Anna Harkins on Visual Parts Lookup, Faster Aftermarket Ordering, and Protecting Parts Revenue for Complex Equipment Manufacturers

From the Plant Floor to CDS Visual

Harkins began her career in manufacturing, working in the chemical industry, automotive, and food service equipment. That background shapes how CDS Visual, a visual first engineering and commercial experience platform that has been in business for about 20 years, builds its software for manufacturers with complex parts and configured-to-order equipment.

We're not people who just build software, we're people who've actually experienced it. We're practitioners in the manufacturing space.
— Anna Harkins, General Manager, CDS Visual

Hein noted how much that matters when a software partner needs to understand an original equipment manufacturer's real problems, not just the technology behind them.

What a Line-Down Moment Really Costs

Harkins described the old process in two scenarios. As an operations leader, she would troubleshoot a stopped line, call maintenance, and dig through an owner's manual of 100 pages or more, hoping every page was still there. Once the team identified the part, the real work began: finding the correct part number, finding a phone number, and calling the manufacturer, often after hours.

It never happens when you have a slow month. It always happens at the end of the quarter, at the end of the fiscal year.
— Anna Harkins

As a materials manager, she saw the other side. Customer service reps needed part numbers, and the answer often depended on a 30-year veteran named Kevin who could name parts from memory.

Thank goodness for Kevin.
— Anna Harkins

When Kevin was out on the floor, she searched the ERP system for a bill of materials, called engineering, and sometimes drove to another building to find a drawing. Hein added the cost side of the equation from his own years in distribution.

When a line is down, the only way you earn revenue goes to zero. And all you are doing is incurring costs.
— Jason Hein, B2B eCommerce Association

He pointed out that a materials manager, expediters, product experts, and purchasing staff all spend time on a single breakdown, which is why customers often care more about speed than price in the moment.

From Dusty Manual to Visual Parts Lookup

Harkins walked through what the same moment looks like with CDS Partable™, CDS Visual's interactive visual search and 3D parts catalog for aftermarket ordering and field service. An operations manager opens a tablet or laptop at the machine and enters the serial or model number. If the manufacturer has a 3D model, the user sees the equipment, hides the outer framing, explodes the assembly, finds the broken part, and checks it visually. If the manufacturer has only PDFs, the system presents them with automated hotspots. Either way, when the manufacturer has turned on cart-to-checkout, the buyer can purchase the part right there.

Not everybody wakes up in the morning knowing the part number.
— Anna Harkins

The same approach helps field service technicians, who otherwise write down what a machine needs, type up an email at the hotel, and wait for a customer service rep to enter the order the next morning. Her point is that the more complex the equipment, the more valuable visualization becomes. Manufacturers weighing what an aftermarket parts experience needs from the underlying platform can start with B2BEA's guide to selecting a B2B eCommerce platform, and Digital Commerce 360 has reported on why manufacturers cannot afford to ignore digital tools.

Getting the Order From Dealer to Manufacturer

Hein raised a practical question: many manufacturers sell through distributors, so how does an order placed through a manufacturer's site reach the manufacturer quickly? Harkins explained that the answer depends on the manufacturer's digital maturity. Companies with a third-party CRM can connect it directly to CDS Partable. Companies earlier in their journey can use Partner Exchange, which lets them onboard dealers and distributors who can check out a part or request a quote, see quantity on hand, view tracking information, and access bill of lading paperwork for international shipments.

It makes it look like it's a one-to-one connection. It's very complicated in the background, but we make it simple.
— Anna Harkins

Hein summed up the payoff: the distributor can tell the customer the order has been placed and will arrive tomorrow, all before the manufacturer is awake. Harkins added that manufacturers who acquire other companies can present one front end across several plants and customer service teams, while keeping business rules in place for what ships from where. For a broader look at how these back-end connections fit together, see B2BEA's guide to the systems that power B2B commerce, and Digital Commerce 360's reporting on why B2B companies are integrating ERP and eCommerce technology.

