Product Configuration and Variant Configuration

An overview of the basic tasks of a CPQ solution

Product Configuration and Variant Configuration –

an overview of the basic tasks of a CPQ solution

Configuration — An overview

Con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on in the sen­se of pro­duct con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on or vari­ant con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on includes pro­ces­ses that con­sider the assem­bly of parts and modu­les into indi­vi­du­al pro­ducts or the fin­ding of vari­ants in a pro­duct ran­ge. Con­fi­gu­ra­tor soft­ware has found its way into many are­as of life: in the B2C sce­na­rio, end cus­to­mers con­fi­gu­re their indi­vi­du­al pro­ducts with visual­ly ela­bo­ra­te 3D con­fi­gu­ra­tors; in the B2B sce­na­rio, manu­fac­tu­ring com­pa­nies sell com­ple­te plants and fleets with sales con­fi­gu­ra­tors. In pro­duc­tion, con­fi­gu­ra­tors also help with the cor­rect fil­ling of parts lists or with the crea­ti­on of com­ple­te work plans.

In sales and mar­ke­ting, the term CPQ (Con­fi­gu­re — Pri­ce — Quo­te) has been estab­lished for con­fi­gu­ra­tors that pri­ma­ri­ly sup­port the sales pro­cess. The­se are appli­ca­ti­ons which con­fi­gu­re pro­ducts or ser­vices (Con­fi­gu­re), deter­mi­ne a pri­ce for the con­fi­gu­red pro­duct in par­al­lel or down­stream (Pri­ce) and final­ly crea­te a quo­ta­ti­on docu­ment with this infor­ma­ti­on (Quo­te). Howe­ver, the use cases of an ele­gant CPQ solu­ti­on are cer­tain­ly broa­der. A con­fi­gu­ra­tor can be ope­ra­ted as a sales tool for sales and dea­lers and at the same time as an online con­fi­gu­ra­tor for the end user. It can be inte­gra­ted into the pro­cess land­scape and thus sup­port the enti­re sales pro­cess or it can map ETO (Engi­neer-To-Order) pro­ces­ses becau­se it invol­ves all depart­ments in the com­plex pro­duct fin­ding and pro­duct deve­lo­p­ment.

Configure

Con­fi­gu­re (con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on, pro­duct con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on, vari­ant con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on) includes all pro­ces­ses that mana­ge the assem­bly of parts into indi­vi­dua­li­sed pro­ducts or the fin­ding of vari­ants in a pro­duct ran­ge. This is used in are­as with mul­ti-vari­ant pro­ducts on the basis of super bills of mate­ri­al as well as for pro­ducts and ser­vices that requi­re expl­ana­ti­on. The more com­plex the com­po­si­ti­on of a pro­duct or the need for expl­ana­ti­on, the grea­ter the requi­re­ments for the CPQ solu­ti­on used. For Con­fi­gu­re, the pos­si­bi­li­ty of arbi­tra­ry depen­den­cy defi­ni­ti­on, i.e. the defi­ni­ti­on of all rele­vant rules and con­texts, cons­traints and exclu­si­ons, is an indis­pensable func­tion. Based on this, an engi­ne is requi­red that hand­les the enti­re depen­den­ci­es com­ple­te­ly and wit­hout errors.

Around 200 users from fifty countries use the multilingual product configurator from Otto Christ AG — Wash Systems to design vehicle wash systems in a knowledge-driven way.

Otto Christ AG — Wash Sys­tems offers the right gan­try wash sys­tem for any requi­re­ments. With curr­ent­ly around 200 users from fif­ty count­ries, about 30 to 50 con­fi­gu­ra­ti­ons are gene­ra­ted per day. The high accep­tance is explai­ned by the com­fort offe­red. Clear for­mu­la­ti­ons, free­dom from errors and over­co­ming pos­si­ble lan­guage bar­riers play an essen­ti­al role in this. The clear and intui­ti­ve user inter­face enables the con­fi­gu­ra­tor to be used wit­hout time-con­sum­ing trai­ning. The pro­vi­si­on of a strin­gent sel­ec­tion of the desi­red com­pon­ents at any time great­ly faci­li­ta­tes the work and pro­vi­des secu­ri­ty with regard to fea­si­bi­li­ty. Gene­ral­ly, enorm­ous time savings are recor­ded con­cer­ning the ent­ry of purcha­se orders. The sim­pli­fied pro­cess flow struc­tu­re in order pro­ces­sing con­tri­bu­tes to this signi­fi­cant­ly.

