How PTC Utilizes Cloudpaging and CCDN to Seamlessly Provision 3D CAD Software and Increase Free Trial Conversion Success

PTC Company Overview

PTC is a global software company that delivers a technology platform and solutions to help companies design, manufacture, operate, and service things for a smart, connected world. Like many software companies, PTC knows that nowadays, promises, and stories are not enough and prospects want guarantees and proofs. PTC provided a real software experience to customers with a trial download of the industry’s leading 3D CAD software Creo. At the time of the engagement with Numecent, they had more than 10,000 users.

Addressing an Ineffective Trial Software Campaign

The largest problem was the size of Creo’s installer download. At 4.18 GB, it took more than 25 minutes to download the software. Unfortunately, this led most prospects to abandon the download altogether and never launch the product. Other prospects would not validate they had suitable system requirements, leading to failed installations. Sales staff from PTC would follow-up with prospects to find they either never got the product working or were so frustrated with the installation they were no longer interested in the product.

Overall the Creo free-trial campaign was not producing the results that PTC had expected, with a success rate of less than 50%. Instead of increasing sales, the Creo trial was creating support issues and increasing costs. On average, Creo software trials averaged 2.58 support tickets per week. The trial program also increased development costs as the team tried to continuously build out the trial experience.

The Solution

PTC needed a solution that allowed users to quickly and easily begin using PTC Creo. They also needed some insight into how successful the installation of the product had gone, including how much each user was using the product. Finally, they needed some way to ensure users could not use the product for more than 30 days unless they purchased a full copy of Creo.

PTC utilized Cloudpaging to package their Creo software and deployed it to end users via Cloudpaging CDN, Numecent’s global cloud-based content delivery network. Cloudpaging technology breaks down applications into “pages” (instruction fragments) and delivers them on-demand. This requires only five to ten percent of an application to launch, while downloading the rest of the application in the background. Once fully downloaded the application can be used offline without the need for access to the cloud. For Creo, only 180 MB of the 4.18 GB are needed in the initial delivery payload.

This transformation enabled Creo trial users to begin using the software within minutes of requesting access to the application without any installation or configuration required.

Usage Data Allows for Better Decision Making

Utilizing the application usage metrics captured by Cloudpaging, PTC can determine whether users were able to launch the Creo product and how long they used it. They are also able to monitor any errors users experience and proactively route that information to their Support team to assist the prospective customers and ensure their trial is successful. Usage information is routed to the Sales team who can adapt their conversation based on the customer usage patterns.

To address their need for software license controls, they utilized Numecent’s patented Cloudpaging technology to enforce a 30-day trial limit, regardless of whether the system clock is changed or not. With Cloudpaging, after 30 days the Creo application access is revoked and simply disappears from the end user’s machine. This eliminated the need for one-off versions of Creo to be implemented.

Key Results

• Decreased average deployment times from more than 25 minutes to less than two minutes
• Improved free-trial conversion success from <50% to more than 80%
• Automated lead routing, based on trial status
• Gained visibility into software trial usage
• Established automated software license policy enforcement

Conclusion

PTC was able to eliminate Creo software installation issues for free trial users and drastically reduced trial abandonment. Prospects are now able to immediately utilize the product and are proactively contacted if they run into issues. The improvements to deployment times and application monitoring enabled them to increase the success rate of Creo trials to more than 80%.