Starting With the Data You Have

Hein asked what it takes to find the product data behind an experience like this. Harkins described a range. In the best case, a manufacturer already has CAD drawings and a CRM that can be connected. At the other end are customers with 20,000 legacy PDF manuals of 50 pages each, with inconsistent formatting. For those, CDS Visual uses AI and machine learning to ingest the files, add hotspots, and organize the content, after which customers can correct errors themselves or use the company's professional services team.

So we can meet you wherever you are.
— Anna Harkins

She was candid about the limits: a drawing that calls out 10 parts when the table lists nine will produce inaccurate data, so clean PDFs matter. When a part is replaced, an administrator updates the system so that a serial number returns the active part number instead of the obsolete one, and some customers add a note that the part replaces an older number. B2BEA's look at closing the product data gap in B2B eCommerce covers that foundation in more depth. Harkins said the company's sweet spot is manufacturers with $25 million to $1 billion in revenue and complex, engineered-to-order or configured-to-order products.

Protecting Parts Revenue

The conversation also covered what is at stake for manufacturers. Harkins said downtime costs US manufacturers upwards of $50 billion, and that many of her customers are losing about 30 percent of their genuine part sales to third-party suppliers and suppliers from lower-cost regions. Aftermarket parts typically carry higher margins than the original equipment, so those lost sales hit the bottom line as well as the top.

Hein tied that to what customers do under pressure: when time matters most, they sometimes buy whatever part they can find quickly, even if it is not the right one. That is why an easy path to the correct part from the manufacturer matters. Building that path is only half the job, since customers also have to choose to use it, and B2BEA's B2B eCommerce Customer Adoption Framework covers how to get them there.

Making sure that people are buying your stuff, not somebody's private label knockoff, is increasingly important.
— Jason Hein

The Talent Clock

Asked what the conversation had not yet covered, Harkins pointed to retiring talent and siloed data.

The people who wait to do this later instead of now, they're going to be the ones that experience the most pain.
— Anna Harkins

She added a cash angle: she has seen plants hold $500,000 in spare inventory just in case equipment goes down, money that could fund growth instead. Hein agreed and called out a common pattern, where companies rely on product subject matter experts (SMEs) to translate legacy documents for customers and systems.

That use of your product SMEs as an integration layer is not the right integration layer for today's digital first, digital preferring customer.
— Jason Hein

Both agreed that bringing retirees back as contractors to help clean up data can work well, and Hein noted that this is a bridge companies will have to cross.

There's never been a better time to do it. There's never been more upside to doing it.
— Jason Hein

As AI moves into enterprise software generally (Gartner predicts that 40 percent of enterprise applications will feature task-specific AI agents by 2026, up from less than 5 percent in 2025), the manufacturers that capture their knowledge now will be best positioned to use it.

About the Guest

Anna Harkins, General Manager, CDS Visual

Anna Harkins is the General Manager of CDS Visual, where she helps manufacturing OEMs transform how they grow aftermarket revenue, accelerate quote-to-order cycles, and scale workforce productivity. She works closely with digital, aftermarket, and operations leaders at industrial manufacturers. Anna brings a pragmatic, executive perspective shaped by the real-world challenges of modern manufacturing, from unlocking engineering data to enabling digital customer and service experiences. Her work focuses on aligning digital strategy with measurable commercial and operational outcomes. Anna regularly shares insights on how manufacturers can turn complexity into competitive advantage. Connect with her on LinkedIn.

About the Host

Jason Hein is Vice President of B2BEA Academy and Global Director of Programming for B2B eCommerce World at the B2B eCommerce Association, where he builds and scales the association's practitioner education offerings and leads the development of conference programming across B2B eCommerce World events in APAC, the Americas, and Europe. He also hosts the B2B eCommerce Show, where he talks with practitioners and technology leaders shaping how manufacturers and distributors sell online. With nearly 30 years of experience in B2B eCommerce, he also runs his own consulting practice, Acumental B2B, helping companies fix underperforming B2B sites.