It needs experienced application engineers & sales people and typically consumes several hours of high-end staff time. Designing custom products every time means that the organization has to be able to retain, access & build upon its product knowledge. ETO manufacturers tend to depend on the knowledge of their experienced engineers & sales people to win business. But people retire or move on, which means that the key product & process knowledge leaves the company along with these people. And new staff takes time to move up the learning curve. Inaccuracies in product configuration & quotation can result because of human error, which can be prove costly in various ways. Proposals need to include information such as engineering drawings, technical summaries & other engineering documentation. Accurately pricing their quotes is vital for ETO manufacturers in order to win business profitably. Bills-of-Material & reports need to be generated as part of the quotation documentation. All this makes demands on the time of sales teams. But they would like to reduce the time they spend on internal collaboration & coordination and increase face time with customers. Instead, they are forced to negotiate price books & product catalogs to create proposal documentation. Challenges such as these need to be addressed effectively if the manufacturer has to remain competitive in its market. |
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Benefits through the sales cycle |
The process of performing engineering calculations, evaluating suitable product alternatives & finally generating the necessary commercial documentation is automated. This reduces errors & boosts sales productivity. Risk of missed opportunities caused due to insufficient time to respond is reduced. Accuracy of quotes is enhanced. Knowledge about product configuration is captured in the form of rules assisting the retention of crucial process knowledge, mitigating the risk of knowledge drain.
precise enables you to deliver product & pricing knowledge directly to your sales force, ensuring that you meet your customers' needs for complex engineer-to-order products. Application engineering knowledge is captured in the form of engineering calculations & selection & configuration rules. The application engineering team is able to focus on more critical cases as opposed to complex configurations. And your sales team can configure optimal solutions for your customer's specific service conditions.