Product Configuration

However important personal relationships, contract selection, and marketing may be, an essential factor in ensuring a successful sales transaction is a complete, correctly specified and feasible product. Unless the right resources are available, many products can be specified by specialists only. Sofon Guided Selling makes it possible to put complex products together in no time and with a minimum amount of product knowledge. A comprehensible questionnaire guides the user (sales office, sales representative, dealer, end user) through the process of translating needs into a complete product specification – specified in such a way that the description can be assessed by the prospect or customer and configured in such a way that the bills of materials and routings can be used directly in the production of the order.

Sofon differs from the usual product configurators in many respects. Not only is Sofon an extraordinarily powerful configurator, it is also particularly easy for product specialists to maintain, without the need for in-depth IT knowledge. This means that it is possible for product rules, prices, texts and illustrations to be maintained directly by product specialists, without having to transfer knowledge back and forth from the product specialist to the IT department. This prevents duplicate work and miscommunication, and the long cycle times for processing changes are a thing of the past.

Models or versions follow on from one another in quick succession for all products. With this in mind, Sofon offers version management, ensuring that information relating to successive models is stored. If a quotation has been produced on the basis of an old model and your customer asks for a new quotation, the old quotation can be checked against the new rules. Consequently, you do not need to re-enter critical data again. A check is performed for any conflicts between the old and new rules. If options that were previously chosen are now no longer possible, the relevant questions are asked again, enabling you to make a new choice when necessary.

With Sofon, Guided Selling within the context of product configuration means that you are supported in answering questions. Rather than offering countless tabs on which you have to search for the questions that remain to be answered, Sofon guides you through a questionnaire. In this way, you are never forced to revise your answers because they do not fit within subsequent choices. You are also not constantly reminded of questions that you still have to answer. Any unnecessary questions and answers are not shown. The Sofon approach speeds up and – for complex configurations in particular – simplifies the process.