Peter Schuitemaker, CAD Administrator at Heinen & Hopman Engineering, shares why the company chose to transition to named users and upgrade to the Autodesk Premium plan and what benefits they have seen so far.
“We knew this would significantly improve the organization of our contracts and subscriptions.”
Why we transitioned to named user before upgrading to Premium:
One of our primary goals was to be able to purchase centrally. As a global company, we wanted to optimize and manage contracts out of headquarters instead of localized contract management. We knew this would significantly improve the organization of our contracts and subscriptions.
Since centralized purchasing is one of the benefits of Premium, we had to move to named user first and decided to upgrade to Premium at the same time.
“We wanted to find a better way to manage our contracts for all locations.”
How we purchased Autodesk licenses before named user:
Before named users, every subsidiary chose their own software and license types. Some locations had multi-user licenses, and some had maintenance plans.
We have over 350 users worldwide using a variety of Autodesk software, and at one point, we probably had close to 50 different contracts with Autodesk. We knew that we wanted to find a better way to manage our contracts for all locations.
“It took us less than two hours.”
The process to transition to named user:
The process itself was simple, but communicating the change worldwide took the most time.
We planned and communicated the change to everyone first. That included sending a letter to our subsidiaries and completing the change of reseller forms where needed, and making sure contractors were assigned to our accounts—so that we could bring everything under one Premium plan.
We made sure our network licenses wouldn’t expire too soon. When the day came, it only took us an hour and a half or two hours. From changing the license types to importing and assigning users, we did it all in under two hours. We had experience in this, which made it easier, but the process was still very quick.
The impact of the transition for our users:
Our users hardly noticed the difference when we transitioned to named user, which I see as a good thing. Our team’s motto has always been not to burden the user, meaning we don’t want them to have to bother with any IT/technical setup. We just give them what they need, ready to go. Since our users hardly noticed the difference and had no difficulty accessing their software, we see that as a success for our team.
When everyone had to work from home this past year, named user also made it much easier to manage user’s software and assignments while employees were working remotely.
“Global purchasing has been the main benefit for us with Premium.”
The benefits we see with Premium Plan:
- Centralized purchasing: Global purchasing has been the main benefit for us with Premium. With so many international projects, we can now easily assign subscriptions in a matter of seconds to users on the other side of the world. There is more of a cost assigning globally managed subscriptions to employees in another country than what it might cost in their local currency. Still, for us, it was worth it to no longer have to manage localized software administration and have everything managed through headquarters.
- Single sign-on: SSO has also been nice to have as well. We also are implementing SSO company by company and already have 3 or 4 domains set up. Soon, everyone in the company will be set up with SSO, making our systems more secure and making it easier for users to log in.
- Next Benefit (Coming Soon): Next to SSO, we are looking forward to a full Azure AD Integration to assign licenses by group membership. This would be a benefit for license management and also a registration tool for charging the subsidiaries.
“Have a plan in place.”
Recommends for anyone preparing to transition to named user and upgrade to Premium:
Make sure you have a plan in place. You’ll also want to have a complete list of all your users and get familiar with Autodesk Account beforehand, so you know how to import and assign users. I also recommend doing a test first.
Want to learn more about how Premium can benefit your company? Find out more.
Peter Schuitemaker is the CAD Administrator at Heinen & Hopman Engineering. Founded in 1965 in the Netherlands, Heinen & Hopman Engineering specializes in marine and offshore HVAC systems. The company now has offices and workshops in 23 countries, with over 1650 employees around the world.
Peter has over 20 years of experience working with and training companies to use Autodesk software. After working as a consultant with Heinen & Hopman for nearly nine years, he was brought on permanently about a year and a half ago to manage the CAD – PLM environment. Peter is responsible for CAD in the IT team at Heinen & Hopman. The IT team manage the software for several hundred users worldwide, working to create and distribute documentation, conduct training, and get their employees up and running with the tools they need.