PRODUCT CONFIGURATOR IN PRACTICE
... „When you understand Sofon, you can do almost anything“
„With the Product Configurator software of Sofon, we can offer everything the customer needs, just like Lego. There are unlimited possibilities to build systems for the customers, flexible and individual. We cannot handle the complexity of our welding solution without software in reasonable time and without failures. With Sofon’s Product Configurator, we can use it and build it like we want it.“
Sven Kotteck is Product Configuration Manager at Scansonic, a welding specialist, and satisfied with working with the Product Configurator of Sofon: "Other suppliers of software need to customize their software to implement products, whereas Sofon allows customer to implement even the most complex products by themselves. When you understand how the Sofon modelling-system works, you can do almost anything."
Helping customers with solutions
"Our company provides solutions for welding, we supply machining heads that OEM's use for the production of cars. We work for almost all car manufacturers worldwide. "You supply only the heads? "No, also the plant components and the support. We provide solutions to them. Our products are used especially for laser joining in the field of body construction. Main applications are the joining of trunk, roof and door parts. We are market leader in roof brazing."
"We offer the most reliable and effective solutions. And we provide a huge variety of services, for instance, we put the heads into the production line. We help our customers to understand the processes and parameters because there are a lot of parameters needed to perform the laser process well. Sharing this knowledge is important, that is how we create a lasting relationship with our customers. Our service team has a good connection to the customers."
"I am Product Configuration Manager, responsible for implementing and maintaining the Sofon software for our Sales and Service Partners, I am also the Product Manager for the configuration tools in our company. The way to create proposals with Sofon saves a lot of time and provides necessary knowledge: our Sales and Service Partners don’t need to know all kinds of technical details of our products. For instance, they don’t have to know all the dependencies between subcomponents or modules."
The advantage of Sofon is also a dilemma
"Sofon provides a lot of documentation, due to the complexity of the software. Without workshops, it is hard to figure out the structure of the software by yourself. It took us some time to use the software in the way which fits best for our products." So, there are many possibilities? "Too many in some cases. Sofon Studio is a development environment for which you need trained people. In order to do that, you have to have the knowledge of a Sofon consultant to understand it. Every week we find new features and we still are using only 30-40% of all features. You can use Sofon in so many different ways, that the advantage is also a dilemma."
"Sofon is more fun for our Sales people to work with: they can focus on selling without the complexity. And they can use the software to get relevant information. For example, when a new variety is launched we can inform Sales people so they can get the relevant information very easily within the configuration process. We don’t have to send all the information with all complexity, it reduces the time to train them. By using Sofon, our customers get their quotes within 1 day instead of 2-3 weeks. That's a huge benefit."
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