CREALIS® — quote generation including purchased parts

Within the Viessmann Group, the complexity of products and systems is mastered through the use of the innovative CREALIS® product configurator, which supports the generation of quotes for turnkey projects

VIESSMANN Group

The Viess­mann Group is one of the lea­ding inter­na­tio­nal manu­fac­tu­r­ers of hea­ting, indus­tri­al and coo­ling sys­tems. Viessmann’s com­pre­hen­si­ve ran­ge offers indi­vi­du­al solu­ti­ons with effi­ci­ent sys­tems and out­puts from 1.5 to 120,000 kilo­watts for all appli­ca­ti­ons and all ener­gy sources. With 22 pro­duc­tion com­pa­nies in 11 count­ries, sales com­pa­nies and repre­sen­ta­ti­ves in 74 count­ries and 120 sales offices world­wi­de, Viess­mann has an inter­na­tio­nal out­look.

THE TASK

Hig­hest pos­si­ble effi­ci­en­cy, func­tion­a­li­ty and fle­xi­bi­li­ty in quo­te gene­ra­ti­on, order con­fir­ma­ti­on and order pro­ces­sing The Viess­mann Group’s pro­duct cate­go­ries of indus­tri­al boi­lers, CHP units, bio­mass and lar­ge heat pumps are com­plex and requi­re a gre­at deal of con­sul­ta­ti­on. From this port­fo­lio, pro­ducts and sys­tems as well as com­ple­te turn­key pro­jects are offe­red to indus­tri­al cus­to­mers and muni­ci­pal faci­li­ties. The ever more exten­si­ve quo­tes were beco­ming incre­asing­ly dif­fi­cult to hand­le in terms of effort. In order to achie­ve the grea­test pos­si­ble effi­ci­en­cy and fle­xi­bi­li­ty in quo­te gene­ra­ti­on and order pro­ces­sing, Viess­mann deci­ded to use a pro­duct con­fi­gu­ra­tor deve­lo­ped spe­ci­fi­cal­ly for their needs.

THE PROCESS

Advan­ta­ge­ous approach from data ana­ly­sis to spe­ci­fi­ca­ti­ons and pro­to­ty­pe con­cre­ti­sed the approa­ches at any time As CREALIS® lar­ge­ly met Viessmann’s expec­ta­ti­ons, ORISA was com­mis­sio­ned to draw up spe­ci­fi­ca­ti­ons. A pro­duct-ori­en­ted ana­ly­sis of the data stored in the SAP® sys­tem was man­da­to­ry. For opti­mal imple­men­ta­ti­on, exten­si­ve dis­cus­sions took place with tho­se respon­si­ble from sales, mar­ke­ting and engi­nee­ring. Par­al­lel to the spe­ci­fi­ca­ti­ons, a pro­to­ty­pe was alre­a­dy crea­ted, which incor­po­ra­ted both the sales and tech­ni­cal cri­te­ria from the design area. Cha­rac­te­ristic-spe­ci­fic mate­ri­al groups were defi­ned. Among other things, it had to be deci­ded whe­ther the pro­ducts were crea­ted in-house or whe­ther they were bought in. Many approa­ches beca­me con­cre­te, so that fea­si­bi­li­ty and accep­tance alre­a­dy accom­pa­nied the pro­ject at this point. This was fol­lo­wed by the deve­lo­p­ment and pro­vi­si­on of the inter­faces. Fur­ther­mo­re, inten­si­ve work was done on the user inter­face and it was ali­gned to the indi­vi­du­al needs as well as to the cor­po­ra­te design. Pri­or to the roll-out of the 1st ver­si­on of the pro­duct con­fi­gu­ra­tor in March 2015, the sales staff in the pro­duct cate­go­ries under­went appro­pria­te trai­ning.

