Calculations

When calculations become a bottleneck for getting a proposal or quote to a customer, your salespeople can spend far too many hours trying to untangle issues. The underlying problem is that critical information is scattered. Companies offering custom products or services, or standardized products with lots of options, often rely on separate sources of information: brochures, huge Excel spreadsheets, pricing information stored in silos, and expertise stored in people’s heads. And as your company and product portfolio grows and diversifies, the situation gets more intense. Hiring more employees to ensure quotes and orders include the right specs isn’t a profitable move. You’re looking at the need for robust CPQ that can handle complex calculations.

Challenge

If your company produces and sells custom, complex products, you may be spending too much time and calling on too many employees to organize product specs for customer quotes and orders. At the same time, you need assurance that specs match highly specific requirements. For example, producing a quote for a pump could involve cooling calculations, optimization algorithms, constructional calculations, thermodynamics calculations, formula calculations, and more. In addition, all calculations need to be precisely aligned and based on the latest information.

Solution

Using e-Con to calculate product specs/matches offers multiple benefits. Because e-Con lives in the Microsoft Dynamics database, users work with a central version of the truth. Results are saved automatically to Dynamics and information can be accessed anytime, from any location via the web. The e-Con rules engine houses all formulas and algorithms, and works continuously to auto-create and update all calculations based on real-time data. Calculations are incorporated into quotes and proposals without user intervention. When a salesperson taps or clicks “configure” for a quote or proposal, the result will include accurate, complete specs that map exactly to customer needs.

Gain

When you use e-Con to calculate possible product combinations you save hours and days of time. You also protect salespeople against selling offerings that your production team can’t create; we call e-Con “the end of product impossible.” Your sales team isn’t dependent on multiple sources of product information or an individual’s product knowledge. e-Con stores all possible and impossible combinations once, then works 24/7 to ensure all combinations are current. Sales representatives are equipped with everything they need to create a complete quote for a complex product themselves. Indeed, they can take on the role of trusted advisor for customers because they will have accurate, current, well-organized information right at hand. There’s no need to call on other teams or employees to fill gaps. Salespeople can answer any question on the spot.

Your procurement department also benefits in a big way. Because orders are aligned precisely with all quote details when a quote is generated, there’s virtually no need for additional order processing. When a salesperson receives customer approval, they can instantly convert a quote into an order that includes all documentation needed to jump-start production.