Responding quickly to customer enquiries in a competitive environment is always a challenge for engineered products companies. The sales process of engineered-to-order products & equipment is complex and faces several constraints. 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 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 increased 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 plough through various price books & product catalogs to create proposal documentation.
Such challenges need to be addressed effectively for the manufacturer to remain competitive.
