The CAD specialty agencies maintain a very close relationship with the CAD vendors themselves. This allows the agency to keep abreast with the latest CAD software revisions, features and benefits. In some cases the CAD specialty agencies become the primary source for staffing at the CAD vendors sales and support facilities as well as their major customers around the world. If the companies base their agency selection on a past volume relationship, the agency who supplied the most clerical, assembly and manufacturing people will become their likely selection. Getting products to market on time before the competition is the very lifeblood of the organization.
Product development is what provides each and every employee with a paycheck.
Typically, the specialty agencies that find themselves locked out of these companies use them as recruiting sources for other clients. Recently some companies have come to realize this problem and have changed their strategy by selecting exclusive agencies for the volume clerical and manufacturing areas and excluded the engineering disciplines from the exclusive agreement. They give their engineering managers a free hand to directly deal with and hire from any agency source that can find the qualified people. They understand that just because a full service agency is able to service their volume needs on a regular basis doesn't make them good at servicing the limited low quantity of technical product designers. Some of the bill rates for these highly skilled CAD product designers can be shocking to the managers who are new to hiring temporary contractors.