Goedhart
Sofon precludes costly clerical errors
Digni van der Zande
HEAD OF ORDERDESK
5 questions for a Sofon User
1 What does Goedhart use Sofon for?
“Our sales staff use Sofon Guided Selling to produce their quotations. These are quite complex as there are many variations possible in air coolers and air-cooled condensers. Furthermore, there are many possible options. The minute a quotation becomes an order, I get a little signal from Sofon saying I should put the order into production. For this, all the data, such as materials and man hours needed, are input into the Baan ERP package.”
2 Does Sofon meet your expectations?
“That is a good question. The answer is ‘yes’ and ‘no’. Yes, because we are able to use it efficiently and it does what it should do. No, because things could always be better. Sofon offers so much flexibility that the organization of data in the system isn’t ever really com-plete. We are constantly working to improve our sales processes. My department plays an important part in this. Sales will ask us to adjust something in a model. This request is carried out by a model builder and then tested extensively by us before the new version goes ‘live’. This is an ongoing process.”
3 Which advantages does Sofon offer?
“The most important advantage Sofon has to offer, is the opportunity to reduce errors due to retyping. An accepted quote is turned into an order. This seems like a small thing, but in practice a small typo can mean a lot of extra costs. An example: once we supplied four enormous air coolers to a company in the US. After assembly, the positioning of the plates was found to be faulty. The machines were flown back to the Netherlands to be adjusted in our factory here. They then had to be transported back to the US. You can imagine how the extra costs for transport, extension and assembly sky-rocketed. So every typo costs money, but mistakes can be prevented with Sofon.”
4 Are there any disadvantages to Sofon?
“That depends on your point of view. It is a fact that sales people have less freedom to offer what seems best to them at the time. On the other hand, they may want to offer something that it is not possible for us to produce. We find that sales staff seek out the bounda-ries set on their possibilities. We are happy with this restricted freedom. We now know for sure that every order that is taken into produc-tion is correct and feasible, while we retain a good margin.”
5 What does Sofon mean for the future of Goedhart?
“Sofon contributes to our (European) expansion. Quotations and production orders can be switched to any language necessary with just one key-stroke. That makes doing business internationally a lot easier.”