Category: Product Configuration

How Greenheck Fan is Making SAP Integration Pay

Bottom line: Making SAP integration pay starts when inbound orders are automatically converted to BOMs and then scheduled for production – all electronically and all with completely transparency to the channel selling, direct selling and sales management teams. That combination of speed and accuracy of orders – and everyone knowing order status – is making every company choosing to integrate Cincom product configuration with SAP R/3 systems all the stronger competitively for it.

Mar 10, 2010 | 0 comments | View Post

How Product Configuration Strategies Can Help You Out-Teach the Competition

Bottom line: Using all the lessons learned from a product configuration strategy to better serve channel partners and make them stronger is what out-teaching the competition is all about. When pursued with insight and intensity, out-teaching the competition is by far more powerful.

Mar 03, 2010 | 0 comments | View Post

Wedding Innovation and Business Value, Implications for Product Configuration Strategies

Bottom line: Consider multichannel selling strategies as an innovation lab too – and seek to discover new approaches that work for your company in attaining its margin and profit goals. Streamlining product configuration, pricing, and quoting – all essential aspects of operational efficiency, when combined with multichannel selling, can drastically improve a company’s performance, per McKinsey’s insights on this topic.

Mar 01, 2010 | 0 comments | View Post

How Web 2.0 Technologies Are Changing How We Work: Lessons for Product Configuration Strategies

There are excellent take-aways for quoting, pricing and product configuration strategies as well, specifically in how to make these strategies more collaborative and successful. His concept of “pockets of energy” could be likened to those groups who stay focused and strongly committed to getting a company’s product configuration strategies adopted and moving forward.

Feb 26, 2010 | 0 comments | View Post

Ten Reasons Why Guided Selling Strategies Deserve More Respect

Guided selling needs more respect and focus, it’s a stealth weapon for selling that more companies need to get aggressive about.

Feb 20, 2010 | 0 comments | View Post

IDC Predictions 2010 and the Product Configuration Landscape

* The proliferation of mobile devices is going to make untethered sales and product configuration a critical requirement for more companies than ever before.

* AJAX and optimized XML on private networks are going to be the foundation of distributed order management systems that can manage varying levels of product order complexity. Think scalability of production process, from assemble-to-order through engineer-to-order.

* The pervasiveness of cloud computing and virtualization is going to be a catalyst for product configuration strategies being used for standard products too.

Feb 19, 2010 | 0 comments | View Post

Gaining Insights into Innovating Your Business Model: Implications for Product Configuration Strategies

Bottom line: Product configurations strategies are the catalyst for many companies moving into adjacent market segments – take for example Oracle’s decision to make Sun servers entirely build-to-order (BTO) while also bundling in virtualization software and enterprise management apps. The BTO strategy Oracle is pursuing is an example of how product configuration can extend a business model profitably.

Feb 16, 2010 | 0 comments | View Post

Best Practices in Selling with Product Configuration: Keeping Trust King

Bottom line: Time to hit the customer reset button and get out of the “cost coma” so many companies are stuck in right now. Get more focused on the experience your systems are delivering and the trust you’re earning – and realize that above all else, owning a customers’ problem is the most important step in any recovery. Trust is king, earning it by owning their problems are the path back to sales growth.

Feb 10, 2010 | 0 comments | View Post

Most Common Wastes in Front Office, 1-5

Businesses implementing lean manufacturing often bypass the front office and target their manufacturing processes. After all, front offices have paperwork not inventory, right?

Feb 04, 2010 | 0 comments | View Post

Competing with Giants: It’s All about Speed

The same holds true for product configuration strategies of smaller competitors in large markets. It all starts with product configuration strategies aimed at excelling the user experience.

Feb 01, 2010 | 0 comments | View Post

Creating a Customer-Centric Business with Product Configuration

How to get beyond the platitudes of customer centricity to the hard work of making lasting change happen in organizations?

Jan 28, 2010 | 0 comments | View Post

Defining an Effective Sales Model for the Enterprise Software Industry

SaaS, to be successful in the enterprise, needs to concentrate on a agile product development and support role-based, not necessarily personal productivity-based workflows.

Jan 25, 2010 | 0 comments | View Post

Navigating Complex Selling with Product Configuration: Part I

Bottom line: The essence of excellent selling is helping customers past the dangerous pitfalls their strategies may hold and guiding them to their goals. Product configuration platforms in high-tech, industrial plant and equipment, telecom and many other industries are the lighthouses that combined with selling expertise keep companies on the path to their goals.

Jan 21, 2010 | 0 comments | View Post

Start Your Product Configuration Strategies as a Selling Strategy First

The best place to start? Integrating the product catalogs, websites, pricing systems and service systems you may already have in place.

Jan 21, 2010 | 0 comments | View Post

Power Up Your Quoting and Product Configuration Strategies

The greatest results from quoting and product configuration strategies aren’t …

Jan 20, 2010 | 0 comments | View Post