CREALIS® CPQ offers indivualisation for MAN ship engines

The Marine Engines division of MAN Truck & Bus SE uses the product configurator CREALIS® as an ‚electronic sales manual‘ to efficiently support the sales of its marine engines

MAN TRUCK & BUS SE

MAN Truck & Bus is one of the leading manufacturers of commercial vehicles in Europe with production facilities in three European countries as well as in Russia and South Africa, India and Turkey. The Nuremberg plant has been operating as an international MAN engine competence centre since 1955. Here, diesel and gas engines are developed and produced for in-house commercial vehicles, as well as for external customers in the agricultural sector and the private and commercial marine sector. The efficiency of around 4,300 employees is underlined

by an annual production of over 100,000 engines.

THE CHALLENGE

The sales network of the Marine Engines division of MAN Truck & Bus SE previously had a sales manual based on a CD-ROM with an extensive PDF collection at its disposal. The complexity, especially of the relationships that had to be taken into account, increased the processing effort and the risk of errors. Orders were placed without the possibility of technical verification, and a correct pricing could only be obtained with a disproportionate amount of effort. In order to be able to act even faster and more sustainably in the market, it was demanded that all offers should be prepared via an electronic sales manual. The declared aim was now to develop a webbased system that offers both online and offline solutions for efficient sales support.

THE PROCESS

A decisive factor for assigning ORISA to realise this challenge was the presentation of the used product configurator CREALIS® during a reference visit at Zünd Systemtechnik AG.

The fact that the ORISA employees were confronted intensively with the ‘MAN at an early stage was expedient in the implementation of a high process reliability and the acceleration of the sales processes. Within the framework of the configuration-conformant consolidation of data and information about design, production and sales, options, dependencies and rules for the configuration process of individual products were formulated. This way, the configurator can be operated without any programming knowledge.

THE RESULT

The product configurator CREALIS® integrates into the existing IT infrastructure thanks to its export/import options. Thereby, it was kept in mind that different calculations and behaviour patterns of the international users had to be included. This concerns country-specific conformity as well as the consideration of local legal regulations and standards as well as pricing. The definitions of the more than 11 different role characteristics are stored in easily understandable tax settings.

In addition, the marketing, design and production departments can also benefit from using the configurator. With an error rate close to zero, the entire process is accelerated enormously. Finally yet importantly, the high acceptance of the product configurator in the sales network is worth mentioning.

THE OUTLOOK

Since January 2016, all incoming orders from the network have been successfully processed with the configurator. The most important element of the configurator is the 100 percent correct order intake and the quick recognition of special requests according to the order, if the order is calculated correctly. “We very much welcome the fact that the latest Crealis version has a response capability on all terminals,” Thomas Scharr, Project Manager, Technical Application Marine Engines, MAN Engines, Nuremberg sums up. “We can therefore offer our field service and our importers a further optimised benefit. Because in the sense of time-to-market, the requirements of the customers can also be met in this way with a valid offer.”

With its flexibility, the product configurator offers sufficient leeway to efficiently map various customer requirements.

- Maximilian Lang MBA, Marine Sales Manager, MAN Engines – A Division of MAN Truck & Bus SE

The project in figures

91%

time saving in the
quotation process

95%

of the offers are realised
within the configurator

100%

users worldwide

11

international
role characteristics

Customer benefits at a glance

Support from sales conversation to order
Multilingualism and the inclusion of foreign currencies
Realisation of updates and their prompt availability
Differentiated role concept with authorisations for areas and functions
Customer-specific adaptations with regard to corporate design
Direct order transmission from the system to the production