ACCURATE QUOTES AND ORDERS IN THE SHORTEST POSSIBLE TIME WORLDWIDE

With CREALIS® CPQ, Christ AG is achieving a high level of efficiency in the international distribution of its car wash systems.

OTTO CHRIST AG

The Christ Group is a group of com­pa­nies under the umbrel­la of Otto Christ AG — Wash Sys­tems in Mem­min­gen. Foun­ded in 1963, the com­pa­ny is now one of the lea­ding car wash manu­fac­tu­r­ers in Euro­pe. The pro­duct ran­ge extends from the well-known gan­try car washes and self-ser­vice sys­tems in car wash parks to various car washes for com­mer­cial vehic­les such as trucks and buses as well as rail vehic­les. The inter­na­tio­nal dea­ler net­work and its sub­si­dia­ries are the pil­lars of its world­wi­de dis­tri­bu­ti­on.

THE TASK

Otto Christ AG — Wash Sys­tems offers the right gan­try wash sys­tem for every requi­re­ment. In the past, Christ’s sales force used about 25 dif­fe­rent pri­ce lists kept in Excel, which had to be rege­ne­ra­ted regu­lar­ly. Howe­ver, the varie­ty of com­bi­na­ti­ons and the multi­tu­de of inter­de­pen­den­ci­es under cer­tain pre­re­qui­si­tes such as tech­ni­cal fea­si­bi­li­ty and eco­no­mic effi­ci­en­cy can­not be map­ped in Excel in a usable way. The quo­te pro­ces­ses are to be made simp­ler and error-free using a pro­duct con­fi­gu­ra­tor and achie­ve an increased sales pre­sence on the inter­na­tio­nal mar­ket.

THE PROCESS

An extre­me­ly good respon­se after a suc­cessful test pha­se prompt­ed a roll-out across the world­wi­de dis­tri­bu­ti­on net­work After eva­lua­ting a com­pre­hen­si­ve mar­ket ana­ly­sis, Christ opted for CREALIS® CPQ from ORISA. A pilot pro­ject was initi­al­ly laun­ched in mid-2013. As a pro­to­ty­pe, a sel­ec­ted gan­try washing sys­tem was to be map­ped and con­fi­gu­red in the con­fi­gu­ra­tor tog­e­ther with the available wash pro­gram­mes. This includes both deter­mi­ning the tech­ni­cal com­pon­ents requi­red in each case and the lay­out of the wash pro­gram­me steps. In addi­ti­on, exten­si­ve cal­cu­la­ti­ons were inte­gra­ted, for exam­p­le, what con­sump­ti­on of resour­ces (ener­gy, water, che­mi­cals, etc.) and what cos­ts are incur­red by the sys­tem ope­ra­tor when using the respec­ti­ve wash pro­gram­me. After suc­cessful com­ple­ti­on of the pilot pro­ject, the actu­al pro­ject star­ted at the end of the year. The cus­to­mer gra­du­al­ly under­took the model­ling tasks its­elf. For this pur­po­se, the modellers recei­ved the appro­pria­te ins­truc­tions from ORISA. The models can thus be deve­lo­ped and main­tai­ned inde­pendent­ly of the soft­ware manu­fac­tu­rer. The inter­nal IT depart­ment accom­pa­nied this pro­ject in an advi­so­ry capa­ci­ty and with the pro­vi­si­on of the exis­ting IT infra­struc­tu­re. In 2015, the for­eign dis­tri­bu­ti­on star­ted with the beta pha­se. The good respon­se from the par­ti­ci­pan­ts prompt­ed a roll-out across the glo­bal dis­tri­bu­ti­on net­work, which was com­ple­ted at the end of 2015.

