How long does it realistically take to move quoting from Excel to a configurator

The question comes up almost always in the first ten minutes of a discussion: "okay, so how long will this take?" It's a fair question, because you have a production line to keep moving and you can't afford a project that drags on forever. But an answer given in weeks, before anyone has looked at your quoting file, says too little. Two companies in the same field, with the same products, can have completely different timelines — and the difference doesn't come from the software, it comes from what already exists inside the company.

Below are the factors that actually determine the duration. If you know where you stand on each of them, you can estimate for yourself whether we're talking about a short project or one that happens in stages.

1. How many product rules you actually have

A configurator isn't a form. It's the set of rules by which your product can or can't be built, written so that a computer can apply them.

Take a simple example: a door. The dimensions determine which hardware can be fitted. The thickness determines which hinges fit. Certain combinations of finish and accessories aren't produced at all. All of this already exists — but it exists in the heads of experienced people in the company, not written down anywhere.

The real work of the project is here: taking the rules out of their heads and putting them into a form that can be checked. The more variants and exclusions a product has, the longer this part takes. A product with a few clear options gets set up quickly. A product where every order is practically a new project needs more rounds of discussion with the person who quotes it today.

What shortens this stage: already having, even on paper, the list of allowed and forbidden combinations. What lengthens it: having two people who quote the same product differently, with no one able to say who's right.

2. How clean the data you have today actually is

The second source of duration is less dramatic, but more often underestimated: the materials and price catalogue.

In a quoting file built up over time, you get things like: the same supplier written three different ways, prices updated only partially, product codes that no longer match what the supplier delivers, markup included in the price for some items and added separately for others. None of this is a problem as long as the quoting is done by someone who knows "how it really is." It becomes a problem the moment the calculation is done by a system, because the system applies exactly what's written.

So part of the project is data cleanup. Who does it matters: if someone in your company can allocate consistent time to validating the catalogue, it moves quickly. If validation happens "whenever there's time," the project waits.

3. How many integrations are in scope

A configurator that stands alone is built faster than one that needs to talk to the rest of the company. Every connection adds time:

• Invoicing — an accepted quote needs to reach the invoicing software without being re-entered.
• Inventory / stock management — if you want material availability to influence the quote.
• Production — the bill of materials and the workshop order generated from the configuration.
• Optimisation software (nesting, cutting) — which has its own file format.

Not all of these are necessary from the start. Most of the time they shouldn't be. A flow that works completely for a single product, even without integrations, tells you more than a system that's half-connected to everything.

What genuinely lengthens this part: old systems with no way to connect, where data can only be moved through manual export and import. Worth checking early, not at the end.

4. Who decides, on your side

This is the factor that's most often underestimated, and it makes the biggest difference between a project that moves forward and one that stalls.

A configurator forces the company to make decisions it has put off for years: what's the correct price for variant X, who's allowed to give a discount and up to how much, what happens when the client asks for something you don't normally make. The software can't answer these questions for you. If there's someone in the company who can decide and who has time allocated for it, things move. If every decision waits for a meeting, the duration doubles without anyone writing an extra line of code.

5. How big the first piece you tackle is

A project that starts with "let's digitalise everything" always takes longer than one that starts with "let's make quoting work for a single product line."

The second option has a practical advantage: after the first stage you have something usable in sales, even if the rest of the company still works the same way as before. And the people who will use the system give feedback on something real, not on a description. Almost always, this feedback changes a few rules — better for that to happen on one product line than across the whole catalogue.

How to get an estimate that actually means something

If you want an answer to "how long" that isn't a guess, ask for the estimate to come after someone has looked at:

• a real, complete quote, made recently, including all the variants the client asked for;
• the file or program in which the price is calculated today;
• the list of materials and prices, as it actually looks now, not as it should look;
• what happens to the quote after the client accepts it — who re-enters the data, and where.

The scope becomes visible from this material. Without it, any duration is a guess.

That's exactly what we do in the free audit: we take one of your quotes and take it apart, to see what can be turned into rules and what needs to be decided beforehand. If you'd like to see first what the system looks like as a whole, the configurator and quoting page describes the complete flow, from request to production order.