For complex equipment, and products built-to-order with many options, it can be difficult for manufacturers to provide mass customization to all of their customers. This results in long sales cycles, and a lot of room for human error in the sales to engineering hand-off. It’s a challenge that manufacturers have been trying to solve for years; it’s a problem that can be solved through CPQ solutions.
In a recent article on Diginomica Strategic Accounts Director at KBMax, Kris Goldhair, explains how CPQ software can help manufacturers bring B2B2C to their business. To start, Goldhair emphasizes that B2B2C models help to increase sales, and enable industries with complex products to sell direct-to-consumer.
CPQ software allows manufacturers to configure their products for easy customization and visualization and provides one central system for all channel partners, distributors, and resellers to utilize in their sales process. Using rules builders, and pricing configurators even the most complex products can be mass-customized.
Goldhair describes the capabilities of KBMax Snap, a visual rule language used to configure products. Software like KBMax Snap enables sales and manufacturing leadership to align on customizations that can be made, pricing differences and time for manufacturing. Once you use a rules builder, like Snap, to configure your products it becomes easier to centralize your sales process. Plus, sell direct to consumers for complex products.
Creating a B2B eCommerce model isn’t easy, but, with time and investment in CPQ, it’s possible even for the most difficult to customize products. Diginomica author, Barb Mosher Zinck, concludes that “A B2B2C strategy is smart. It’s a way to reach customers directly, while at the same time working with other companies that sell your products as well. It’s a strategy that manufacturing is only getting started with, but with the right software, can be successful at it.”
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