Volvo Penta is a world leading supplier of engines and complete drive systems for marine and industrial applications. Volvo Penta has one of the industries strongest brands, turnover of over € 1300 million and more than 5000 resellers in approximately 130 countries.
The Challenge
To meet the challenges from customers, the product development is continuous and rapid. The development pace in the electronics area has been especially rapid. As a result Volvo Pentas products have become more and more advanced and the complexity has increased. This creates a need to effectively and rapidly be able to distribute product and pricing information on a continous basis. The fact that the products complexity has increased also causes more administrative work for the salesforce and thus reduces the time for customer management and sales while the risk for order errors increases.
The Solution
Volvo Penta selected the ProSales system from Guide Proconsa to meet the challenges the company was facing. ProSales is aimed for the sales companies around the world as well as selected resellers. The system is webbased and provides quick access to all the new and important product, pricing and sales information. ProSales creates the following improvements:
- Updated pricing information and product structures is easily and effectively communicated to all users
- Order specifications are checked when created and errors are not spread to the factory
- The order is submitted directly into the companies logistics funtion
- The ability to quickly prepare and communicate correct proposals and orders
- Easily and quickly calculate a price
- Easily and quickly create a specification
- Support to product education and new product launches
- Quickly convert proposals to orders without additional efforts, saving time and reducing the risk for errors
“This is a project that makes the entire sales process, offering and ordering our products more effective. With ProSales the communication of product and pricing information between us and our markets is simplified. This will save time that instead can be spent in customer engaging activities.” Kim Örthén, Head of Marketing Europe
ProSales most important task is to reduce the administration in the working process from the salesforce to production in the factory. Over time this will also increase the service level towards resellers as it simplifies ordering of engines from Volvo Penta.
The implementation of the system also has positive effects on the ”back office” functions within Volvo Penta. With a more effective order placement function the work load on the central order administration will be reduced. With more correct orders from the start, there will be less administration and the number of errors reaching production, is drastically reduced. This will also help decreasing lead times.
The roll out of ProSales was completed at the European market for one business segment in 2005 and has been initiated for the US and Asian markets as well as other segments.
Results
- Order errors are drastically reduced
- Less administration for the market offices
- Faster and more effective creation of product specifications
- Ability to easily communicate suggested proposal and orders
- Quick creation of a price calculation
- Less administration for the central order desk
- Quicker creation of correct proposals
- A more rational order process
