Teledyne saw major competitive advantages in providing a quick quote response time and the ability to take orders with undefined requirements. The existing quoting process required manual input into Microsoft Excel and considerable engineering review which was causing major issues. There could be numerous post-order revisions that required excessive communication between sales to the customer, and sales to engineering.
Teledyne offers frame agreements with its major customers that allow for individual pricing on various components. This meant sales reps had to utilize error-prone Excel files or perform calculations manually. It was increasingly difficult to release updated options into the Excel configurator and enable sales teams to know when and how to offer them.
“Our previous process was extremely inefficient. We had outgrown our Excel configurator and needed to have an enterprise tool.”
Andreas Kwetkus, Vice President of Business Development | Teledyne Marine
There are no longer multiple Excel files flowing through engineering for translation. Sales can sit with prospective customers and show them real-time pricing and visuals with immediate documentation.
The sales team has seen a significant rise in hit rates due to faster response and better proposal documentation, visuals, and drawings.
Engineering does not have to “fill in the blanks” on incomplete orders anymore. They either get valid configurations to build from or can approve custom requests before an order is approved.