Product Proliferation Increases the Complexity of Order-to-Delivery Processes
As customers demand more intricate and advanced product offerings, there is pressure to proliferate SKUs and bundled offerings. Products are changed to accommodate customer requirements, productivity enhancements and government regulations, causing problems with option validity, code conversion and data rules.   This often results in poor deliver-to-promise accuracy, unstable production and material releases and an inability to optimize the supply chain and logistics network due to volatility and lack of visibility.  In this complicated environment, effective order-to-delivery execution requires more than good processes for order management and production.   To meet ship date commitments, reduce response times and improve inventory turns while maintaining or improving margins, Selectica’s configuration software solution provides additional intelligence before an order is taken to properly align customer-facing CRM and internally-focused SCM and lean / JIT processes and systems. 

After-Sales Parts and Services Create Additional Opportunities
Beyond primary products and services, after-sales parts and services that account for only 10% to 25% percent of sales can contribute 40% to 70% of profits.  Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are uniquely positioned to capture these revenues because they can bundle additional services into purchases at the point of sale.  Taking advantage of this opportunity, however, requires ongoing availability of multiple previous generations of products and components.  Combined, the seemingly infinite options offered to customers for configurations can create tens or hundreds of thousands of unique finished products and combinations of products and services.   The Selectica configuration software solution can evaluate any number of choices based on any number of rules.

Variability of Supply and Demand Increases the Volatility of Financial Results
Product mix is often forecasted poorly and expected order volumes and allocations can change dramatically based on customer demands, material availability, changing costs and plant constraints.  Using the Selectica  configuration software solution, industrial manufacturing companies can identify the most profitable alternatives to offer, meeting customers’ requests while maximizing return on assets (ROA). 

Leverage Knowledge to Deal with Complexity
Whether it’s industrial products or consumer goods (CPG), the ability to deliver the right product, to the right place, at the right time is critical and can be a key competitive differentiator.   Rather than waiting for analysis by a small number of experienced employees, success requires a method to capture and deploy the knowledge of those employees.  Selectica’s solution can be centralized for the manufacturer’s sales and service personnel, while also being nimble enough to support the requirements of customer-facing eCommerce Web sites and sales and services partners.