How can the product configurator support boat manufacturers?
Product customization is growing in importance. In many industries it is even a standard, and each order is a unique set of product features. The Polish yacht industry has set its sights on individualization.
Why do customers want to individualize their yachts?
The world's most expensive yacht, measuring 180 meters, is worth more than $600 million, while the most expensive car costs less than $30 million! This proportion perfectly shows what a prestigious and expensive market boats and yachts are. And although the largest group of yachts are the much smaller ones - around 24 meters - they are still expensive and attract demanding customers.
And wherever there is a rich and demanding customer, there is also the need for individualization. A yacht or catamaran is an object that builds the owner's own brand. It is where friends and contractors are invited, so every detail of it must testify as best as possible to whoever could afford such a purchase. Both technical and finishing features of the boat are chosen. The color and type of wood alone is a choice from more than a hundred options, and there are even more types of upholstery or decorative elements.
What does individualization mean for manufacturers?
Since there are thousands of boat components, and each of them can be selected from dozens or hundreds of options, it's easy to guess how difficult the salesman's job is. Not only does he have to have a good understanding of the customer's needs and present him with the various options to choose from, but he also has to make sure that the subsequent components work together and meet certain technical criteria, as well as...fit within the buyer's budget. It's as if the person buying the car wanted to decide on every element of it - from the color of the paint and the type of rims, to the type of windshield wipers and the design of the cup holder. There is also the added challenge of having to keep an ongoing eye on offering only those items that are currently available on the market. This requires working through many different catalogs, paper and electronic, flipping from centimeters to inches and feet, and from dollars to zlotys and vice versa.
All these tasks take time. And customers get impatient waiting too long for an offer. Especially now, when the market for boats and yachts is growing rapidly, response time is very important - it determines whether the sales process will be successful.
How can configuration automation accelerate sales?
In recent years, boat manufacturers' interest in sales automation has been growing rapidly. On the one hand, this is due to the desire to speed up the quoting process, and on the other, to provide a configurator to customers who want to go through the selection stage themselves. Product configurators are therefore being placed both on dealers' tablets and on manufacturers' websites.
The most important benefit of such a solution is that the time it takes to assemble the product and price the whole thing is reduced from several days to several minutes. But there are other advantages as well. Selection errors, for example, are reduced, as it is the algorithms that make sure that all components fit together. The quality of the production itself is also shortened and improved, as the product configurator can check the availability of individual components in stock and send orders, in case of shortages.
What further boosts sales is the ability to equip the configurator with a module that quickly generates a 3D visualization of the configured boat and allows the customer to see his dream object. The configurator also allows you to quickly prepare an offer in any language, individualize it in terms of colors or fonts, and take care of its elegance. And the icing on the cake is that it's also a much greener option than traditional catalogs and paper offers.
Our numerous contacts with the boatbuilding industry, visits to domestic and international trade fairs and observation of customer markets make us confident that the coming years in the industry will be marked by investments in product configurators. We are happy to take on this challenge!
