Digital tools are revolutionizing how manufacturers run their businesses, providing more opportunities for efficiency, accuracy, and customer satisfaction. A recent study by Deloitte showed that companies with higher levels of digital maturity reported higher net profit and revenue growth.
In this blog, we explore how manufacturing companies, particularly those selling configurable products, are making digital transformation work for their business.
What is digital transformation?
Digital transformation in manufacturing refers to integrating digital technologies into all areas of the manufacturing process. It replaces manual tasks with digital tools and encompasses changes that manufacturers make to their design, sales, and production processes to streamline workflows and reduce bottlenecks.
Digital transformation involves leveraging technologies to improve efficiency, productivity, and innovation within the manufacturing sector.
The key benefits of digital transformation
For manufacturers of complex, configurable products, adopting digital technology is essential to meet customer expectations and stay competitive. According to McKinsey, digital transformation in manufacturing can boost throughput by 10% to 30%, and cut machine downtime by up to 50%.
Digital transformation provides a number of benefits:
Streamlined sales process
Digital tools like Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) simplify the sales process for custom products as follows:
Configure: Product configurators remove the challenges of specifying complex configurable products. Guided selling features enable sales teams, distributors, and customers to configure custom products easily and accurately. 3D visualization tools communicate complex design details easily, enabling customers to understand different product options as they make changes.
Price: Real-time rules-based pricing and discounts are automatically calculated, ensuring accuracy and reflecting current business pricing strategies.
Quote: Quotes and sales documents are automatically generated and emailed out, giving sales teams more time to focus on selling.
Automated engineering processes
For manufacturers of custom products, digital tools automate the preparation of engineering documents and data, which is beneficial for:
Reducing bottlenecks: Automation speeds up the creation of drawings for quotes and orders, reducing bottlenecks in sales, engineering, and manufacturing teams.
Freeing up engineers: Allows engineers to focus on high-value tasks by automating repetitive design work.
Automate business processes
Automation of routine tasks improves business agility, enabling teams to respond quickly to internal and external factors. This is beneficial in:
Freeing up sales teams: Automation reduces the need for manual quote approvals, freeing up sales teams from spending time on sales admin, and giving them more time to focus on selling.
Enhancing responsiveness: Automated workflows and approval processes streamline the flow of sales inquiries, through to design and manufacturing teams to improve communication and response times.
Overcoming staff recruitment and retention challenges
Digital tools help to overcome the challenge of recruiting and retaining skilled team members by automating processes across sales, design, and production teams. This:
Improves staff retention: Removing manual and mundane tasks improves job satisfaction, leading to lower staff turnover rates.
Reduces onboarding time: Guided selling functionality speeds up the training and onboarding of new sales staff, removing the need for intensive product training and knowledge.
Integrated data
Integration connects different company systems, enabling automatic data sharing. This is important for successful digital transformation as it:
Improves data accuracy: The automatic flow of data between systems eliminates errors from manual data entry.
Ensures up-to-date information: Keeps data accurate and current across all systems.
Facilitates informed decisions: Provides easy access to the strategic business information needed for monitoring performance and making decisions.
DriveWorks digital transformation customer story
KARACA GEMI, based in Turkey, is among the world leaders in developing and producing ship windows, glass, wiper, and frame constructions.
Karaca Gemi started their digital transformation journey with a free 30-day trial of DriveWorks Solo.
They use DriveWorks to automatically create custom SOLIDWORKS parts, assemblies, and drawings to meet customer requirements. DriveWorks also automatically saves the generated SOLIDWORKS files in PDF, DWG, and STEP format, ready to be sent to the customer.
Using DriveWorks Solo, Karaca Gemi respond to customers quickly with 3D models of their customized products as well as key sales documents, including BOMs and quotes.
Start your digital transformation journey today
DriveWorks Solo is the ideal solution to transform how you design, configure, and sell custom products. Using DriveWorks Solo, design engineers can automate repetitive SOLIDWORKS® tasks so they have more time to work on new product designs. Automating and streamlining the process of designing, configuring, and selling products drives sales and improves business efficiency.
Start your digital transformation today with a free trial of DriveWorks Solo for 30 days. No credit card required.