In today’s digital world and changing business landscape, manufacturing businesses like yours face many challenges, including closing client deals quickly. To reach these goals, your company needs to establish accurate price estimates and quotes which your clients can use to decide whether they want to hire your services. Our goal at Six S Partners is to consult and help you grow your sales by implementing the ERP tools that suit your needs. We provide our clients with the best estimate software and ERP quotation software in the Canadian market, SecturaFAB and Epicor CPQ, to help them increase customer revenue and engagement. Six S Partners chose these systems for our clients in Canada and the United States:
Quoting: Epicor CPQ
A quote represents a fixed price for a product or service offered to a customer. It usually cannot be changed after the customer has accepted it. It is also legally binding and should only be used when the manufacturer is sure of the costs involved in the project. This means that accuracy is critical, especially with products that include customizations. Epicor CPQ is a quote generation software that provides an end-to-end configure, price, and quote (CPQ) solution. It is a powerful rules engine for manufacturers that can automate CAD drawings, proposals, cut sheets, and more. It simplifies and automates sales, engineering, and manufacturing processes.
Capabilities
Epicor CPQ offers many capabilities for its manufacturing clients. A few of which are:
It is equipped with 2D/3D and AR visual configuration, which gives your customers lifelike visuals of your products on screen. Your customers select options and customize products by color, size, materials, etc. With dynamic processing, their price quote changes based on pre-configured rules. Quote automation is a feature that produces high-quality and accurate ERP quotes for your customers. Its robust workflow capabilities allow your dealers or distributors to build precise configurations before submitting them for approvals and creating an order.
Epicor CPQ analytics is a feature that you or your marketing team can use on your visual product configuration to collect key user experience data and send it to your preferred platforms to answer your questions on your customer’s behaviors. For example, how often do visitors abandon a product configuration? Or how many quotes are created daily, monthly, or yearly? This feature is also compatible with other analytics platforms so that you can see these data on your other preferred platforms.
Cut design cycle times from weeks to minutes with CAD and design automation. This feature allows your sales team to generate CAD drawings for their proposals without waiting for your engineering team to validate designs or profitability, which may take time and affect sales costs and profit margin. Your engineers can focus on enhancing design and custom work instead of transactional pre-sale activities.
Case Study: Teledyne Marine, Florida
Teledyne provides configurable Nautilus electrical and ODI optical equipment for clients in the Subsea oil and gas industry. Customers can customize connector and hose assemblies to get exactly what they need. This was great for customers but strained Teledyne’s sales, teams, and distributors. They saw a significant competitive advantage in providing quick quote response time and the ability to take orders with undefined requirements. The existing quoting process required manual input into Microsoft Excel and many engineering reviews, causing issues such as post-order revisions and excessive communication between sales, customers, and engineering. Sales also had to utilize error-prone excel files to perform price calculations manually. Teledyne knew they had outgrown their excel configurator and needed to have an enterprise tool.
Epicor provided Epicor CPQ engineering automation to overcome these challenges. With web-enabled configuration, sales and distributors can access Epicor CPQ over a web browser. They can update images in real-time to help them visualize their configured cable assembly. Validation rules trigger warnings and prompts to guide the user to preferred options. Pricing can be quickly calculated based on specific customer agreements. Teledyne uses the Epicor CPQ workflow engine to route approved quotes to particular users to ensure faster quote-to-order time. Internal admins can quickly add new options to their configurator without waiting for external help and can efficiently push out new product options and pricing to their global sales team.
Without having excel files flowing through engineering, sales can sit with customers and show them pricing and visuals in real-time. They have seen a significant rise in sales due to faster response and better proposal documentation, visuals, and drawings.
Estimating: SecturaFAB
SecturaFAB is a quoting and cost estimating software designed to provide faster estimates so manufacturers can win more clients. Unlike a quote, an estimate is not a set price and is considered the best guess of what a job or product might cost. It should only be used as an initial guide price because it can change when new information or unexpected complications arise. Developed by SecturaSOFT, SecturaFAB was designed to provide an easy and flexible way to create accurate and profitable pricing to win quotes quickly. Estimates can be produced in minutes rather than hours so your team can accept more jobs, increase speed from manufacturing to delivery, and eliminate time to give customers feedback. For your customers who are already under a deadline, SecturaFAB can provide pricing that is accurate enough for the business and fast enough to win.
Capabilities
- It accepts all types of files, including DXF, DWG, and 3d models
- You can define length and quantities, bars, structure, pipes, or tubes from a catalog
- Customers can upload files, select specifications and quantities, and get quotes instantly
- It can be customized as a quoting software with ERP and integrated with your CRM, CAD, and accounting software.
Case Study: Brunswick Steel, Winnipeg, Manitoba
Brunswick steel is a metal service center that offers a full range of raw materials, including plate, sheet metal, tubing, rebar, and more. What sets them apart is their value-added metal processing services. They have a reputation for quality products and services and a willingness to go the extra mile. Their facility can operate 24/7 due to automation on the shop floor. However, their sales and estimating departments were still using manual quoting.
The speed at which quotes are created was limited by the knowledge and experience of senior estimators and salespersons. This can ultimately affect the organization’s profitability if sufficient staff are unavailable. In their case, their quoting process was manually intensive, and they relied on excel spreadsheets. This resulted in quotes not being created promptly. They knew speed, accuracy, and consistency are vital to winning business in this industry, so they found SecturaFAB in 2017. With SecturaFAB, their non-expert team members could confidently create fast and accurate quotes. They found the software so successful that the company expanded its use through its sales staff.
Watch our customer webinar highlighting their advanced capabilities
Learn more from Six S Partners
Your manufacturing company can experience results like these and more with ERP solutions from Six S Partners. As certified Epicor partners, we will work alongside you to set up and manage your quoting and estimating software so you can maximize your profits. Contact us today to get started.