Defeating the Ugly Door

Using Online Product Configurators to Avoid Costly Mistakes

It’s Friday afternoon and a call comes in for a door. Joe, a sales representative, is talking to the customer and offering all the options. On Monday in the planning department, Elaine, the production planner, is wondering what Joe was thinking when he quoted the door. In Elaine’s mind, it is the ugliest door she has ever seen, and Joe obviously made a mistake in his specifications to the client. We now route back to Joe and the client to “pretty up” the door and make it into something the client would actually install. The whole process wastes valuable time, money and goodwill with the purchaser. This is a typical scenario in complex product sales.

Fear Not, Help Is Available

For all those manufacturers and dealers who have stumbled along this same path, help is available. It comes in the form of an online product configurator – a tool designed to ease quoting and prohibit the creation of a product no one would purchase. The tool is geared toward easing the movement of goods through the entire operational cycle, from quoting and sales through planning and manufacturing.

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