Generative text and imaging AI systems are currently catching most of the media and investor limelight, as well as the interest of the general public. But, there’s a silent revolution brewing within enterprise and B2B software. One that isn’t centered around AI or automation, but on collaborative work.

Spurred on by the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for modern, collaborative feature sets in enterprise software applications has exploded. Overnight, organizations all over the world had to move from an almost exclusively office-oriented workplace, to one of fully remote work. I am not referring to video conferencing and chat solutions such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom or Slack, even as these were instrumental in minimizing operational disruption in the shift to work from home. I am referring to a new crop of software that is inherently real time collaborative, highly intuitive and almost effortless in its approach to helping people get more work done, together. Solutions such as Figma, Pitch or Miro.

While collaborative solutions such as Google Workspace (formerly G Suite), revolutionized collaboration when they first arrived in the mid-2000s, they don’t feel truly collaborative. The level of immersion, and lack of immediate feedback these solutions offer fall short of what most people expect from modern software today. It isn’t enough that you can work in the same document. People now expect to see exactly where their colleagues are, what they’re doing and the ability to react to changes with virtually zero lag. Just how important the concept of real time user presence and feedback is becoming, and the impact these two have on the sense of immersion, can only truly be appreciated by experiencing them directly.

Contrary to what most people believe when they first hear about Encube, our main competition isn’t CAD, PLM or CAM software. It is the combination of email and presentation and video conferencing solutions the customer uses internally today to move the product development process forward. Not because we build video communications technology, or produce output that even remotely resembles PowerPoint in our product.

Email, video and static documents make up how product design, manufacturing requirements and cost estimates are shared and communicated across the organization for most manufacturers today. This is a fragile, and time consuming, way of working. The slightest change in requirement, or design aesthetic, can invalidate the mountain of static information that is being shared with colleagues, suppliers and customers. Updating key documents and re-sharing them easily becomes a full-time job, fraught with the risk of human error.

The core software offering we’re developing at Encube is designed from the ground up with a specific set of high-impact, real time collaboration features that enable teams to dramatically accelerate the speed with which high quality decision can be made to close the gap between design intent and manufactured outcome.

Within this highly collaborative workflow, we deploy a set of AI models specifically developed to help product and manufacturing teams industrialize their part designs. These models automatically, and near instantly, uncover potential design issues that affect manufacturability, time and production cost for CNC machined parts. By visually calling attention to these issues, and contextualizing possible solutions, it becomes much easier for teams to work together to make data-informed decisions that move the overall development process forward.

Real time collaboration and generative process AI are without a doubt valuable on their own, but it is the combination of the two that offers the most potential in genuinely leveling up a manufacturers ability to bring new and innovative products to market.