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).
Read our general guidelines on project planning and then fill out your own product specific deliverables and delimitations under each step in the Word (.docx) file that you can download below. This will help you to get an overview and to create time estimates of each step.
If you use a modern CPQ solution together with a parametric CAD-visualization tool like DynaMaker our experience is that each project step (1 – 7) will usually require around 40 hours of work for an expert with experience with CPQ implementing a product of average compexlity. And step 8 and 9 can be added multiple times depending on how many product configurators you are planning to implement.
Steps to implement CPQ
- Pilot project – Always start with a pilot to investigate, analyze, prototype and find the best way forward
- Internal product configurator – So that sales can start configuring, driving sales and giving feedback
- Product visualization with configurator – So that sales can see whats beeing configured
- Automatic generation of technical documents – To save time for sales and to clarify for the client
- Public product configurator for homepage – Enabling distributors and customers to also configure and quote
- Auto generation of Quote document – To save time for sales
- Enable external administration of quotations – To save time for sales and engage distributors / clients
- Add next product configurator (step 2 – 4) – To increase sales
- Add more details to existing product configurator (step 2 – 3) – To increase sales
Download template below for goals, generic deliverables and delimitations for each step