The manufacturing firms always face challenges in product customization, personalized products, sales, and on-time delivery. We live in a generation where customers are spoilt for choices propelling the growth of personalized products.
Amid all this trend and rising personalization, the one fraternity that is faced with challenges (also hefty monetary benefits) is manufacturers. To offer product personalization they invite design revisions and approvals which result in missed deadlines and difficulties in running a profitable business.
A product configurator plays an important role in solving these issues by accelerating design cycles for B2B processes and streamlines sales order cycles eliminating delays.
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What do you need to know about the Product Configurator?
To understand better, think of a product configurator as an interactive platform that offers an automated process from sales to manufacturing using logical rule-based engines.
Role of product configurator in self-configuration, product customization, and online purchase
Wouldn’t it be easy if someone guided you in the right way to purchase a product? Leave the hassle of the product purchase to the product configurator and reap more sales in return? A 3D product configurator does exactly this!
Let’s look at two critical roles that a 3D product configurator plays in increasing B2B sales revenue:
- The interactive platform of the product configurator helps your customers to configure their products just by themselves. Customers become fully satisfied when they have full control over their product specifications and higher satisfaction.
- Offering a streamlined order to dispatch cycle that enhances communication between two teams, [manufacturers and designers] eases approvals, and offers up-to-date data at any point in time.
A product configurator thus actually guides the customer in a step-by-step manner from choosing the size parameters of the product until the end according to their need.
5 Reasons Why Investment in Configurators is Profitable
1. 360-Degree Product Visualization to Establish Trust
Sellers need to offer a good selling experience to their customers to convert leads. Surveys suggest that buyers prefer to purchase products on websites that offer a high degree of interactivity and dynamic solution. As customizations rise, being able to show what their proposed product will look like offers higher satisfaction.
A product configurator offers a similar experience to the customers. According to a report by Motley Fool, using product configurator sellers can expect 50% more purchase in a store.
Obviously, the customer will be thrilled and confident while they make the purchase. The key takeaway is it adds more value to the customer buying experience and promotes large sales volume.
2. Streamline Sales Process for Maximum Efficiency
Do you know that businesses lose a lot of orders because of manufacturing delays and inaccurate quotes? How can a business possibly overcome such issues? The solution lies in employing technologies that can integrate the business processes to function efficiently. Let’s see it in a more simple way.
Typically, manufacturers have their own ERP, CRM, SCM, and other business management software systems. Simply integrating these systems with the product configurator can easily streamline your sales process.
Take, for example, if your sales representative is equipped with instant price quotes and design drawings, it will expedite the sales process. Automatically the customer experience will get better due to a streamlined process that avoids delays.
The result is, as soon as the customer places the order, the engineering design team will be prepared to fulfill the order, reducing cycle time and increasing profit margins for manufacturing firms.
3. Customizing Product Gets Easy
Offering a highly customized product and staying profitable is the trickiest part of mass customization. The answer lies in deploying a product configurator designed with forms and parameters that allow your customers to configure their products by themselves.
By designing logical rules, you can get real-time prices for every product customization. It is a win-win situation for both, your customers get the products they want, and you can achieve more sales.
Also, manufacturers on the shop floor get automatically generated custom BoMs and manufacturing drawings for faster manufacturing.
4. Opportunity to Upsell and Cross-Sell
We have heard the saying that ‘time is money’. But do you know technology can also yield more money for a profitable business? If you aren’t clear about what we mean, let us say that you can sell even more using this tool.
For instance, while your sales rep is developing an order, the software can be programmed to display similar products preferred by customers. Marking products under the “Frequently bought together” section can prompt customers to consider additional product purchases that are useful to them.
Tracking the customer’s buying behavior provides valuable insights on what kind of product they are looking for.
Such kind of data-backed insights can improve customer experience by upselling products that are most useful to them. Not to say, these types of intelligent selling strategies can improve the overall customer experience.
5. Catalogue Management for Better Customer Experience
Do you know the secret formula behind massive sales of online stores? Presenting your products in a desirable and convenient way to your customers.
Isn’t it? That is where a catalog management module can do the trick. Through an intuitive and interactive user interface, the software tool is able to achieve deeper customer engagement.
Using a product configurator, the customer will be at absolute ease in purchasing their products. From your end, it is absolutely easy to make quick product changes to the product catalog.
Using a product configurator can help you achieve in providing personalized products, and thereby increase sales revenue.
Final Word
With the benefits ranging from mass customization, personalized products, streamlined manufacturing process, and catalog management – a product configurator is a boon to the manufacturing community.
We can say firmly that the efficiency of your business will increase drastically and yield profits while satisfying your customers.
