Configurator White Paper
Configurator White Paper
Configurator White Paper
Table of Contents
Executive Summary 1
Background
Summary
15
16
Executive Summary
Companies that build configurable, multi-option, and customizable products are finding that a configurator can provide a competitive edge by reducing lead times, automating quotation documentation, increasing workforce efficiency, eliminating errors and rework, and increasing customer satisfaction. Introducing a configurator into an organization requires a considerable investment of both time and resources. Capturing knowledge to define configuration rules is time consuming, whether undertaken by a consultant or by a companys own personnel. However, once these rules are captured, they become a company asset. To maximize the benefit from this asset, its important to select a configurator that not only addresses the companys immediate requirements, but also provides a growth path to adopt advanced options in the future. The configurator market can appear confusing. Unlike financial accounting software, which has specific functionality for categories such as accounts receivables, payables, and a general ledger, there are no such standard definitions of what configuration software must contain. All configurators are not the same, and today there are hundreds of different software products that fall under the umbrella term of configurator or product configurator. In this white paper we examine the capabilities of the four major categories of configurator products available in the market today: Knowledge-based engineering (KBE) solutions ERP configurator modules Product visualization solutions Enterprise product configurators This white paper highlights the functionality that companies are looking for in a configurator today, and examines the scope of the four categories of configurators mentioned above. This document provides some of the key questions you should ask potential software vendors, and will help you select the right product for your companys needs.
Background
For many industry sectors, the days of producing standard products or products with limited options are over. Driven by customer demand and the need to differentiate themselves, manufacturing companies are offering more custom or configurable products. In the past companies did not offer customization, as it was just too expensive for the manufacturer and the customer. Today, if your company offers standard products only and does not allow customers to configure your products to their specifications, your business is at a serious disadvantage. Simple standard products are too easily copied and manufactured in regions with low-cost production. To combat this threat, companies must offer more value to their customers and distribution channels. To compete with low-cost rivals, many North American and European manufacturers have adopted Lean techniques, which reduce waste and improve productivity.
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Most of these companies start these initiatives on the shop floor. However, many have discovered that there is a greater benefit to be derived by cutting out waste and errors from the front-end business processes. This is because the complicated quote-toproduction process of a complex product manufacturerinvolving multiple departments including sales, estimating, engineering, and customer servicecan lead to slow response, potential errors, and an increase in overall product lead time. The business-to-business market for configurable products is also being influenced by what is available in the business-to-consumer market. One example is Dell Computer (www.dell.com). With Dells direct sales model and online configurator, customers can get exactly the computer they want instead of choosing from pre-built configurations. To stay competitive, other computer companies now must offer the same capabilities. In another example, automobile manufacturers are providing customers with the ability to pick colors and options, and price a vehicle, without stepping into a showroom. This trend has moved into the industrial and high-tech equipment market for products such as conveyor systems, elevators, telecommunications systems, medical technology, and technical furniture. Customers are asking why they are limited to a small number of different styles. They are demanding the ability to customize the exact size and specifications of the end product. Increasingly, companies must offer configurable products to stay competitive, and offer these products with the same lead times for which they would offer standard products. To address these challenges, manufacturers need sophisticated configurator solutions that can help reduce lead times, eliminate errors, and lead to increased revenue and margins.
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Increase Efficiency
Automating the quote-to-production process frees engineers time to work on designing products instead of creating estimates. Sales people can spend more time prospecting and talking with customers, instead of on paperwork. The customer service departments workload is reduced as accurate quotations and configurations lead to fewer queries. With access to online information, customers can be more self-sufficient answering their own routine inquiries. Support personnel can then spend more time solving complex problems when they occur.
Key Benefits:
Decrease quotation lead time between 40-80% Reduce order lead times 10-50% Reduce costs 10-40% Grow market share by 20% Eliminate between 40-80% of human errors Free up between 1-5 personnel
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Before examining the different characteristics of each category, lets consider the types of requirements that a potential buyer may look for in a configurator solution. The process of defining configuration rules differs based on the physical nature of the product being defined. There are separate categories of rules for assemble-to-order (ATO) or configure-to-order (CTO) products and engineer-to-order (ETO) products.
Integration with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and/or Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
In most companies, configurators exist as a part of a larger IT infrastructure that may include ERP and CRM applications. The configurator should integrate seamlessly with these business applications without the need to write a custom interface. But historically, ERP and MRP applications lack the tools to integrate to other applications such as configurators. The configurator needs to include system integration capabilities that allow it to interact and share data bi-directionally with other critical enterprise applications. An Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) approach allows the enterprise to share data and processes without having to make sweeping changes to the applications or data structures. The integration tools must be flexible enough to handle the wide variety of formats and protocols, and have the capability to build integration business logic. Modern integration tools provide graphical representation and point-and-click mapping of data structures between applications.
