Conference ilbbak::us_sales_service

131.0. "A quick and simple configure/quote process" by SALSA::BLUNDELL () Sun Jun 28 1992 20:55

A lot of our Sales Reps time gets spent preparing and making changes
to quotes.  Most Sales units prepare in excess of a thousand a year,
and each one can be revised many times, so the effective quote to Customer
Order number can be quite high.

My job involves helping Sales prepare technically accurate quotes and also
certifying the Customers Orders before they are seen by Manufacturing, so
I am constantly aware of the time spent to prepare the quotes, and the
difficulty Customers have in giving us a clean order.

Seems to me there is an excellent opportunity for some of our products to
use an automated system to prepare quotes and accept orders without using
any Digital employees time at all.  Heres the vision:

Lets say we want to accept orders for a product that requires some configuring
and there are rules to be followed to ensure that the desired mix of options
can be assembled by Manufacturing.  My experience has been that three types
of mistake are made when putting this together:

            1/  The wrong variant of an option is chosen
            2/  More options are chosen than there is space to mount them
            3/  Needed prerequisites or supporting parts are forgotten

We can avoid these common mistakes and get the Customer to do ALL the work
by implementing this new way to prepare quotes and enter orders.  For each
product using this scheme we will produce a pictorial configuring form.  The
form will have a drawing of the major assembly, and will be accompanied by a
sheet of stick on labels with pictures of the configurable options.

Lets take one of the new disk cabinets as an example.  The main sheet would
show the cabinet outline and the bays available for mounting the disk storage
arrays or tape drives.  The labels would each show an alternative storage
array or tape drive that could fit in the cabinet.

We immediately solve the most common configuring problems!  The Customer does
not have the choice of an incorrect option variant because we only give labels
for the appropriate options.  When the picture is full, the storage cabinet is
full.  This will be self evident!

We can also construct the labels so that they include related parts.  For
example, disk drives need cables to connect them to the system.  We would
make the disk drive label include a smaller label that defined the cable
needed.  If the Customer did NOT want the cable, then they would remove the
small label, which could reveal a statement that a cable would be needed.

OK, so now the Customer is looking at a picture of the equipment they would
like to buy.  They have done the configuring for us, and want to get a formal
quote and maybe place an order.  (Remember, apart from the upfront work of
preparing the pictorial order form and getting it in the Customers hands, we
have spent no time on this so far.)

Suppose we had a small system/PC somewhere with a FAX interface and some OCR
software that could recognize the order form and the labels the Customer had
been using?  It would be simple to translate those items on a one for one basis
to our internal part numbers, which could then be sent to AQS to generate a
formal quote and FAX the quote back to the originating FAX.

To review what has been accomplished:

1/  The Customer put together a technically valid configuration.
2/  The Customer entered all the data and prepared a quote.
3/  The Customer printed the quote and reviewed it.
4/  All the above could happen in a ten minute period!  


The hardware needed to do this is trivial, a small PC with a FAX board and
connection to AQS to actually produce the quote.  The system could be
implemented as a trial for any product, although it fits most naturally
in the Desktop and Storage areas.

Well, heres a proposal.  I'm not in a position to do this myself yet, I have
most of the hardware at home but have not yet got the application software or
skills to implement a demo.  At work, its out of the question, I'm in Admin
and not expected to be developing demos, but I do feel free to have ideas
about doing the job better and making proposals.

Does anyone have the vision (and the money) to put together something like this
to make it easier to sell their product?  Want to comment on the idea?

Jeff
    
    Posted here for discussion and with luck to plant a seed.  Also sent to
    DELTA.

    
    Great Idea!
    
    NO let's take it one step further (into the future?):
    
    Put these 'sheets' that will be expensive to print and
    distribute/interpret etc. and put them onto a disk that will work under
    MS/Windows (Millions sold to date!).  The 'customer' (could be a sales
    rep w their new Notebook PC) clicks on, say an expansion box for a
    VAX4000 icon and a new set of available options pop up.  Using the
    mouse, they drag the options over to the Expansion box until it is
    full.  If they don't need/want the cable they click on the cable check-box
    removing the X from the option icon.
    
    Now they can a: print and mail or FAX the configuration to DEC
    		 b: FAX or otherwise transfer electronically to DEC
    		 c: Copy to Floppy Disk and give to sales or operations
    In any event, we now have the order on line where it goes into AQS for
    detail analysis and print-out or display to the sales person who can
    add allowances and/or adjustments and return it (electronically?) to
    the customer.
    
    If we build this in an object oriented fashion, there could be
    background rules built in that check things like power supply ratings,
    etc.
    
    Now, to reduce our cost of sales further (no salesman will call, blah,
    blah) allow the customers to dialin remotely from their desk and
    generate the whole thing.  This could take the place of all the systems
    and options catalogs we print, further reducing our cost.  Doesn't look
    like 'rocket-science' to create this approach and it should pay for
    itself quickly by moving lots of products into the commodity space.  It
    also would give us a selling advantage over the competition similar to
    the Airlines sponsorship of reservation systems.
    
    I say you should send this to DELTA and get some money from the 'bank.'
    
    Jerry

    Jerry,
    
    	Copy SALSA::DECPC.EXE over the net, and run it on your laptop.
    
    It is almost what you are talking about, and its on the CD-ROM disk
    that we distribute free to our Customers in the PC world.
    
    	It does not drag icons around, but has a series of radio buttons
    that are labelled with the possible options allowed.  Where multiple
    quantities are allowed, then it keeps count.
    
    End result is a configuration printout very much like an AQS quote with
    short descriptions.  No prices though.
    
    As far as DELTA $'s go, its  _time_ thats short, I have enough
    hardware at home to support the idea!
    
    Jeff

re: all

Look for something that does this, plus more, in the next 6 months or so.  And
yes, it runs on MS-DOS w/windows.

Bob

    Would it be too much to ask that the current price file also be
    incorporated in to such a system?
    
    Basically, I am looking for AQS on a Laptop.  
    
    AND, for those of us in the edu space, it would save a lot of manual
    calculation time if the TEI pricing could be there as well.  Nothing is
    worse than having to use a calculator to determine the TEI allowance
    for just about every part number!
    
    Art

I see my .3 has aroused some interest.  For further information, please contact
Kristen DLOACT::COX.

Bob

    re .3...Is this new configurator an object oriented system (ala a code
    builder)?  I think that Jeff's idea is good.  Sales should be selling,
    not spending their time configuring.  
    

An update to my .3

There appears to be some non-technical problems with us generating potentially
binding quotes and doing configuration validation.  We are pushing for a
favorable resolution.  If not, we may be forced to leave out some desired
functionality :-(

Bob