Selling complex, engineered-to-order products was error-prone and time consuming. Relying on 2D drawings and spreadsheets risked specification errors and sales delays. Hitachi Energy leveraged PTC’s augmented reality to accelerate complex sales cycles with virtual product demonstrations.
Hitachi Energy Uses PTC’s Augmented Reality Technology to Help Customers Visualize Complex Products
Leading the Power Grid Industry with Optimized Customer Solutions
Hitachi Energy is a global leader providing product, system, software, and service solutions across the power chain. To address power quality problems, Hitachi Energy offers capacitors and filters—highly customized systems that improve the power quality of electrical networks by eliminating disturbances and improving power factor in line with grid requirements.
Product Customization Can Present Challenges in the Sales Cycle
For Hitachi Energy, selling complex, engineered-to-order products required very careful, methodical planning and detailed communication with customers. Adding to that, prospects and customers often got information from multiple suppliers relating to different pieces of the power grid solution. With so much complicated information to sift through, it could be challenging for them to determine how it all fit together or where a particular part fit into the overall picture.
Hitachi Energy engineers and sales representatives worked closely with customers to ensure compatibility with their required specifications, communicating critical information for complex systems that had yet to be built. Early in the sales cycle, it could be difficult for the customer to visualize their product order since there were no ready-made catalogues or manuals to reference. Instead, customers relied on design images, 2D drawings, and spreadsheets to imagine the finished product. However, these sales assets did not reflect the full benefits of Hitachi Energy’s solutions and were inconvenient for customers, leading to longer sales cycles. As a customer-focused company, Hitachi Energy wanted to improve the sales process and optimize these engineered-to-order solutions.
Hitachi Energy Uses PTC's Augmented Reality Technology to Simplify the Sales Process with a New Customer Experience
Adding to the momentum and improvements from their recently developed design configuration software, known as CapDes, Hitachi Energy realized that with more of the right technology, they could enhance the customer experience, improve purchase confidence, and boost sales effectiveness.
Having an established relationship with PTC, Hitachi Energy decided to leverage Vuforia augmented reality (AR) technology to help customers visualize their finished products. Using Vuforia Studio, Hitachi Energy created immersive 3D virtual product demonstrations to help customers better understand the offered solution.
As an efficient AR authoring environment, Vuforia Studio enabled Hitachi Energy to leverage their existing 3D CAD models to create immersive AR experiences based on variants specified in their CapDes system configuration software. The AR experiences created in Vuforia Studio then allowed the customer to see a full-scale digital representation of the proposed solution in their own environment, showing the exact placement within the greater power grid system. This allowed the customer to feel confident that the finished product would meet their needs.
Hitachi Energy Remains a Leader in Customer Satisfaction
Customer feedback has been very positive. AR has helped simplify the sales process with a quicker, more personalized solution. Notably, Hitachi Energy has witnessed a whole new level of purchasing confidence from their customers.
Hitachi Energy is going even further with their AR transformation by piloting an addition to the service cycle. They are using Vuforia Studio to develop real-time instructions to help customers and outside vendors assemble the customized capacitor systems in the field and perform routine maintenance and service.
Vuforia technology has helped Hitachi Energy meet the needs of their customers by accelerating the sales experience, enabling purchasing confidence, and improving the overall customer experience. With PTC technology in their corner, they're looking forward to the future of customer service ahead.