What if you could configure anything? 

In today’s fast-paced manufacturing landscape, customization and personalization have become essential to meet the changing demands of customers. Manufacturers need to efficiently configure complex products and manage intricate pricing structures while ensuring accuracy and speed. To simplify this process, many companies are turning to Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) software. 

Manufacturers across different industries are beginning to see the value CPQ software is bringing to their everyday sales and engineering processes. A company that uses CPQ software for their sales process typically has a complex product or service offering, with many customizable options and pricing variables.  

CPQ is particularly useful for companies that manufacture or sell products with multiple configuration options. CPQ helps manufacturers streamline their processes, enhance efficiency, and deliver accurate quotes and configurations to customers. Let’s look at a few different kinds of manufacturers who are using CPQ and the benefits. 

What kind of manufacturers can benefit from using CPQ? 

Industrial equipment manufacturers:  

Companies that manufacture complex machinery and equipment, such as manufacturing plants, material handling equipment, and medical equipment often have numerous configurable options. CPQ can help these companies to quickly generate accurate quotes for customers, taking into account the specific configuration of the product. 

Automotive manufacturers:  

Automotive companies that offer customizable cars, trucks, and other vehicles often have a wide range of options for each vehicle model. CPQ can help these companies to streamline the sales process, providing accurate quotes to customers and ensuring that the vehicle is configured correctly. 

Elevator manufacturers: 

Elevators often involve intricate configurations with various components, specifications, and regulations. The software ensures that all components are compatible and generates accurate configurations based on predefined rules, reducing errors and minimizing the risk of incompatible combinations.  

Watch how Swift Home Lifts use CPQ

Packaging and production lines manufacturers:

Packaging and production lines often involve a wide range of components, options, and configurations. CPQ software allows manufacturers to create a comprehensive catalog of components and configurations, enabling easy selection and customization of the packaging or production line equipment. Sales representatives and customers can configure the equipment based on their specific needs, ensuring accurate and compatible solutions. 

Read how Plus Pack is using CPQ 

Industrial Refrigeration Manufacturers

A new and emerging industry that is investing into CPQ solutions is Industrial Refrigeration manufacturing. This field involves highly specialized and complex systems that require precise configurations to meet specific environmental and operational requirements.

Tacton CPQ can significantly enhance the efficiency and accuracy of the Industrial Refrigeration Systems market by streamlining the complex configuration, pricing, and quoting processes.

Industrial refrigeration systems often need to fit into specific spatial configurations within a client’s facility, which can vary greatly depending on the type and size of the operation. CPQ software aids in layout planning by allowing sales and engineering teams to visualize and configure systems within the actual spatial constraints of the client’s environment.

This ensures that the designed systems not only meet functional requirements but also fit perfectly into the available space, optimizing both performance and usability. By addressing spatial challenges effectively, CPQ helps in delivering solutions that are both efficient and practical, further enhancing customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.

Large system manufacturers:

Large system configurations can be intricate and involve numerous components, options, and dependencies. CPQ software provides a user-friendly interface that simplifies the configuration process. It guides users through selecting compatible components, managing dependencies, and ensuring that all requirements are met. This simplification reduces errors and improves the efficiency of the configuration process. 

By leveraging CPQ software, large system manufacturers can simplify the configuration process, automate pricing and quoting, enhance visualization, improve collaboration, integrate with engineering and manufacturing systems, and gain valuable data insights. 

What are the benefits these manufactures are seeing using CPQ?  

Enhanced configurations: 

With CPQ software, manufacturers can configure even the most complex products quickly and accurately. The software allows for easy selection of components, features, and options, ensuring that customers receive tailored solutions that meet their unique requirements. 

Error-free quotes and pricing: 

Manual calculations are prone to errors, which can lead to costly mistakes and delays. CPQ software automates the pricing process based on predefined rules, ensuring accuracy and consistency. It enables manufacturers to generate error-free quotes with up-to-date pricing information, discounts, and promotions, improving customer satisfaction. 

Efficient sales processes:  

CPQ empowers sales teams by providing them with a user-friendly interface to configure products, select pricing options, and generate quotes in real-time. The software automates approval workflows, reducing administrative burdens and enabling sales representatives to focus on building relationships with customers and closing deals. 