Crealis 3d Screen

THE OUTCOME

Web ser­vice enables cur­rent inclu­si­on of purcha­sed parts in the con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on pro­cess Based on ORISA’s CREALIS® pro­duct con­fi­gu­ra­tor, a solu­ti­on was desi­gned spe­ci­fi­cal­ly for Viessmann’s needs. By means of the cross-pro­duct con­fi­gu­ra­tor, it is pos­si­ble to obtain an exact pro­duct pre-sel­ec­tion as well as spe­ci­fi­ca­ti­ons with just a few ent­ries in order to gene­ra­te a quo­te quick­ly and wit­hout errors. In prin­ci­ple, the pro­duct con­fi­gu­ra­tor pres­ents its­elf as a black box. Users are not bur­den­ed with the tasks of the chan­ge ser­vice, the admi­nis­tra­ti­on of mate­ri­als, part num­bers and docu­ments. They are gui­ded in a pro­duct-com­pli­ant man­ner from the pro­duct pre-sel­ec­tion via tech­ni­cal data — frame­work con­di­ti­ons, para­me­ters — to the spe­ci­fi­ca­ti­on. This approach turns out to be an opti­mal fil­te­ring pro­cess. In the back­ground, the asso­cia­ted tech­ni­cal values are cal­cu­la­ted, which then flow from CREALIS® into the Viess­mann request for quo­tes. In addi­ti­on to the three coor­di­na­ted and deploy­ed soft­ware sys­tems (CREALIS®, quo­te por­tal and SAP®), a web ser­vice in the sen­se of B2B bet­ween the com­pa­nies was crea­ted. When con­fi­gu­ring an indus­tri­al boi­ler, for exam­p­le, the­re is also the sel­ec­tion of a sui­ta­ble bur­ner. Sin­ce Viess­mann does not manu­fac­tu­re bur­ners, they are bought in. During the con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on pro­cess, the­se bur­ners are ful­ly inte­gra­ted. “With the web ser­vice, using the exam­p­le of the bur­ners, we have suc­cee­ded in inte­gra­ting purcha­sed parts into the con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on pro­cess in real time with a uni­form user inter­face wit­hout media breaks,” explains Bob­by Har­ke.

THE OUTLOOK

Exten­si­on of the web ser­vice appli­ca­ti­on and ali­gnment of the lay­out in respon­si­ve web design After the roll-out of the 1st ver­si­on of the Viess­mann con­fi­gu­ra­tor for four pro­duc­tion com­pa­nies, the addi­ti­on of a fur­ther sub­si­dia­ry, Elek­tro­nik GmbH, is now immi­nent. In addi­ti­on, a roll-out of the con­fi­gu­ra­tor to all sales com­pa­nies is plan­ned. In fur­ther deve­lo­p­ment, a super­or­di­na­te approach is to be crea­ted in order to accom­mo­da­te users even more in the pro­duct pre-sel­ec­tion. Based on the suc­cessful web ser­vice appli­ca­ti­on, plans are in place to set up three more B2B imple­men­ta­ti­ons with coope­ra­ting com­pa­nies. This con­cerns the pres­su­re main­ten­an­ce sys­tems, pumps and fit­tings pro­ducts. In addi­ti­on, the lay­out of the con­fi­gu­ra­tor is also to be adapt­ed to the dis­plays of mobi­le end devices such as tablets and smart­phones, so that users do not have to scroll, but can drag the images smal­ler or lar­ger. The crea­ti­on of an addi­tio­nal­ly sel­ec­ta­ble offer form almost as a bud­get quo­te in the style of a manage­ment sum­ma­ry is in the design pha­se.

“The con­fi­gu­ra­tor leads to a reduc­tion of the error rate to almost zero, to fas­ter respon­si­ve­ness to enqui­ries and to a signi­fi­cant gain in time for the actu­al sales work.”

- Bob­by Har­ke, Viess­mann Indus­trie­kes­sel Mit­ten­wal­de GmbH

the project in figures

80%

of all por­tal quo­tes via the pro­duct con­fi­gu­ra­tor

40%

Increase in the num­ber of quo­tes

26

Lan­guages

> 95%

Time saving with com­ple­te sys­tems

> 1 Mio.

Vari­ants for heat gene­ra­tors

THE CUSTOMER BENEFITS AT A GLANCE

  • Cross-pro­duct con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on for quo­te gene­ra­ti­on with pro­duct pre-sel­ec­tion and auto­ma­ted accep­tance of pro­duct-spe­ci­fic cha­rac­te­ristics

  • Coun­try-spe­ci­fic pro­duct spe­ci­fi­ca­ti­ons and manage­ment of lan­guage ver­si­ons

  • Inter­faces to SAP, to the por­tal request for quo­tes and to sup­pli­ers

  • Pro­vi­si­on of cal­cu­la­ti­on results and pro­duct fea­tures for auto­ma­tic accep­tance in modu­la­ri­sed and dyna­mic sales texts