How do configurators improve the relationship between sales and production? (Part 1)
Collaboration between sales and production is the site of an age-old, almost classic conflict in most companies. The former accuse production of being sluggish, the latter accuse sales of offering pears on willow. Product configurators are able to offset these tensions and reconcile the two departments.
Among the many causes of disagreement between salespeople and their colleagues in the production department are:
- Too little time to produce the product promised to the customer
- Promising an unrealistic shape of the final offer
- Collecting too little data on customer expectations
- Collecting inaccurate data on the parameters of individual bid elements
- Selecting to offer materials and items that are currently unavailable or for which you have to wait longer
- Putting together such elements of the offer that are mismatched or whose combination requires additional work/investment within the final product
Vendor support with electronic offer selection and configuration systems is a growing market trend, particularly exacerbated by the surge in interest in online shopping during the COVID-19 pandemic. The configurators are both made available to customers themselves and function on the computers and tablets of vendors, who can use them to create and present offers more quickly and practically, without error.
Strengtheneddialogue between sales and production
Already when creating the configurator, a dialogue between the two departments is necessary. Product configurator is a series of connections between elements of the final offer. It is necessary to define the rules of these interrelationships, so that in the future an accurate offer will be created, which will respond to customer needs, but also meet the business expectations of the company.
To design such a solution, therefore, one needs to gather information about what product options may be available, which types of linkages are risky or even impossible to implement, what kind of data needs to be obtained from the orderer. It is also necessary to determine from which sub-suppliers the various parts of the product are purchased, and how to ensure that the configurator has up-to-date data on their availability and price. This dialogue will continue when it comes time to develop the configurator with new options.
Collaborativeproduct development work
Historical analysis of configurator content can provide the company with excellent data for the development of further products and services. Thanks to it, you can see which product elements are particularly valued by customers, and which they easily give up. It is also possible to see how customers prioritize the criteria for selecting product elements, as well as which - absent from the offer - options they ask for.
This knowledge allows for a better understanding of the audience and is a great resource for the sales and production departments to think together about what new products are worth bringing to the market to get as close as possible to customer expectations. The sales department will bring market knowledge, trends and fashions to the process, while the production department will bring production experience and technological expertise.
Eliminatingconflicts at the selection stage
A well-designed configurator not only helps to put together the most matching items, but also makes it impossible to select those that do not match. Rules sewn into the software will make it impossible to combine some parts of the offer. Working on the configurator will also allow you to describe unusual situations - such as when the customer orders rare, but still possible, combinations, or very strongly individualizes any parameter of the product (for example, for a piece of furniture, this could be its length).
In such a case, the system will make sure that an order for an unusual combination entails ordering the elements necessary for its proper functioning (such as an extra pair of legs or a reinforced frame). Thanks to this, the risk that the production department will receive an incomplete order drops almost to zero, and satisfaction with cooperation with the sales department increases dramatically!
This is not the end of the evidence that configurator algorithms can mitigate conflicts. In the second part of our article, we will cite even "harder" evidence that the relationship between sales and production can be much better thanks to them.
