Goals
- Migrate the existing Excel Pricing Model to web application
- Integrate with sales & back end ERP systems to fetch Quote Requests, Raw Material Price List, and Machine Cost etc.
- Implement approval workflow for Quote preparation
- Provide Pricing Margin analysis for packages by varying Prices for quantities
Results
- Standardized pricing across the organization
- Increased Governance and Monitoring of Quote preparation
- Automated process reduced human error and possibility of modification of pricing formulae by sales representatives
- Timely notifications sent to intimate pricing team member to preparation quotes and for Approvals, delays etc.
- Easy Analysis and Reporting
Approach
- Pull data from sales & backend ERP systems at predefined intervals using scheduler
- Implement Excel based pricing model in the tool
- Implement role based access restriction and workflow for quotation approval
- Maintained quotation revisions within the system making it easy for pricing team to
- Develop a single repository for all the quotation related documents
Existing excel based pricing model was inefficient for the pricing team to prepare the quotations and send it to the sales representatives. Preparing a single quote involved exporting the quotation request information from CRM system, importing the latest raw material price list, importing the machine cost. The process was exhaustive and pricing team was unable to meet quote demands from sales. Managing the quote revision requests was very difficult in excel.
Existing process posed other challenges like approval process for the quotation and posed threats of modification in formula in the excel template files.
Solution
We studied the manual process of quote preparation and existing pricing model and developed user interface prototype for the web based application.
Schedulers were developed to import the raw material price list, machine cost information from the backend ERP systems. Price lists & machine cost were imported on a fixed schedule for every plant. Price quote requests from the CRM system were imported to the tool.
Configurable workflow process was developed in the tool for the price quote preparation process. Price quote requests from the CRM systems were assigned to pricing team member based on the workflow. Price quotes were prepared by the pricing team based on the type of package, quantity, printing required & many other parameters. The pricing model in the tool calculates the prices for different combinations, controls were given to the pricing team to override the pricing calculated. Email notifications were sent to the users at every stage of the approval process.
Migration of existing pricing model from excel to the tool standardized the pricing across the organization and provided flexible tool Pricing Analysis.
The pricing tool would calculate and present the client Base Price and also give a margin for negotiations to the sales representatives. Any revisions requested by the sales team would be tracked in the pricing tool making it easier for the pricing team.
The pricing tool also provided additional feature to the pricing team to create standard packaging as a Specification. A Specification would include all the raw materials required for manufacturing and the machine cost per duty cycle. Several reports were developed for pricing analysis for the management.