Rapid turnaround time: 

CPQ eliminates time-consuming manual processes, enabling manufacturers to respond to customer inquiries and generate quotes with remarkable speed. By streamlining the quote-to-order process, manufacturers can shorten sales cycles, gain a competitive edge, and improve overall operational efficiency. 

Accurate order fulfillment:  

By integrating CPQ software with ERP systems, manufacturers can ensure seamless data transfer from the sales process to production and order fulfillment. This integration minimizes the risk of miscommunication and ensures that the final product matches the customer’s specifications precisely. 

Data-driven insights: 

CPQ provides manufacturers with valuable data and insights into customer preferences, sales trends, and pricing strategies. Analyzing this data can help manufacturers make informed decisions, optimize product offerings, and identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities. 

Who uses CPQ? 

Overall, companies that use CPQ software typically have complex product offerings, and the ability to accurately configure, price, and quote their products is critical to their success. CPQ software helps these companies to streamline their sales process, reduce errors, and improve customer satisfaction.

Exploring the Limits of Configurator Compatibility with Complex Products 

If you are selling B2B manufacturing products that are deeply individualized for each customer, you know the benefits of Configure-to-Order (CTO) compared to that of a manual and slow Engineer-to-Order (ETO) process.  With CTO you increase sales speed, accuracy and win rates – especially with a configurator you can trust.  

Can today’s configurators really handle the high level of complexity that B2B manufacturing products typically have?  

Let’s look at what complexity could be and how configurators may address it.  

• For standard and commoditized products with no variation you do not need configuration. An example could be a screw. These products can be sold through pick-to-order from a catalogue and have a repeatable and predictable order fulfillment process (production, delivery, installation).  
• On the next level we find products that are individualized but have a small number of part variants. A shoe may have different kinds of strings that you may want the customer to choose from, but the number of string types is mostly limited. More importantly, there is no dependency between the string and rest of the shoe: You can basically select any string type without getting into conflict with the functionality of the shoe. These products may use simple forms of configurators (often with a visual component) but the selection of parts variants is almost on par with standard products selection.  

 

• On the next level we find products that have tree-like assembly structure. A bike, for instance, consists of an assembly with subassemblies (e.g. frame, handlebar, front wheel, rear wheel, gears). For each subassembly there could be great variance (e.g. large selection of wheels and tires). Moreover, the selection of each subassembly or module is dependent on the selection of other subassemblies on the bike. For instance, some wheels and tires may be incompatible with the diameter and length of the frame fork. To avoid ordering faulty bikes, a configurator of bikes needs to keep track of these interdependencies. However, the number of subassemblies for a bike is static: at the time of setting up the bike configurator we know that a bike will only have one frame, one handlebar and two wheels (unless you are selling tandem bikes!). This makes the configuration problem less complex.  

• On the next level of complexity, however, that is not the case. In these products, the number positions at which those assembles can sit, is not known at the time of creating the product model. A heavy truck, for instance, may have 4, 6, 8 or even 10 wheels, depending on load capacity. In these cases, the configurator needs to support dynamic positions, the number of which affects other parts of the technical solution (e.g., the chassis, drive line and gearboxes). Only a hand full of configurators can handle this level of complexity with acceptable performance and a reasonable level of maintenance.  

• So even if a truck is complex, the range of positions are still finite and known. A heavy truck manufacturer may offer perhaps up to 10 wheels, but certainly not 40 or 100. But products with unknown scope do exist. Normally we call them systems. These products – for example HVAC systems, production lines, power distribution equipment, plants or wind turbine parks – typically have an organic and unbounded structure. The number of units in the system – and their spatial relations – is not known beforehand but may impact how the system performs. Each of those units may be complex and configurable in themselves, affecting the overall system landscape. Also, the ordering of the units may be important, especially in process flows systems. For a long time, these products have been deemed too complex for Configure-to-Order process and have been sold through manual Engineer-to-Order, causing long sales cycles, high cost of sales and costly quotes and order errors. Companies that have tried implementing a Configure-Price-Quote system for these products have suffered from performance issues and high maintenance costs of CPQ.  

However, recent configurator technologies now enable manufacturers to confidently Configure, Price & Quote large-scale systems with low sales costs and great sales tool performance.