We recently held a webinar during which we discussed how leading mechanical equipment manufacturers leverage purpose-built select, configure, price, and quoting technology for a competitive advantage. This helps them not only win more, but win more profitably.
Joining our roundtable discussion was Trey Maxwell, CEO of Flexaseal, John Kahren, President of SPP Pumps, FPX CRO Russell Scherwin, and FPX VP & GM Trygve Dahl. Together, we discussed the business impact of select-configure-price-quote capabilities, additional benefits of SCPQ, and critical success factors.
The History of These Pump Manufacturers’ Relationships with SCPQ
We kicked off the webinar with an introduction of Trey’s and John’s businesses and the history of their companies’ relationships with SCPQ and automation tools.
“Our business has always been about speed, accuracy, and the ability to institutionalize and administer tribal knowledge—particularly that of long-time, key, and retiring employees,” Trey explained. “But speed is number one. [With the Intelliquip/FPX solution of Select, Configure, Price, Quote (SCPQ)], we can create a very fast mechanical API 682 seal proposal with all of the data included in less than a minute, and an API 682 systems proposal in an additional five minutes.”
John started out in the industry back in the mid-1980s when there was a price book that was two and a half feet long. “It was a very long process. Updating the information was difficult and maintaining information outside of the book—the information that lived in people’s heads—was very challenging. Our internally-developed program was limited in its scope, so we put Intelliquip’s solution against our current solution and found that Intelliquip was more advanced, so we made the transition. It took a lot of the guesswork out of the application process and helped us put the pricing, orders, and submittals together. We then drove it into SAP, released the job, and completed the bill of materials, ultimately enabling us to decrease our lead time by 40%.”
Business Impact of Select-Configure-Price-Quote Capabilities
When it came to the business impact of SCPQ, Trey Maxwell shared, “The principal advantage of Intelliquip and FPX is speed: The ability to match our industry-best equipment deliveries with an industry-best quote-to-lead time, and the ability to generate a very fast quote that’s accurate both from a technical standpoint and a price standpoint. We feel like Intelliquip really lives up to the speed that we bring to the market.”
John Kahren found the most value to be not only in accuracy and speed but also in knowledge sharing: “The most important part for us is getting information to the customer as quickly, accurately, and competitively as we can. Intelliquip has made a big impact on supporting our customer base made up primarily of distributors, allowing us to take all of our internal knowledge and best practices and extend it to them.”
Additional Benefits of SCPQ
When it comes to driving speed profitably, Trey explained the value of being able to deploy updated pricing whenever needed and setting multipliers for distributors, end-users, and OEMs. “The biggest benefit is getting everyone on the same sheet of music with one click of the mouse.”
For John’s extensive distribution network, SCPQ played a huge role. “We took what was a 50/50 mix of us quoting for distributors and distributors quoting for themselves, to 85% of quotes being generated by a third party, giving us more time to follow up on those quotes. We’re now able to support 73 distributors and their selling efforts with 9 people.”
Critical Success Factors: Learning from Those Who Have Walked the Path
Trey has carried out four Intelliquip implementations at various companies over the past 20 years. So when it comes to the successes and mistakes of driving adoption, he has a lot of experience.
“Adoption is one of the key pillars of success. You can have this beautiful system that you put all this time into that no one uses. So the first thing you need to do is round up all the price books. You’re going to have three fundamental users—sales, engineering, and operations—and all three have to be a part of the process; it can’t be seen solely as a sales management tool. Engineering has to ensure the technical variables in the tool are updated, operations needs to keep prices and lead time updated, and sales needs to use it to quote and configure products. You have to speak to what’s important to each team and really get them involved in the product from day one.”
At the end of the day, this technology allows you to sell more, sell faster, and sell more profitably. An SCPQ tool purpose-built for your business can decrease sales cycle time by up to 70%, increase revenue by 4%, and increase margin by 1.5%.
