Developing a product configurator can be challenging due to the many design decisions along the way. Two of the most critical aspects that impact implementation time and skill requirements are:
That is why we have put together some examples to help you determine the complexity level based on the approach you take to the configuration, and hopefully guide you in the way you tackle your development project.
When creating your first product configurator that should help sales, distributors and even customers to configure products and request quotes there are many ways how to tackle the implementation project.
We have therefore created a generic project plan to be used as a template (see below) targeted towards manufacturing companies. To avoid ending up with a long and costly IT project that isn’t used by anyone we have divided the project into a series of steps to maximize the chances of success and to get value of the implementation as soon as possible (start to use the implementation already after step 2).
Customer self service applications come in many shapes and sizes. But they all enable the customer to do more of the sales work themselves which leads to increased customer engagement and should free up considerable time and resources for the internal sales team.
Taking the step from internal sales applications to public ones can however be challenging since it requires a new perspective (the customers) on pretty much everything in an app compared to what previous solutions have been optimized for (the experts). There are lots to be learned along the way when releasing the first customer self service application.
To minimize the risk of a huge development project that costs a fortune, takes forever to complete and is used by nobody afterwards, we have collected some general principles below that can help smooth the ride when developing your first customer self service application. Use the principles below together with our project plan template for implementing a CPQ.
When working with complex configuration its usually hard to separate visible input fields and variables from hidden rules and formulas. A product expert usually relies on experience when configuring a product, instead of strict rules and formulas. But when anyone should be able to use a product configurator the complexity needs to be greatly reduced, resulting in the requirement of a limited set of easy to understand input fields and a extensive set of hidden formulas that captures all the rules.
When working with changes in the sales process its essential to have a clear view of the customer journey. Therefore we have created a short questionnaire for some of the basic questions that the sales team should discuss and try to answer.
This can result in a list with the typical steps to a closed deal that can be used when discussing changes.
