Explosive growth in biologics and gene therapies mandates changes in the way these life-saving therapeutics, vaccines and diagnostics are developed and manufactured. Key trends point to flexible bioprocessing solutions, a paradigm shift to single-use, highly configurable technologies, and a premium on rapid response and delivery.
As an innovative bioprocessing tools provider, Repligen pioneered ProConnex® Flow Paths—configurable and complete assemblies that connect tangential flow filtration (TFF) systems to the bioprocessing workflow. The product involves custom engineering and assembly of up to 200 parts: fittings, connections, process reservoirs, pressure transducers, aseptic connectors, TFF filters, pumps, and stands. ProConnex® Flow Paths clearly answered the industry need for single-use assemblies with ready-to-operate convenience, and the demand for the product grew exponentially.
Design and configuration of the hundreds of components and filtration options into a ProConnex® Flow Path were manually done by Repligen engineers. In addition, design input format varied. Customers communicated their requirements in multiple ways –pictures, napkin sketches, or written description. Repligen needed a configurator that enabled sales reps to configure and review proposed initial flow paths directly with the customer, before submission to Repligen Engineering.
Manual development, revision, and review of engineering drawings is a long process. Waiting for a quote was not meeting their customers’ need for a rapid response.
Repligen needed a configurator that incorporated business, sales, and manufacturing principles, along with a free-form drag and drop interface for use by sales reps. The solution had to be user-friendly and integrate with Salesforce CRM.
As demand for ProConnex® Flow Paths continues to grow, leadership at Repligen found themselves at a crossroads: hire more engineers to support pre-sales activities, or find a way to automate the process. Repligen decided to invest in a scalable, automated, flexible configurator that enabled sales reps to control and enhance the total customer experience, while providing engineers with rigorous technically-correct initial drawings so they can focus on final-product designs and production.
“We expected to create a more modern workflow for our commercial team. We didn’t expect to have a configurator that is also enjoyable to use.”
Daniel Spurgin, Senior Product Manager | Repligen
With Epicor CPQ, a sales rep is now presented with a library of base configurations that they can choose from. They select some basic options, and are presented a pre-built assembly that they can start customizing for the customer.
This prevents them from designing common assemblies from scratch every time, greatly reducing sales training. Sales veterans and newbies alike are fully enabled to build initial drafts of complex assemblies.
Instead of taking weeks to get a configuration figured out, they can now build visually in 3D with the customer in real-time. The best part is, they robust rules running in the background assures that anything a rep puts together in the configurator is valid and can be successfully built.
Even though the configurator is constantly updating pricing in the background, Repligen has strategically chosen to hide this information on screen. This allows the rep to safely work up a quote in real-time and keep the pricing and discounting discussions for a later time in the sales process.
Selections made by Sales during configuration of a single use assembly now drive the engineering process. They are now making changes for themselves which they were previously 100% reliant on Engineering for assistance.
The Epicor CPQ product configurator automatically generates a CAD drawing in PDF format to attach to customer quotes, as well as Solidworks format to allow for potential validation or customization by Engineering. A Bill of Materials (BOM) with pricing details is also dynamically generated to assist with downstream production.
Change management is revolutionized because Sales can open an existing quote in Salesforce, and with one click, launch the Epicor CPQ configurator and start working right from where they left off. The Epicor CPQ workflow just bundles everything up and sends it back to Salesforce with updated pricing, CAD, and Bill of Material outputs.
Repligen chose to deploy the Epicor CPQ entire cloud-based CPQ solution, including the powerful Snap advanced CPQ rules engine, 3D visual configurators with drag-and-drop, CAD automation, dynamic pricing, and integration with their Salesforce CRM instance.
A major reason that Repligen chose Epicor CPQ is because of its flexibility and extensibility. Since administration of the configurators can be done simply and with minimal technical knowledge, their internal teams are already working to add more filters and parts to their assemblies in Epicor CPQ.
After successfully hooking into Salesforce with Epicor CPQ, Repligen is considering a project to integrate with enterprise PDM (Product Data Management) as well. The robust Epicor CPQ API and the out-of-the-box integration capabilities leveraged through the Epicor CPQ + Mulesoft partnership makes these integrations, previously considered to be difficult, much more attainable.
With minimal training, Sales can quote the customer with confidence in the accuracy, pricing, and outputs.
Reduced time and number of people involved in quoting means more quotes generated and less waiting for the customer.
With 50 users already, and growing, Repligen is looking to deploy in other use cases, product areas and business units.
