Updates

In today's fast-paced and ever-evolving manufacturing industry, businesses are constantly seeking ways to streamline their processes and deliver innovative products to meet the demands of their customers. One such method that has gained significant popularity is Configure-To-Order (CTO) manufacturing. In this article, we will explore what CTO products are, the benefits they provide, and the key differences between CTO and Engineer to Order (ETO) products.

In times of economic uncertainty, manufacturing enterprises are often challenged with reluctance to making business investments. Economic crises tend to trigger cost-cutting measures and cautious spending. However, Configure Price Quote (CPQ) solutions can be considered as an exception, since it forms an essential tool to support sales and provide potential benefits. Let’s take a look at why investing in CPQ in times of crisis is so crucial.

Another year has gone by! While we’re settling into the new year, we’re taking one final look back on 2022 today. How did our Configure Price Quote solution change in the past year? What new features did we implement to improve our solution? Let’s take a look at how our product evolved in 2022.

Welcome to the future of lead generation. We are launching the Hive Experience Configurator, a new way of generating qualified leads with active purchase intent straight from your website. Align your marketing and sales processes with the actions performed by your prospects on your configurator to increase conversion and closing rates. Use our experience configurator to sell more (efficiently)!

The war for talent rages on. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, companies are not only dealing with a talent gap, or a lack of skills in the workforce, but also with the great resignation, making people rethink their salaries, working conditions, and job satisfaction. The number of people quitting their jobs has rarely been higher. Studies have shown that the manufacturing industry in particular has been hit hard by this job market crisis. How can you protect your company from the increasing influence of the talent gap and the great resignation?

The past year has been extraordinary. 2021 was the year of vaccinations, more remote work, and the attempt to catch up on the things we had to miss out on in 2020. Today, we’re taking one final look back at the previous year to see which features we treated our customers to! We added 150.000 lines of code to Hive, what kind of features does this translate to?

Customers that have to wait for months on their orders, empty shelves in stores and unseen increases in price: the manufacturing industry is currently struggling with a worldwide shortage of raw materials. The lack of materials such as lumber, aluminum or plastic has caused a crisis for manufacturers. But where does this sudden scarcity come from? And what is the best way for companies to handle this situation?

Manufacturers are often struggling with long and complex sales processes, making it hard to increase sales. This has to do with the complex nature of the goods, but also with the fact that B2B sales requires various stakeholders to work together. On top of that, the manufacturing market has had some intrusive changes: increasingly demanding B2B buyers and global competition continue to impact companies. Increasing sales in manufacturing is therefore not as straightforward as it often is in other industries. We are bundling some tips to increase your sales again. Read along!

HiveCPQ simplifies international B2B e-commerce even further now: our platform is running in China! It is one of the fastest growing economies in the world, working its way up to the number 1 spot. China, known as a manufacturing hub, is therefore an interesting place for B2B players around the globe to target.

The current situation of the manufacturing industry is very complex, as companies evolve in a very competitive environment. But competition is not the only challenge manufacturers face, as product life cycles have been growing shorter and customers are demanding customized products more and more. The arrival of 5G will ease these challenges, but it is important to be prepared, by investing in the right software today.

HiveCPQ is the next generation quotation tool. Why? We take the quotation process out of your current CRM or ERP environment. Quotations can be made by any stakeholder (Sales, backoffice, engineering and your customers). The user interface is fast, clean and simple. HiveCPQ speeds up the quotation process. HiveCPQ supports complex products and pricing, but manages to hide the complexity to the users.

To know when certain products will be shipped is often a challenging question, causing inefficient phone calls and back and forth emailing. Increase your customer relationship with HiveCPQ’s new feature 'Shipping Schedules', which can be activated by any manufacturer.