Evan on Engineering Software

Matt Lombard, a SolidWorks user, author, and blogger, wrote a piece called Selling CAD when you should be Selling Productivity

Here's a small excerpt:

What’s the difference between CAD and Productivity? CAD is just a tool. In the same way that a hammer sitting on a bench isn’t putting a new roof on your house, CAD itself is just a static tool. Productivity is the combination of a tool and the ability to use it. It’s like a two part epoxy - either part on its own is just a sticky mess that you can’t do anything with, but put them together, and you’ve got something of value. If I buy a CAD product and have no idea how to use it, the software itself has no value to me. Ironically, the value is created by the customer, not the vendor, when the customer learns how to use the tool. So often, the customer has to pay extra for training on the tool. It is only when the abilities confered by the training are combined with the software that you have something of value - productivity.

Matt actually wrote this article a year ago.  But I don't know that the subject will ever be stale.

Here's my thought:  Advanced capabilities do far less to help make typical CAD users productive than do improvements in baseline usability.