Articles on configurators, bills of materials, automations and how custom software gets bought — written for people running a manufacturing company.
A made-to-order manufacturer has different problems from an online shop. Quotes are calculated per configuration, not per SKU, and between the first “yes, we're interested” and a job entering production there are days of measurements, drawings and confirmations. These articles start from what actually happens in production companies: slow quoting, prices that differ from one salesperson to another, bills of materials rebuilt by hand, spreadsheets that no longer keep up.
Each article covers a single decision: whether you need a configurator or just a price calculator, what an automatically generated BOM really is, how long moving quoting off spreadsheets takes, and what to ask a software vendor before signing.
For the full picture, start from the solution pages: CPQ configurator, custom ERP and automation. These articles explain the reasoning behind them.
You do not need a full ERP to eliminate certain repetitive tasks. Examples of automation for quote requests, approvals, documents and orders, including using applications your company already has.
Excel is not the problem. The problem starts when quoting, orders and production depend on separate files and information known only to certain employees. How to choose between a CRM, an ERP and a simpler solution.
Both produce a price. Only one of them knows whether the product can actually be made, and produces the bill of materials. How to choose between them, depending on what you sell.
The questions that separate a serious offer from one that just sounds good: who owns the code and the data, what happens with changes, what handover looks like, and what happens if you want to leave.
Re-entering the bill of materials after a quote is one of the points where time and margin get lost. What it actually means for it to come straight out of the configuration.
Duration isn't the right question — what determines it is: how many product rules you have, how many integrations are needed, and how clean the data you use today actually is.
