The design, sale, and manufacture of custom products require complex workflows involving different teams and multiple sales channels. Different businesses have different workflows and sales strategies, and the true value of a configure, price, quote (CPQ) solution lies in its ability to be customized to meet the specific needs of your business. Custom workflows and permissions play a critical role in this, enhancing the flexibility of your CPQ solution and boosting productivity.
Customized workflows and permissions enable you to design a bespoke guided selling solution for sales teams and distributors to sell custom products with valid configurations. Intelligent automation of the sales process for complex custom products can deliver significant business benefits. 78% of business leaders believe that automating tasks at their organization will increase productivity levels for all.
This is backed up by research that sales professionals estimate they save around 2 hours and 15 minutes daily using automation tools to automate manual tasks.
With custom workflows and permissions in DriveWorks CPQ for Manufacturing, you’re in control of what happens, when it happens, and who can make it happen. You have complete control over the process a new order goes through from initial inquiry through to manufacturing. In this blog, we’ll look at the key benefits of building custom workflows and permissions in your DriveWorks CPQ solution, and how they can transform your business.
Tailored workflows for your unique processes
Every business develops their own workflows that work for their products, teams and processes. With custom workflows, DriveWorks CPQ for Manufacturing can adapt to the unique processes used by your business. Whether it’s your engineering design process, order enquiry or product configuration, you can design bespoke workflows that fit your requirements.
Benefits of custom workflows:
Efficiency boost: Automated workflows reduce manual input, enabling tasks to move seamlessly from one stage to the next, and minimizing delays, errors and re-work.
Flexibility: Processes can vary for many reasons, product line, sales channel, geography, etc. Custom workflows allow for adjustments so each process has it’s own bespoke process.
Improved collaboration across departments
The design, sale and manufacture of custom products involves collaboration between various teams. Custom workflows streamline this collaboration, ensuring quotes and manufacturing documents and data are with the right teams at the right time.
Benefits of improved collaboration:
Faster approvals: Automated workflows reduce bottlenecks and speed up approvals. Notifying users when tasks are assigned to them improves task completion rates and reduces quote and sales cycle times.
Fewer errors: Errors are minimized when workflows are clearly defined and automated. Each team understands its tasks and responsibilities, what needs to be done and when.
Robust control with custom permissions
Custom permissions enable you to define which users can access certain features, products, or data within your CPQ platform. They enable you to create a controlled environment where the right people have the right access to the right things, keeping your CPQ process secure and efficient.
Benefits of custom permissions:
Channel differentiation: Custom permissions give you flexibility and control around product configurations across different sales channels. This is particularly beneficial when selling through a distributor/reseller network.
Process control: Give managers an overview and visibility into the workflow to easily manage approvals and make changes at a more senior level.
Scalability and adaptability as you grow
With custom workflows and permissions your DriveWorks CPQ for Manufacturing solution can adapt to changes in your business. From expanding into new markets to recruiting additional salespeople, your CPQ solution can scale with you.
Benefits of scalability:
Agility: New workflows and permissions can be added quickly in response to changing business needs, enabling your business to stay agile and competitive.
Long-term solution: As your business grows, your CPQ solution grows with you without the need for costly updates and add-ons.
Improved customer experience
The efficiency and UI of your CPQ solution have a big impact on customer satisfaction. Custom workflows and permissions enable online B2B buyers and sales teams to accurately configure complex custom products.
Benefits of improved customer experience:
Quicker quote cycles: Custom workflows and permissions enable sales teams to quickly and accurately provide quotes.
Personalized offers: Provide personalized configuration, upgrade, and cross-sell options to different customer segments.
Custom workflows and permissions with DriveWorks CPQ for Manufacturing
Dolphin Solutions, based in the UK, design and supply a range of products and accessories for commercial washrooms. Before implementing DriveWorks CPQ for Manufacturing technology, Dolphin Solutions’ order process was lengthy and time-consuming with each individual bespoke mirror unit and associated production files designed manually from scratch using SOLIDWORKS®. This involved a lot of dialogue between the sales and design teams.
With DriveWorks CPQ for Manufacturing, their sales team can now take the configurator tool directly to customers on laptops and tablets that display product options. Using custom workflows and permissions, only options that are manufacturable are shown to customers, improving collaboration and eliminating costly errors in the manufacturing process.
Every time a new specification is generated, DriveWorks and SOLIDWORKS work together to create a brand new drawing for each specification, ready to be sent to the manufacturing floor. An email alert is also triggered when a specification is complete, automatically sending an email to the sales and marketing teams, with information including the customer name, email, phone number and company. The customer also receives an email confirming their order.
Guided selling, setup using DriveWorks Rules technology ensures that only valid options based on previous selections and product parameters are shown. This ensures that configured products are always valid and can be manufactured, and without the requirement to consult the design team, sales cycle times are improved.
“The days and weeks are cut down to minutes and hours because our customers are finding their final design much quicker. They can see all their options and the drawings are generated automatically.”
Robert Allen, Product Design Engineer, Dolphin Solutions
DriveWorks CPQ: Industry-proven software for manufacturers that sell configurable products
Custom workflows and permissions inside a CPQ solution are the key to creating a dynamic and efficient platform that maximizes the value of your CPQ solution. They enable you to tailor your CPQ solution to your unique business needs, improve collaboration across departments, and sell complex configurations across different sales channels. They also allow you to scale and adapt as your business grows, ensuring that your CPQ investment delivers long-term benefits.
DriveWorks CPQ enables manufacturing companies to easily build a configure, price, and quote solution with custom workflows and permissions.