Turn your quotation data into competitive advantages with Business Intelligence
Which machine do we offer most frequently in our main sales region? Which product variants tend to fall under the radar – and which are particularly in demand? What impact does supply behavior have on production and purchasing?
Were you able to answer these questions quickly and with certainty? Then you have a solid basis for decision-making to pursue your product strategy – and a clear advantage over companies that rely on gut feeling instead of a data-driven strategy. According to an encoway study 65 % of product managers do not have a reliable database for their portfolio management. Yet the valuable information has long been available – it is just not being used.
Our CPQ solutions generate valuable quotation data every day. With business Intelligence and analytics you can interpret this data in a targeted manner for your business strategy. Our BI interface makes this possible – without any prior technical knowledge and with just a few clicks.
Do you want to optimize your product strategy with Business Intelligence?
Practical example: How HBC radiomatic developed new products with business intelligence
A complex range of variants, increasing customer requirements and the need to adapt quickly to new market conditions – these challenges put many manufacturing companies under pressure.
HBC radiomatic, a medium-sized manufacturer of radio control systems, also has to meet these requirements. With encoway CPQ software and business intelligence, the company has succeeded in using data from different areas holistically and reacting proactively to changes.
Thanks to the systematic evaluation of quotation data, HBC radiomatic recognized that many customers were requesting control cabinets for remote controls with around 25 relays – although until then only variants for 20 or 50 relays had been in the portfolio. In response, the company developed a new product that precisely met this customer requirement.
The result: satisfied customers, higher completion rates and more efficient production.
What is Business Intelligence?
Business Intelligence (BI) refers to the systematic collection, processing and analysis of business-relevant data.
BI tools such as Power BI, Tableau or Qlik help companies to gain meaningful insights from millions of data points. They structure, filter and illustrate business data to create clear reports and dashboards. As a result, BI tools minimize the risk of errors and uncover unused optimization potential.
Use BI data as the basis for your product and sales strategy
When you configure products, calculate prices and create offers with our CPQ solutions, you generate valuable data. With encoway’s BI data interface, you can feed this data directly into modern business intelligence software – without any prior technical knowledge or help from your IT department. This allows you to answer important strategic questions for your business area with just a few clicks. BI tools such as Power BI or Tableau allow you to prepare complex data graphically so that you can clearly record and present relevant information to your team. Standardized evaluations can be automated, leaving more time for value-adding analyses.
Among others, these roles benefit from the analysis of their supply data:
Managing directors who want to future-proof their company,
Product managers who want to strategically align their variant portfolio,
Sales managers who want to analyze regional performances and
Production planners who have to react precisely to upcoming demand.BI data as the basis for your product and sales strategy
From CPQ quotation data to business intelligence
Our BI data interface provides structured offer and configuration data from the CPQ system. You can export this automatically and process it in a targeted manner.
The structured database includes, among other things, includes:
Offer items (line items): Detailed information on products, variants, quantities, prices or selected product characteristics.
Configuration decisions & product characteristics: Which options were selected or offered in combination and how often?
Guided selling data: Which configurations were created for which application areas – and which variants were preferably selected?
Regional sales data: Which products were offered in which regions and how often?
Early indicators for purchasing & production: Which options are piling up in open offers – and which purchased parts should be scheduled early?
Explore what ERP and CRM systems overlook with CPQ
CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems also generate business-relevant data that can be analyzed with Business Intelligence. However, CPQ data opens up a much more precise perspective on offer behavior – including offers that have not been commissioned and detailed configuration decisions. This allows you to recognize market needs that were formulated in sales but never ordered, or to derive expected orders for production before they even appear in your ERP system. With our BI data interface, you can make targeted use of precisely these insights – for example for your strategic portfolio management.
Your CPQ data = your next strategic decision
With our BI data interface, you can tap into the full potential of your offer and configuration data: Create individual reports in your business intelligence software, analyze specific markets, variants or regions and automate recurring evaluations. In this way, you create a sound basis for decision-making and set the course for data-supported growth with a real competitive edge.