are ready for production, they can be scheduled with CO-AM. Complementing the same are these assigned work plans that bear the responsibility to instruct employees on completing production activities until the very point of delivery, while simultaneously keeping up with production and quality requirements. Such a feature directly helps manufacturers in tracking every single order and giving instant and accurate status updates to their customers.

“Speed and reliability are essential for manufacturing companies,” said Const Ivanov, CEO of DigiFabster. “Working with Materialise, we will be able to offer a digital manufacturing workflow that offers a modern customer experience and helps our customers win more business. This partnership will offer significant value to our customers.”

Making the collaboration more important than it might have looked at the top is a study conducted by DigiFabster, a study where it was revealed that, with the rise of e-commerce, nearly 80% of the time buyers will work with the provider who manages to deliver the first quote.