Roles, Approvals, Discounts: Speeding Up Manufacturing Sales

Posted by Sabine Kempe on Apr 13, 2018 10:14:41 AM
Sabine Kempe
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“Manufacturing” as a category might make up a huge part of a country’s GDP. But when you break it down, the types of products made can range from the smallest screw to the largest forklift. There are automotive manufacturers, medical equipment manufacturers, contract manufacturers, engineer-to-order, and make-to-order businesses…the list goes on.

Sales processes differ dramatically according to the type of manufacturing as well. In this article, we will be looking at the ability to expedite the industrial B2B sales cycle for a section of manufacturers.

"How complex is your manufacturing business? How many quotes do you send out per day? How global is your sales business?"

If the answers to those questions above are ‘very’, ‘too many’, and ‘globally’, then this article on enterprise manufacturing sales will be very helpful for you.

Managing Country-Specific Up-To-Date Pricing

When companies have multiple production sites across countries, costing can differ widely, leading to varying pricing models that may not be accurate or producing the best margins. From a business point-of-view, there is a need to combine these different pricing models into one system that can be controlled and managed centrally.

 This helps manufacturers ensure that sales organizations across different countries are using the correct material costs, updated with the latest data from their ERP systems. For some sites, some products might include or exclude certain items that aren’t available in the region, for example. Teams from different sales regions need to be looking at the accurate pricing models and up-to-date costing, in order to churn out a quotation quickly and efficiently.  

For example, Mindray is a global Medical Manufacturer that covers the whole value chain from product design through manufacturing, shop floor, distribution, etc. With a number of offices in different geographies, pricing became a manual process, with country-specific processes that depended on the local managers. There were many configuration options when it came to medical devices as well, which were subject to changes during the product lifecycles. 

“This required significant lead time to push to the frontlines and ran the risk of introducing errors each time,” explains Mindray CIO Henry Wu.

Multiple Roles And Rules In Quotation Creation

Speaking of teams, each role in a team would be responsible for different parts of the sales process. For example, sales reps need to manage RFQs and quickly create accurate quotes. Some of them would also need to give discounts to customers in order to close the deal.

On the managerial level, there’s the need to maintain margins, so they have to be able to look at the feasibility of a quote to generate the amount of profit that will help them meet their sales targets. For managers, the ability to forecast margins over time (with, as usual, data from the ERP system) will hence be an important part of any sales solution.

Both these roles are different, and the type of information they need to access would be different as well. A central solution that can create rules to restrict access to certain points, like margins, would allow the sales rep or manager to focus only on the points that matter to them.

Getting Past The Approval Gates

Approvals can be a pain to manage, especially in enterprise manufacturing companies. Many sites would have a role hierarchy in approvals, leading to roadblocks and delays that can happen at any step of the approval process.

To get a quotation created quickly, it is necessary for approvals to be efficient. Quotations that are under a tight deadline might need to go to the top of the approval list or be flagged to skip certain additional approval gates.

What Can Expedite The Manufacturing Sales Quotation Process?

When it comes to enterprise manufacturing sales, where there is a high number of quotes sent out every month, efficiency of the quoting process becomes a key factor of success. It isn’t enough to use pure Excel sheets to manage the sales process; accuracy and efficiency need to be combined with speed.

For this, manufacturers require a centrally-managed repository of data that is hosted in the cloud, for updated costs and prices at all times. This solution needs to manage pricing models and costs from different countries or sales regions, with rules that will restrict access based on certain roles or regions. At the same time, when role hierarchy is required, there needs to be an option to get approvals quickly, to ensure that quotes can be sent out with minimal disruption to productivity.

For our customers, a holistic Digital Sales Platform for manufacturers is the right choice to automate the entire sales process. 

Mindray was determined to get a global solution that could handle all of their requirements  - from prospect to quote to production and to after-sales, and with a digital sales platform for manufacturers, they now expect quicker time-to-market and efficiency gains that will help them to remain relevant and competitive

“We expect significant time savings as this is essential to our overall Sales Transformation.” - Henry Wu, Mindray CIO

Do you want to explore how a Manufacturing Sales Platform can help you to manage roles, approvals, country discounts and efficient quoting in general? Sign up for our free trial!

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Sabine Kempe

Written by Sabine Kempe

Sabine - a digital enthusiast at heart, she is dedicated to matching the challenges of manufacturing businesses with the opportunities of a digitalized world.

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