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Another consideration of application integration is to provide monitoring and alert capabilities to track and maintain data moving from one system to another. For example, if the configurator is sending sales order data to the ERP system, and that system is unavailable, there needs to be a way to store the data so it is not lost.
Web-Based Architecture
A web-based architecture provides the flexibility to support a variety of usersinternal, external, or both. The advantage of a web-based configurator is that it requires no software on the client other than a standard web browser. This approach eliminates the need to keep laptop and desktop computers up-to-date with the latest configuration rules, as all the data operations are performed on the server.
Offline Capabilities
Although the majority of users will access the configurator online via the Internet, on some occasions users may need to access the configurator in a standalone mode, for example, on a long flight where an Internet connection may not be available. Having the option to use the configurator in a mixed online and offline mode is a requirement for many companies with a highly mobile sales force. For these situations, it is important to have the ability to run the configurator offline, completely encapsulated on a laptop, and then later synchronize with the central database of information and rules when an Internet connection is available.
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Quote Creation
Many companies want to improve the quality of the quotation sent to their customers. This includes the ability to control the format and look of the document. Most configurators can produce a professional looking quote or proposal document that is based on a standard template and for many companies this will suffice. Other companies require additional functionality, so that the configurator will customize the quote by inserting specific calculations, text, and images based on the features and options that the user selects. The configurator should also provide a variety of methods to produce and send the quote or proposal document to the customer. These methods include printing, faxing, and creating a PDF file to send via email.
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A web-based enterprise product configurator allows for many different user scenarios, and provides the necessary outputs to support the quote-toproduction process.
3D Virtual Images
Quotation
Visualization
Quotation Management
Once a quote is created, quotation management provides users with the capability to save, edit, and maintain the quote through its lifecycle, over multiple versions, tracking changes, and viewing history. Quotation management also includes the ability to monitor pricing and discounts, and to provide warnings if pre-defined limits are exceeded. Security and filters should be provided to restrict access to information. For example, a regional sales manager may be prevented from viewing quotes outside their area of responsibility.
Visualization
The ability to present images of available options during the configuration process can be very useful, especially if the users are not experts in the products they are configuring. For example, simply providing options A, B, & C in a dropdown list is not as helpful as showing an image of each option. Some configurators can dynamically generate virtual 3D images and web-viewable 3D VRML models (spin and zoom) of exactly what was configured. This functionality provides a much easier way for the user to verify the accuracy of the configuration, rather than simply looking at a bill of material. Advanced visualization capabilities make the configuration process more efficient and reduces errors.
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Another consideration for some manufactures may be room layout visualization. With this type of visualization, users construct 3D rooms consisting of configured and/or standard items incorporated into the 3D scene, to show how they fit and appear in a virtual room environment.
E-Catalog
Electronic catalog (E-catalog) functionality provides a companys catalog in electronic format, and generally includes the ability to find both standard or configured items through category drilldowns, searches, and filters. The E-catalog also allows users to obtain information such as cut sheets, product descriptions, and product images. This functionality is especially useful when a companys product line includes both standard and configured items. By integrating an E-catalog with a configurator, a quote or order containing both standard and configurable items can be constructed from a single source.
E-Commerce
Companies that want to incorporate the configurator as part of their website require the ability for customers to place orders and make payments directly without assistance from internal sales. In many cases, the first phase deployment of a configurator is limited to internal users. But many of these same companies will eventually want to make the configurator available to their end customers and extended sales channels via public or secured websites. It is therefore essential that the configurator contain native E-commerce capabilities, such as shopping cart functionality that enables customers to create, save, review, and place orders for both configured and standard products. Payment functionality should include processing for credit cards, purchase orders, or both.
Configurable Security
Different levels of security restrict access to certain data within the system, depending on the user. Internal and external users may need to see different types of information. For example, certain customers may be restricted to certain product lines, whereas sales people may have access to all product lines. The levels of security provided by the configurator should support your particular business processes.
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This functionality provides the flexibility to accommodate many different types of users within an enterprise. A customer, an external sales rep, and an internal order entry person may all use the configurator in different ways. For example: A customer may want to create a configuration and request a quote. The sales rep needs to convert the customers request into a quote, and later a request for order. The order entry person may want to convert quotes into orders or simply skip the quote process altogether and place an order. A configurator with process centric functionality must be supported by roles-based security, with notifications based on changes in status, workflow, and queues. Ultimately, this functionality enables companies to not only automate the creation of deliverables from features and options, but also the entire quote-to-order or quote-to-production process.
