At the end of September, around 110 participants met at the CPQ Summit 2024 in Dortmund. encoway customers, interested parties and partners exchanged ideas with each other and with encoway experts through best practice presentations, expert workshops and personal discussions.
The evening before, many participants took the opportunity to get to know each other and exchange ideas in a relaxed atmosphere over a good meal at the Brauturm Dortmund.
Innovative and reliable
In his welcoming address, Christoph Ranze, CEO of encoway, emphasized that against the backdrop of ongoing challenges, the further development of useful innovations and reliable partnerships are two important cornerstones for future success.
Ranze went on to explain that encoway is a stable anchor in these turbulent times, offering a powerful CPQ platform and an up-and-coming innovation network. Christoph Ranze concluded with a transition to a new solution: encoway is investing and expanding its portfolio with a new solution for the marketing of industrial products.
“Lots of good factual information and experience reports without dazzle.”
Product-to-market: increasing added value with an optimized portfolio
Dr. Maximilian Kissel, New Business at encoway, picked up on this thread and presented Product-to-Market (P2M), a brand new software solution from encoway. With P2M, profit-boosting products are sold in a more focused way. The complex evaluations and derivations required for this are provided with the help of intelligent analytics and AI. This provides companies with the necessary insights and support for strategic decisions and optimized sales management.
Exciting insight into customer solutions
Konstantinos Papadopoulos, Head of Configuration and Timo Koert, Head of Digital Products at the KHS Group started with an impressive presentation on how the complexity of supply in the filling and packaging industry can be successfully mastered. The KHS distribution system with encoway CPQ has been implemented worldwide and has achieved global standardization.
To the recording of the lecture: Video-on-Demand KHS
KHS, itself based in Dortmund, was kind enough to organize the Masterclass workshop for interested parties and a factory tour the day before.
Manuel Benner, Team Leader Internal Sales Automation Standard & Project Manager Introduction CPQ for the ExperT product area, spoke on behalf of CLOOS . He spoke about successful 3D configuration at CLOOS and how it helps to handle customer-specific projects in a standardized way.
To the recording of the lecture: Video-on-Demand CLOOS
“It’s always exciting to see the inspiring new presentations and ideas that come together at the Summit”
Miriam Kniep, Manager E-Commerce Projects and Mario Holt, Vice President Digital Sales and Services spoke for the ifm Group about innovation in automation. The ifm Solution Builder picks up the customer at the point of use and guides them through the product range. Customers save time and money with customized application solutions.
To the recording of the lecture: Video-on-Demand ifm
After the insights into B2B solutions, HORNBACH followed with the presentation “Configurators in B2C”. Alexander Kaiser, Team Leader Configurators Merchandising and Bathroom Concepts, and Lars Bauer, Team Leader Customer Apps and Product Configurators, also highlighted the overlaps in challenges and solutions in B2C and B2B.
To the recording of the presentation: Video-on-Demand Hornbach
Innovations and new solutions from encoway
In addition to the presentations, participants had the opportunity to take away the latest know-how from a wide range of expert workshops. Topics included:
- Efficiency instead of chaos: consistency from the quotation process to production, a joint workshop with our partner CIDEON
- Practical guide product-to-market – from analysis to sales nudging
- How modeling in encoway CPQ Studio is simplified with a co-pilot
- How visualization creates added value in configuration, including an insight into the crystal ball of visual innovations
- How a digital sales room is changing the customer experience
Lively exchange and refreshing conversation
The breaks were used for many fruitful discussions and the physical well-being was not neglected either. A special kind of entertainment was provided by magician Dan Berlin, whose entertaining program caused much amazement and amusement.
“The show act was a nice change and was fun”
After the Summit is before the Summit
We would like to thank all contributors for this successful summit. For all those who could not attend and those who want to come back: the next CPQ Summit will take place on May 22, 2025 in Bremen. Further information will follow shortly.