About the project
Fictiv is the world's leading platform for ordering custom manufacturing. Its technology matches 3D printing, machining, and other production jobs with a manufacturing partner on its distributed network. Fictiv raised over $200M from reputable investors like G2, Accel, and Bill Gates. As the 20th employee, I was responsible for growing and managing the network.
Within a year, I tripled the size of our network, and established robust qualification / onboarding systems. The spike in capacity led to costly turnover when newly onboarded partners went weeks without receiving their first job match. Analysis revealed we needed a solution that would distribute job matches more evenly across the network to improve retention.
The solution
I became responsible for driving our distribution strategy. I had the most knowledge of our partners' needs after speaking with over 5,000 shop owners around the world.
Through these conversations, I learned that being transparent (and accurate) about how much revenue each manufacturer should expect to make enabled us to establish a metric for mutual success. Our mission was to make as many partners successful as possible.
To prove the concept, I developed a prototype of the model that showed how distributing based on engagement could increase network capacity. I managed a stakeholder team of engineers, managers, and data scientists to launch a new distribution model based on my prototype. We met weekly and developed dashboards to monitor variance in engagement across every manufacturer.
Results
As a result of the implementation, matching became a fully autonomous process. Production managers did not need to keep track of how many opportunities each manufacturer deserves at each level.
We observed a 20% increase in job rejections, and 10% decrease in job expirations. Acceptance was important because it gave us insight on a manufacturer's preference. Expirations were an early sign of churn.
I also designed mockups for a manufacturer mobile app. My goal was to create an experience that would incentivize shop owners to report availability in the app and increase engagement by responding to project matches. The performance dashboard lets users view how they are doing on projects.
