The Impact Of 3D Printed Visuals

3D printing is definitely an interesting technology, and I enjoy following it. This technology has made its way into several industries. Some of these industries include medical, architectural, product development, and even hobbyist manufacturing. There are quite a few applications without a doubt, and the number of applications is consistently rising. First off, what can 3D printing do?

3D printing is an enthralling form of manufacturing technology that allows for the layer by layer creation of various products from a wide variety of materials. This technology can be used to create prototypes of products, some fancy desk art, functional parts, or intricate visuals. In this article I want to highlight the power of unique visuals. These visuals can simply be some cool desk art or pieces, but they have so much potential.

Let's talk about the oil and gas industry, and how it could benefit from this technology. I mentioned that 3D printing can create unique visuals. By visuals, I mean manufactured products that can have a large variety of properties. Keep in mind, I'm not talking about a cool picture on a piece of paper, and I'm not talking about a computer image - I'm talking about a three dimensional object. Let's jump right in.

If you don't know this, there is a lot of money involved within the oil and gas industry. Just the operating costs of some wells cost well over 20 million dollars, and the returns are usually at least 3-4 times the expenditure. One interesting fact about the oil and gas industry as well as other industries is this: 100% of all wells are generated by sales. A location has to be "sold" to big corporations or managers with the capital to spend. 100% of all sales are generated by marketing in one way or another. So... why aren't these companies investing more into marketing? That's exactly how 3D printing can help.

I'm sure there are various names for the engineers who find prospects (locations to drill), but I'm going to refer to them as sales representatives. Essentially, that's what they are. These sales representatives have to market their ideas for any business to be made. Let's talk about increasing the power of marketing efforts. Through 3D printing, physical visualizations can be created to aid sales representatives. A full color visualization of a landscape with pieces that can be removed and stacked can be developed through 3D printing. This concept allows for very intricately created pieces which can show that exact details of various prospects. Aside from that, in simple terms, visuals through 3D printing can look very clean, and very professional. These visuals can help present an idea to companies or managers, and that is exactly what marketing is. Presenting an idea in a professional manor is what drives sales. If a visual was enough to create only one sale, the revenue generated could be huge. Let me refer to my father's business. His company revolves around locating prospects for drilling, and presenting them to corporations with large amounts of capital. This company basically says "Drill here," and they work off a commission of around 3%. What's 3% of a 60-80 million dollar well? A lot. That's what it is. If a visual created through 3D printing helped assist this sale, that visual instantly made well over its expenses. A very large detailed visual MIGHT cost up to $10,000, but that number is pretty darn steep. Odds are, the expense will be less than that. A prospect fee given to my father's company will typically consist of around $250,000. Add that to the 3% commission of 60-80 million dollars. Money. That's all I have to say about that. What if a visual created through 3D printing generated that sale? What if it was just enough to lead to that sale? Well, the team marketing a prospect would be in business. 3D printing truly has the power to help marketing efforts within the oil and gas industry.

If you enjoyed this article, you might what else is new with 3D Printing, or possibly you'd like to join a 3D Printing Community,

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Don't Let the 2012 Olympics Have a Negative Impact on Your Business

As we all know, the 2012 London Olympic games is knocking at our doors. Now although Britain is hosting enough grand events this summer to make even the biggest naysayer proud to be British, August 3rd is also expected to be the most monstrous day for congested traffic in the history of London.

A modest waiting time of more than 30 minutes for boarding a train has been estimated by a recent report published by the TfL. The 22 venues for the Olympic games, as well as its surroundings will be crowded and special measures will be put in place to cope with the expected high increase in terms of traffic. Those measures would include: closure of side roads, banning turns, altering traffic light sequences, parking/loading suspensions, and suspending pedestrian crossings.

Aware that every solution will be welcome to reduce the traffic during these Olympic games, the TfL are suggesting to businesses a few ways in which they can combat the inevitable disturbance that the games will have on usual businesses operations. Things like persuading staff to work remotely (from home or from another location that isn't affected by the traffic), take a holiday (that would be great if they can afford it), or work longer hours are amongst some of the suggestions that have been put forward. I'm not going to get into the details of last two suggestions but, as you would have anticipated, I'll take this opportunity to have a look at working remotely.

Advising people to work remotely is easy to do, but how do you, as a business owner, enable your staff to do so? It's not too late to start implementing the move - even temporary - to cloud-based solutions. Think it'll cost you an arm and a leg? Think again. As an illustration, one e-mail box will only cost you just a small monthly fee on a pay-as-you-go basis. A serious provider should not charge to sign up, nor get you tied in to any long-term contracts.

But first of all, you have to identify how you want your staff to work remotely. Although you wouldn't want to move your core IT applications to the cloud the space of one week, chances are that you could do with some other "commodities" like e-mail to keep the wheels of your business turning - after all, one of the most crucial things to ensure while working remotely is to keep communications flowing. I'm sure your staff already has access to mobile phone communications. Now, you can also proceed similarly with your e-mail system by adopting a Hosted Exchange solution. This will allow your staff to access all their e-mails while being on-the-go, and from any internet-connected device. Not only that, but you will have access to all your business contacts within your email system - just incase you did forget that phone number.

Now, if you have some internal documents where some teams need to work on collaboratively, consider putting those documents on a Hosted SharePoint solution. Not only does it allow teams in multiple locations work on projects on a unified collaboration tools, but it also gives you a strong base for being more effective even though the Olympics is disturbing the traffic in town.

Just in case you think you can handle that Olympics 2012 traffic nightmare, just sit back a bit and look at how some similar, yet smaller event, have affected London: I'm of course referring to the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. Just head out and talk to business owners that have their shop or offices near the venues where the Queen Jubilee's event took place. That event only took place over a weekend, now think of the Olympic games that will spread over multiple days, and you can be sure that you'll want a better solution that taking holidays.

Cloud services such as hosted Exchange and hosted SharePoint are available from Giacom World Networks. For more information, visit http://www.giacom.com/.

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