If design engineers are from Mars, too often their financial managers are from Venus. Design engineers spend their time designing, modeling, testing--in short, thinking about the engineering issues involved in developing new systems and products and upgrading older designs. But when it's time for a desktop CAD upgrade, the financial manager wants to hear about other topics, such as hardware and software costs, training costs, labor costs and productivity increases. In other words, return on investment, or ROI.
Today, more than ever, design engineers must speak the language of ROI in order to get their budget requests approved. And engineering managers, who may be in the process of upgrading entire workgroups with desktop CAD systems, must do the same for the divisional manager, CFO or even CEO.