When is the time right to replace your current product configurator with Hive CPQ?
Complex and powerful product configurators are often the backbone of a manufacturers organisation. It is an engine to validate input and generate crucial output information like pricing, bill of materials, bill of labour, complex calculations and more. However, lots of configurators no longer meet today's market standards. Let's take a look.
Product configurators
Manufacturers often have implemented product configurators years ago, and have invested years into the fine-tuning and maintenance of their configurators. Unfortunately, often, these configurators do no longer meet market standards. They often are slow, don’t fully support ‘the web’, look as they come from the Middle Ages. On top of that they cannot be used in multiple applications (CRM, website, lead generation, webshops,…) and it takes a specialist to fill in the inputs in a correct way.
Today’s modern configurators are fast, visually appealing and can be used for multiple purposes and scenario’s. When is your ‘old’ configurator old enough to replace it with a new one? It is a though question.
When is the time right to replace your product configurator?
For starters, it is not always needed to immediately decommission your old configurator. When we make a Hive CPQ implementation it happens we build Hive as a commercial configurator that will support the sales process. Once the order is placed, Hive can supply all inputs to the old configurator module, who in turn will generate all appropriate information for the production.
The advantage of such approach?
- The ‘old’ configurator is no longer used during the sales process
- The ‘new’ configurator does not have to contain all information, but can be a simplified version at the start. Making it faster, more agile and more friendly to its users
- Business logic can be moved gradually into the new configurator. This makes it easier to entirely replace the old one, over time
The disadvantages of such approach?
- There will be maintenance of two configurator engines. Each with its own purpose though. One for sales, the other for production. With a clear goal in mind, decommission the old one.
A good way to support two configurators at the same time, is to make sure they refer to the same ‘master data’. The Hive configurator for example, can use external validation rules to validate a model.
On the other hand, completely replacing it is often the right choice!
If you compare old engines to a modern engine, it is a world of difference. Today, with modern technology, the development of a configurator is easily 10 times faster as it is with old technology. Especially in the maintenance part of the configurator models.
Struggling with your current configurator and wondering if it's time to replace it?
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