Timberlane Decides to Shutter Their Existing Quoting Tool in Favor of Visual CPQ
Timberlane produces custom exterior shutters and is renowned for exceptional quality and customization capabilities available in a variety of high-quality, high-performance materials, including both wood and synthetics. There are no stock sizes or configurations; all Timberlane shutters are custom-made and built to 1/8” exacting specifications at Timberlane’s manufacturing facility in the USA.
The Challenge:
“We have a simple product but with numerous and sometimes complex and unlimited options.”
Jeff Smith, Engineering and Design CAD Specialist at Timberlane, Inc.
Square Peg, Round Hole Technology
Since the mid-90s, Timberlane had been using an in-house quoting tool that was modified from a cabinet-making shop’s software solution. They were able to customize the software in order to design their shutters instead of kitchen cabinetry, but it couldn’t pull off certain things specific to their products. Errors were introduced due to incompatible and outdated product options that they weren’t able to update or maintain themselves.
A Non-Integrated Approach
Timberlane also had a home-grown, online configurator, available to their sales team via an internal web page. It could serve up basic options for their shutters, but it didn’t carry through to their engineering and manufacturing side of the business. They knew that they needed a complete, end-to-end process.
They ultimately wanted to integrate their engineering knowledge with a user-friendly and web-facing tool that could start with a customer order entry and continue all the way through manufacturing.
The Solution:
“KBMax allows us to handle 95% of the custom requests without needing to use outside drawing programs to meet the customer’s needs. And if there is a recurring custom option we are able to add it on our own.”
Jeff Smith, Engineering and Design CAD Specialist at Timberlane, Inc.
Timberlane empowered a small team of internal stakeholders, consisting of a manufacturing leader and an engineering draftsman. They provided top-down knowledge to the KBMax project team about their entire process; from orders and accounting, to manufacturing and shipping. This team knew exactly how materials came in, how their products were sold, all the options available, and ultimately how they were manufactured.
Timberlane’s internal team relayed their robust requirements to the KBMax implementation team who used the information to design and launch a visual product configurator, powered by Snap, KBMax’s easily maintainable visual CPQ rules engine.
20 internal sales reps are already using the configurator, which allows them to only select valid product options when setting up an order. As the shutter is finalized, 2D renderings are automatically generated to support their manufacturing operations, supported with data like BOMs, work instructions, the machines necessary for manufacturing, and even defining the workstations that will be used for that particular order.
Immediately after the project launch, their team started using the tool, and they’re continuously building and trying new things with the platform. The cloud-based platform allows them to enjoy simple maintenance and enhancements, rather than the pain of upgrades and migrations.
Timberlane’s new visual configurator is completely integrated with their other business processes to automate the hand-off between sales and engineering.
The Salesforce CRM integration empowers their team to automatically upload the pricing, taxes, shipping costs for their sales forecasting and reporting.
KBMax’s visual CPQ configurator provides data that’s fed into their ERP, Infor VISUAL®, to handle their customer order entry and work orders and routing. They’ve also introduced inventory integration with their ERP that allows for their stock-level data to be leveraged by KBMax. As hardware is purchased, the inventory data is kept in sync between the two systems. This allows for better visibility and global control of their inventory.
The Benefits:
Streamlined Operations
Timberlane was able to completely automate their customer order entry process and work order creation process in just six months. The team has dramatically reduced the drafting time required to finalize quotes.
No More Errors
Every order is now generated 100% accurately - replacing Timberlane’s old, home-grown, customized software that allowed for incompatible options.
Simplified Internal Control
With KBMax Snap, the team is able to easily maintain and extend their product configurator themselves. They’ve added an entirely new product line of aluminum shutters and introduced inventory integration with their ERP.
