CPQ solu­ti­on gene­ra­tes exact pri­cing infor­ma­ti­on in SAP envi­ron­ment

With the intro­duc­tion of an inte­gra­ted con­fi­gu­ra­tor, ZEISS Medi­cal Tech­no­lo­gy is opti­mi­sing its sales pro­ces­sing across the board

ZEISS MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY

For over 170 years, ZEISS has stood for tech­no­lo­gi­cal excel­lence, pre­cis­i­on, qua­li­ty and relia­bi­li­ty. The acti­vi­ties in medi­cal tech­no­lo­gy are bund­led in the Medi­cal Tech­no­lo­gy divi­si­on. This divi­si­on deve­lo­ps, manu­fac­tures and dis­tri­bu­tes medi­cal pro­ducts with a wide ran­ge of vari­ants and that requi­re inten­si­ve con­sul­ta­ti­on. The­se include com­ple­te solu­ti­ons for the dia­gno­sis and tre­at­ment of eye dise­a­ses and inno­va­ti­ve visua­li­sa­ti­on solu­ti­ons for micro­sur­gery. ZEISS main­ta­ins num­e­rous rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment sties, inclu­ding in Ger­ma­ny, France, USA, India and Chi­na, as well as 42 sales offices and over 100 agen­ci­es world­wi­de. The core acti­vi­ties of the Medi­cal Tech­no­lo­gy divi­si­on are con­cen­tra­ted in the publicly lis­ted com­pa­ny Carl Zeiss Medi­tec AG.

THE TASK

ZEISS Medi­cal Tech­no­lo­gy deve­lo­ps and manu­fac­tures sta­te­of-the-art tech­no­lo­gies and appli­ca­ti­on-ori­en­ted solu­ti­ons for medi­cal prac­ti­ces, hos­pi­tals and cli­nics. The pre­sen­ta­ti­on and dis­tri­bu­ti­on of the high­ly spe­cia­li­sed, mul­ti-vari­ant pro­ducts is hand­led in par­ti­cu­lar by the 42 ZEISS Group sales com­pa­nies
loca­ted around the world. The­re was no uni­form approach to this. The sales staff used various coun­try-spe­ci­fic pri­ce lists, most of which were deve­lo­ped local­ly. Espe­ci­al­ly con­fi­gura­ble pro­ducts could only be repre­sen­ted in the­se lists to a limi­t­ed ext­ent. Against this back­ground, the goal of using a uni­form web-based CPQ solu­ti­on beca­me con­cre­te.

THE PROCESS

ORISA Soft­ware GmbH has been deve­lo­ping pro­gram­mes for the ZEISS Group for many years, among others in the Know­ledge Inte­gra­ted Manu­fac­tu­ring sec­tor. A ‘pri­ce list desi­gner’ for the fle­xi­ble crea­ti­on and main­ten­an­ce of pri­ce cata­lo­gues has also been suc­cessful­ly in use sin­ce 2001. In Janu­ary 2018, the initi­al work­shop was held in Ober­ko­chen, Ger­ma­ny, in order to joint­ly coor­di­na­te the spe­ci­fi­ca­ti­ons and in par­ti­cu­lar, to defi­ne the inter­faces bet­ween the sys­tems invol­ved. The requi­re­ment was to lea­ve the exis­ting data sove­reig­n­ty
within the respec­ti­ve sys­tems. The sys­tems invol­ved are the SAP sys­tems CRM, ERP and IPC as well as the CRM sys­tem Sales­force. The SAP con­fi­gu­ra­tor IPC was exten­ded by a func­tion modu­le, which com­mu­ni­ca­tes with the CPQ sys­tem.
After com­ple­ti­on of the enti­re spe­ci­fi­ca­ti­on in April, the tar­ge­ted tech­ni­cal Go Live was accom­plished at the begin­ning of Octo­ber 2018. Now, the CPQ solu­ti­on was to be intro­du­ced world­wi­de step by step. At the end of March 2019, all sales
com­pa­nies that used the CRM sys­tems that were in line with the group poli­ci­es were able to use the CPQ sys­tem with the excep­ti­on of two sales com­pa­nies.