THE OUTCOME

Con­ve­ni­ent use and exact results lead to high accep­tance With around 200 users from fif­ty count­ries at pre­sent, about 30 to 50 con­fi­gu­ra­ti­ons are made per day. This high accep­tance is explai­ned by the com­fort offe­red. Clear for­mu­la­ti­ons, fault­less­ness and over­co­ming pos­si­ble lan­guage bar­riers play an essen­ti­al role here. This allows the con­fi­gu­ra­tor to be used in the nati­ve lan­guage and the results to be gene­ra­ted imme­dia­te­ly in the respec­ti­ve tar­get lan­guage. A ran­ge of docu­ments such as tech­ni­cal data sheets, pri­ce infor­ma­ti­on, gene­ral terms and con­di­ti­ons, etc. are available in the respec­ti­ve lan­guages. Trad­ers can insert their logos and anno­ta­ti­ons into the Word docu­ments. The visua­li­sa­ti­on in 2D shows the cur­rent con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on sta­tus at any time and lends a hel­ping hand when sel­ling pro­ducts requi­ring inten­si­ve con­sul­ta­ti­on. If a con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on is com­ple­ted and meets the customer’s requi­re­ments, an order can be pla­ced direct­ly from the con­fi­gu­ra­tor. The clear and intui­ti­ve user inter­face allows the con­fi­gu­ra­tor to be used wit­hout leng­thy fami­lia­ri­sa­ti­on. The pro­vi­si­on of a strin­gent sel­ec­tion of the desi­red com­pon­ents at any time faci­li­ta­tes the work to a gre­at ext­ent and pro­vi­des secu­ri­ty with regard to fea­si­bi­li­ty. In gene­ral, the­re are very high time savings when ente­ring orders. The sim­pli­fied pro­cess flow struc­tu­re in order pro­ces­sing con­tri­bu­tes signi­fi­cant­ly to this.

THE OUTLOOK

Off­line func­tion­a­li­ty of the con­fi­gu­ra­tor as well as fur­ther fea­tures for visua­li­sa­ti­on in plan­ning Alre­a­dy, almost 98 per­cent of orders are being pla­ced via the con­fi­gu­ra­tor. It is plan­ned to pro­vi­de cer­tain sales repre­sen­ta­ti­ves and dea­lers with off­line func­tion­a­li­ty for the con­fi­gu­ra­tor. For this pur­po­se, they will recei­ve a licence to use this off­line ver­si­on on their local PC. The results con­fi­gu­red on site are then sent to the Christ ser­ver via a spe­ci­al­ly set up inter­net access. Data syn­chro­ni­sa­ti­on will take place here so that the con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on always has an up-to-date sta­tus. The­re are also plans to use the advan­ta­ges of 3D visua­li­sa­ti­on within the realm of sales sup­port. Gra­phic details can be high­ligh­ted rea­li­sti­cal­ly and effec­tively. In future, this will enable the poten­ti­al cus­to­mer to be gui­ded through the sys­tem to be con­fi­gu­red even more cle­ar­ly. Fur­ther­mo­re, making the con­fi­gu­ra­tor available to users, inclu­ding ter­mi­nal device com­pa­ti­bi­li­ty, is under con­side­ra­ti­on. This mobi­li­ty in the sen­se of respon­si­ve web design allows the con­fi­gu­ra­tor to be used in a wide varie­ty of situa­tions and enables a fle­xi­ble way of working in sales. This results, for exam­p­le, in even grea­ter respon­si­ve­ness to enqui­ries and chan­ge requests.

“Today, almost 98 per­cent of orders are pla­ced via the con­fi­gu­ra­tor. As a result, a 50% time saving is achie­ved.”

- Simon Zett­ler, Area Sales Mana­ger, Otto Christ AG

The Project in Figures

98%

pro­ces­sing of quo­tes via the con­fi­gu­ra­tor

50%

Time saving

55%

Export share

200

Users

50

Count­ries

The customer benefits at a glance

  • Sup­port of inter­na­tio­nal sales

  • Enorm­ous time and cost savings in world­wi­de dis­tri­bu­ti­on

  • Rapid pre­pa­ra­ti­on of cor­rect quo­tes

  • Redu­ced error rate in orders

  • Redu­ced order through put time

  • Available online on the inter­net