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Today I have Bob McCook on my podcast and he explains the best way to take your system from the pre-sales design phase all the way to the customer then delivery and then to maintenance. This is such a great solution for any VAR, (Value Added Reseller) to create the design, present to the customer, then give them a package that they can use for maintenance after delivery.

Pain points:

So ask yourself, how many processes do you have from pre-sales to delivery to maintenance? Is it seamless? Do you have an easy way to keep track of the BOM and the system design? Does the delivery team see the same or even similar documentation that the customer saw when they bought it? What about the tech that has to maintain it, does the tech see what was delivered or do they have to make their own spreadsheet? That is another thing, how do you look at the system? Are you using a combination of Visio or AutoCAD and a spreadsheet and maybe even a PowerPoint deck that is now a PDF? Then you have to keep track of those manuals, the PDF files you need to troubleshoot. What about the config files, where do you keep those? Are they on your laptop or on a server at work. When you’re at the site, do you have access to all of this? What is the backup tech is called while the main tech is on vacation, then what? All of these problems are covers in this podcast.

What about Bob?

Bob is a pretty cool guy that for one, has a great voice, who co-founded Teldio. Teldio created solutions for radio communications. He did this by building apps for 2way telephony. While he solved many problems in that area I was interested in D3M. We talk about what D3M really is and what problems it will solve in wireless deployment. Learn more at http://www.d3mradios.com/#/what-is-d3m.

What is D3M, really?

This solution stands for Design, Document, Deliver, and Manage, D3M, get it? With this app you can create a design with something that will show you the design, site and system, and from that it will build the BOM for you to take to the customer and show them the design then present them with the system BOM with the ability to break it down to the site BOM. Very easy to create sites then replicate them.

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The D3M system design is not just for sales to take to the customer, it is for the customer to keep so that they have a complete record of the as built, it is for the delivery team to use this to build the system from the design and BOM, and then it is passed onto the maintenance teams so that the site tech has a complete design, system and site, along with the BOMs, and they have a place to store all of the files and PDF books in a common area for any tech to access. How cool is that? It has the complete solution for sales to delivery to maintenance.

Learn more and listen to the podcast!

Bob does a great job explaining what this can and will do for anyone who is designing and delivering a system. It really is a great solution. Beginning to end.

When you go visit http://www.d3mradios.com/ make sure that you click on the “Try it for free!” button and take the tour, see how you like it. If you prefer a live demo, you can book your own demo, go to https://d3mtraining.youcanbook.me/index.jsp and set a date.

The Wireless Deployment Handbook eBook that covers professional carrier end to end deployment of LTE small cells, CRAN, and DAS showing you the proper way to plan for deployment then execute.

FYI – if you want more of an incentive to sign up, the folks at D3M are offering you, the hard workers in wireless, a 10% discount when you use the following code to subscribe, WADE4WIRELESS10, while signing up for your subscription. That’s right, 10% off any annual D3M subscription!

I signed up and it is very easy, you need to fill out the form. Make sure you look at the agreement all the way to the end, you need to do that before you can click “I have read the agreement”. You can’t move on until you scroll all the way to the end. Then complete the information and you’re ready.

What’s nice is that they have demo project that comes up so you can see something and play with a project. It is easier for the first time to click on the demo and start moving things around and making changes. From there you get the idea of how to make changes.

Go ahead, try it, you will like it. I know, it reminds you of Visio. However, then you go to the Fleetmap icon at the top and you see that the bill of materials, BOM, is already there for you, so you don’t need to open Excel and build a spreadsheet.

From there, if you look at the icons at the top right, then you see you can share with team members, export the project, take notes, and more. It really is easy to use.

Learn more in this demo video:

Learn more by going to http://www.d3mradios.com/#/what-is-d3m and signing up for a free demo.

See it from beginning to end at http://www.d3mradios.com/take-a-tour/ when you can.

Maybe this drawing will help:

What does a customer say?

“D3M is such a powerful tool with everything you can do with it. I haven’t seen anything like this in the industry. It makes things so efficient from beginning to end, to have everything documented, have a drawing of how everything is laid out, a bill of materials and inventory right there in front of you and the files all update quick and easily. I was blown away! It’s a more efficient and easier way to do things.”

For more customer testimonials, go here.

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Feedback, email wade4wireless@gmail.com when you think of something to say!

Be smart, be safe, and pay attention!

Do you know what to put in your SOW, the details needed to get paid for milestones or job completion? Would it hold up in claims court? Would you rather plan up front instead of fighting for it after the job is done?