THE OUTCOME

The use of the CPQ solu­ti­on pro­vi­des sales staff with effi­ci­ent digi­tal sup­port that sim­pli­fies the sale of pro­ducts with a wide varie­ty of vari­ants and pro­ducts requi­ring inten­si­ve con­sul­ta­ti­on. The intro­duc­tion of inte­gra­ted IT pro­ces­ses for
the com­ple­te hand­ling of the com­pre­hen­si­ve sales pro­ces­ses aims, on the one hand, to pro­vi­de the mar­ket with exact, bin­ding pro­duct offers in the shor­test pos­si­ble time. On the other hand, it helps to ensu­re that pro­ducts are always up-to-date and to avo­id dupli­ca­te pro­ces­sing as well as red­un­dant and incon­sis­tent
data manage­ment. Based on an alre­a­dy exis­ting pro­duct model­ling and con­flict-free pro­duct con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on, CREALIS® CPQ deter­mi­nes the exact pri­ce in the cor­rect cur­ren­cy. Defi­ned pri­ce lists, dis­counts and access aut­ho­ri­sa­ti­ons are taken into account. In addi­ti­on, mas­ter data imports from the ERP sys­tem
and con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on-spe­ci­fic task exports back into the CRM sys­tem are car­ri­ed out. The web-based CPQ solu­ti­on offers a who­le ran­ge of advan­ta­ges, such as the retrie­val of real-time infor­ma­ti­on from the back-end sys­tems (ERP, CRM), back­up of local data and effec­ti­ve user admi­nis­tra­ti­on when acces­sing data. In
addi­ti­on, mobi­le use of the sales tool on any device with modern brow­sers is sup­port­ed.

THE OUTLOOK

With the help of effi­ci­ent digi­tal sales sup­port, a com­pre­hen­si­ve, error-free offer can be gene­ra­ted in the shor­test pos­si­ble time. For this pur­po­se, the deve­lo­ped solu­ti­on was rol­led out to the sales com­pa­nies gra­du­al­ly. With the expe­ri­ence gai­ned, this pro­ce­du­re can be refi­ned and trans­fer­red to other pro­duct are­as
in ana­lo­gue form. The ZEISS Indus­tri­al Qua­li­ty & Rese­arch divi­si­on with its two busi­ness units Indus­tri­al Qua­li­ty Solu­ti­ons and Rese­arch Micro­sco­py Solu­ti­ons is also in the pro­cess of rol­ling out the CREALIS® CPQ solu­ti­on. This solu­ti­on has been exten­ded by seve­ral func­tion­a­li­ties to cover the spe­ci­fic requi­re­ments
of the busi­ness units. “High-reso­lu­ti­on images are used to dis­play the con­fi­gu­red
pro­ducts. The visua­li­sa­ti­on of indi­vi­du­al con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on steps or a chan­ge of view of the pro­ducts is not neces­sa­ry. We are awa­re of the pos­si­bi­li­ties of 3D repre­sen­ta­ti­ons with CREALIS® and are the­r­e­fo­re plea­sed to have made the right decis­i­on with ORISA for this requi­re­ment in the future as well”, comm­ents
Chris­ti­an Pra­ter, Head of Medi­cal Affairs and Pro­fes­sio­nal Edu­ca­ti­on ZEISS Micro­sur­gery.

„CREALIS® CPQ opti­mi­ses the pre­pa­ra­ti­on of offers and redu­ces the reac­tion times for the pre­sen­ta­ti­on of offers. This gives the sales depart­ment a tool that they have been wai­ting for.“

- Chris­ti­an Pra­ter, Head of Medi­cal Affairs and Pro­fes­sio­nal Edu­ca­ti­on ZEISS Micro­sur­gery

The pro­ject in figu­res

100%

pro­ces­sing of quo­ta­ti­ons for con­fi­gura­ble pro­ducts via the con­fi­gu­ra­tor

42

sales loca­ti­ons

17

lan­guages

> 200

role cha­rac­te­ristics

~700

pro­ducts map­ped in the con­fi­gu­ra­tor

The cus­to­mer bene­fits at a glan­ce

  • Stan­dar­di­s­a­ti­on of the enti­re sales pro­ces­ses wit­hout affec­ting the pre-exis­ting IT pro­ces­ses

  • Aboli­ti­on of local pri­ce lists

  • Online access for users with a cus­to­mer-ori­en­ted view on pro­ducts and pri­ces

  • Pro­vi­si­on of opti­mum inter­faces bet­ween CPQ and the SAP sys­tems (CRM, ERP, IPC and EBS) as well as the CRM sys­tem Sales­force