Price

Pri­ce (pri­cing, pri­ce cal­cu­la­ti­on, pri­ce set­ting) includes all pro­ces­ses and infor­ma­ti­on that deal with pri­ce struc­tures and cal­cu­la­ti­on sche­mes of the mul­ti-vari­ant pro­ducts and ser­vices. Pri­ces can be com­po­sed of indi­vi­du­al part pri­ces and pri­ces can play a role in com­bi­na­ti­on with other parts. The type of pri­cing can be expan­ded through cal­cu­la­ti­on sche­mes in which, for exam­p­le, mar­ket and coun­try-spe­ci­fic fac­tors, pri­ce sca­les or dis­count struc­tures influence the final pri­ce. If no indi­vi­du­al parts or assem­blies are available as a basis for BOM-based pri­cing, the pri­ces are defi­ned on the basis of other struc­tures such as pro­duct requi­re­ments or deploy­ment sce­na­ri­os. In addi­ti­on to pure pri­cing, other pri­ce-rela­ted con­tent can also be map­ped. This includes cal­cu­la­ti­ons such as lea­sing, finan­cing or hire purcha­se and mar­ket-depen­dent pri­ce struc­tures and tem­po­ral vali­di­ty, always taking into account the roles of the users and their mar­ket affi­lia­ti­on.

Toyota Material Handling Deutschland optimises the quotation process for the three sales pillars by introducing the sales configurator: Direct sales, key account and independent dealers

With the CREALIS® pro­duct con­fi­gu­ra­tor, Toyo­ta Mate­ri­al Hand­ling Deutsch­land’s dai­ly busi­ness shows a clear impro­ve­ment regar­ding the qua­li­ty of offers and orders. Cus­to­mers recei­ve a flaw­less offer in the shor­test pos­si­ble time. Queries regar­ding the fol­low-up order pro­ces­sing have also drop­ped rapidly. In addi­ti­on, the pre­pa­ra­ti­on of a quo­ta­ti­on for seve­ral units, inclu­ding their finan­cing, yields time savings of around 94 %. Pri­ce manage­ment and the cre­dit appr­oval pro­cess are ful­ly map­ped within the con­fi­gu­ra­tor, taking into account the dif­fe­rent requi­re­ments of direct sales and retail­ers.

Quote

Quo­te (offer docu­ments, cal­cu­la­ti­ons, pro­duct bro­chu­res) sum­ma­ri­ses the pos­si­bi­li­ty of crea­ting an offer for a spe­ci­fic, indi­vi­du­al­ly con­fi­gu­red pro­duct or ser­vice, which can be made available to inte­res­ted par­ties. The neces­sa­ry map­ping of cor­rect pri­cing in the docu­ment is also a fun­da­men­tal task. An offer can be sup­ple­men­ted with a wide varie­ty of docu­ments deri­ved from the indi­vi­du­al con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on. This includes, for exam­p­le, data sheets on spe­ci­fic assem­blies of the indi­vi­du­al con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on, instal­la­ti­on ins­truc­tions, coun­try-spe­ci­fic regu­la­ti­ons for use or CO2 effi­ci­en­cy class cer­ti­fi­ca­tes and much more. By lin­king the con­tents of the con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on to the cor­rect docu­ments, all infor­ma­ti­on in the offers is cor­rect.

ORISA Product Configurator CREALIS® as a Cloud Edition

Rol­lo Solar® Melich­ar GmbH suc­cessful­ly uses the ORISA pro­duct con­fi­gu­ra­tor CREALIS® as an ele­gant cloud edi­ti­on to effi­ci­ent­ly sup­port the sales of cus­to­mi­sed pool covers in the pre­pa­ra­ti­on of quo­ta­ti­ons. The con­fi­gu­ra­tor met with a gre­at respon­se due to its simp­le intui­ti­ve ope­ra­ti­on, rapid deploy­ment and the high degree of per­fec­tion regar­ding the out­put. Rol­lo Solar® reco­g­nis­ed that the­re is defi­ni­te­ly fur­ther poten­ti­al for auto­ma­ti­on. For ins­tance, it is being con­side­red to offer main­ten­an­ce con­tracts along with the quo­ta­ti­on in the future. A fur­ther step could be to auto­ma­ti­cal­ly gene­ra­te pro­duc­tion orders with the bills of mate­ri­als resul­ting from the con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on.

Prozess integration and flexibility

The func­tions that a CPQ appli­ca­ti­on can map depend on the pos­si­bi­li­ties and free­doms of the solu­ti­on used. Natu­ral­ly, the tech­ni­cal basics play an important role in order to be pre­pared for future requi­re­ments. Tech­ni­cal secu­ri­ty in the cloud com­bi­ned with maxi­mum usa­bi­li­ty on all devices is only one aspect that needs to be con­side­red. The fle­xi­bi­li­ty of data main­ten­an­ce and model­ling and the pos­si­bi­li­ties of inte­gra­ting fur­ther sys­tems are topics that play important roles in a CPQ appli­ca­ti­on. ORISA has been a soft­ware pro­vi­der for vari­ant con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on and know­ledge manage­ment for over 30 years and has a wide ran­ge of expe­ri­ence due to the lar­ge num­ber of pro­jects with the most diver­se solu­ti­on approa­ches. Many aspects and ide­as from the various cus­to­mer pro­jects have been included in the in-house pro­duct CREALIS® CPQ, resul­ting in a com­pre­hen­si­ve port­fo­lio of func­tions. If you like to know more about pro­duct con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on, vari­ant manage­ment and CPQ, plea­se cont­act us. We glad­ly advi­se you!