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The diagram depicts the typical process flow covering the quote-to-order and quote-toproduction cycle, showing the scope of the configurator types, and their interaction with the various departments.
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One of the main benefits of using an ERP configurator module is that the functionality is tightly integrated with other ERP components, such as order entry, pricing, bills of material, routings, and scheduling. However, compared to a standalone configurator application developer, ERP vendors must spread their development resources across many different modules. As a result, ERP configurator modules tend to be functionally lean as compared to configurators from pure play configurator vendors. For example, the rules capture functionality may not be as user-friendly. While an engineer or product manager may define the rules, it may require an IT person to create them in the system. Generally, ERP configurator modules have very limited rule-capture capabilities, and can handle only ATO and CTO rules, making ERP-based configurators most suitable for simplistic products and a poor fit for complex products with complex rules and pricing. One of the biggest drawbacks of an ERP configurator module is that the rules are not portable from one ERP system to another. As with any configurator implementation, considerable resources are needed to capture a companys rules. But if a company changes ERP systems, then all the configuration rules must be rebuilt, often times resulting in several man-years of effort. If replacing the ERP system is on the horizon, take this into consideration before deciding to use the ERP configurator module.
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The option to link to various CAD systems, enabling the enterprise product configurator to automate engineering tasks, such as the creation of sales and production drawings, simple and complex bills of material, and manufacturing routing reports. Integrated visualization during the feature and option selection process, and at the end of the configuration, to show 3D virtual product images and VRML of the exact configuration as well as generating 3D room scenes when its valuable to see the configured product in a custom room layout environment. The functionality to deploy integrated E-catalog functionality for use on customer or sales-facing storefronts and aftermarket applications. E-commerce functionality that provides a virtual shopping cart to take orders via credit card or via purchase orders from portals, or the main company website, for both configured and standard products. Enterprise process centric functionality that allows companies to deploy and leverage the enterprise product configurators capabilities throughout the organization. A company making full use of these capabilities would have customer service representatives entering orders and sales reps creating professional quotes. The company could also allow dealers and customers to configure their own products, create quotes, and enter their own orders. Perhaps the company would integrate the configurator into its web site, to include e-catalog and e-commerce functionality, and in some cases provide the ability to visualize the product as different options are selected. To obtain the benefits of all of these advanced capabilities, the enterprise product configurator must be web-based, process centric, and flexible to facilitate use both internally and externally.
This chart shows the capabilities provided by each of the four configurator categories.
Configurator Capabilities
KBE Solutions ATO & CTO Rules ETO Rules Integration to ERP/MRP & CRM Web-Based Architecture Dynamic Drawing Capabilities Advanced Order Entry Multi-level, Multi-View BOM Generation Advanced Pricing Generation Quotation Creation Quotation Management Advanced Document Creation Advanced Routing Generation Visualization E-Catalog E-Commerce Configurable Security Advanced Searches, Queries, & Reports Offline Capabilities Process Centric ERP Configurator Modules Product Visualization Solutions Enterprise Configurator
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Summary
By streamlining all or part of the quote-to-production process, reducing lead times, and eliminating or greatly reducing errors, configurators provide companies with a competitive edge, especially those companies with highly configurable, complex products. KBE solutions are fine if a company simply needs a productivity tool for its engineers. For simple products, without complex pricing structures, the configurator module available with an ERP system might suffice, but rule portability is an important consideration when replacing the ERP system. The all-encompassing enterprise product configurator is the best choice for companies that want to do more with a configurator than simply automating processes or creating documents. The biggest cost involved in a configurator solution is not the software, but the investment in creating the product rules. Once created, the companys product rules become an asset. Making these rules available to more users throughout your extended organization leverages this asset to reduce costs by automating processes, and eventually increasing sales. Even though the initial application of the enterprise product configurator may be internally focused, greater benefits are realized when the enterprise product configurator is exposed to field sales reps, dealers, and customers. Even within these four configurator categories, there are many functional differences between products. Define your requirements carefully so you can select the right product for your companys needs. The configurator solution should be modular, allowing you to buy just the functionality you need today, but provide the functionality for the future. Making the wrong choice and limiting your companys options will not only limit the potential benefits, but also put your company at a severe disadvantage compared to your competition.
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Europe/Asia Offices
Configure One Europe Ltd. 44/45 Harlow Enterprise Hub Kao Hockham Building Edinburgh Way Harlow Essex, CM20 2NQ United Kingdom Phone: +44 (0) 1279 311420 Fax: +44 (0) 1279 311422
www.configureone.com