Customizing SalesDoc Architect with Mid-Level Automation
In our article on Basic Automation, we talked about setting up a basic proposal generator that incorporates solution pricing, and includes the peripheral products and implementation labor that are required in turnkey solutions.
In this article, we are looking to take the next step up in level of automation for the purpose of reducing the number of inputs required by users to configure, price and create proposals for turnkey solutions. By reducing the number of inputs, this not only increases ease of use and saves time for users, but it also better ensures that complete solutions are being configured so that required products and services are not missed or forgotten. This results in fewer mistakes and reduces project margin erosion.
Use Excel’s formulas to automate configuration
One way to increase the level of automation is to take advantage of Excel’s built-in formulas and functions to help you configure your solutions, instead of requiring users to manually select the items that should be configured. You can do this by first creating drop-down boxes and input cells that users can use to select systems and input high-level item quantities.
Excel formulas can then be created to key off of these user inputs to configure component products and services. For example, based on a user’s selection of a certain type of communications system and the entry of quantities against specific types of phone sets, Excel formulas can be used to auto-configure all associated component parts based on those inputs.
In addition, Excel formulas can be used to auto-configure the document sections to include in proposal documents. So, in addition to configuring the component parts associated with a particular type of system or other user input, you can also configure the document sections to include in a generated proposal.
SalesDoc Architect Manager’s help files contain lots of information with regard to creating configuration logic on SalesDoc Architect’s product configuration tabs, including the help topic entitled “Creating and Updating Product Config Tabs.”
Use SalesDoc Architect Manager’s database to drive configurations
SalesDoc Architect provides you with the option of driving configurations using Excel logic, information from SalesDoc Architect’s database, or a combination of both.
Let’s say that you want to import parts and associated pricing from a vendor’s configuration tool, but you want to use SalesDoc Architect to calculate labor and determine the proposal document sections to output. You could accomplish this in one of two ways:
- Create an Excel-based configuration tab that enables the user to select key aspects of the solution being configured (system type, user devices, etc.). Excel formulas within the tab will then calculate the required implementation labor and the proposal document sections to output.
- Add data to and associations within SalesDoc Architect’s database to auto-calculate the labor and documents to output.
The advantage of the second approach is that users no longer need to input data regarding the system type, user devices, etc. The imported part numbers drive the configuration of labor and document sections.
The trade-off to this approach is that the part numbers must be added to and maintained within the SalesDoc Architect database (although we’ll talk about a variation in the next section that enables you to substantially reduce this requirement). Once the part numbers are added to the SalesDoc Architect database, you simply input the installation or design labor hours associated with each of the parts, and create associations between the part numbers and the document sections within your document database.
When you import a group of part numbers from the vendor configuration tool, SalesDoc Architect “knows” to total up the labor hours and output associated document sections for the configured part numbers.
SalesDoc Architect’s import function makes it even easier to import and maintain parts and associated data, including pricing, installation/design labor hours and all kinds of other part-related data. You simply create a spreadsheet with the names of the fields in the first row and import it into SalesDoc Architect, at which point SalesDoc Architect smartly adds to or updates the data within the SalesDoc Architect database.
Automate key vendor parts
At this point, you might be saying: “Well, this sounds great, but I don’t really want to manage this type of information for all of the parts from my vendors. They have thousands of parts, and they’re changing pricing all the time!”
Fortunately, SalesDoc Architect provides you with a means of incorporating labor, document section and other part-related data selectively for key vendor parts, while using data from vendor configuration files to drive pricing/costing for all of the vendor parts so that the vendors are maintaining pricing/costing data, not you. Yes, you can have your cake and eat it too!!
SalesDoc Architect allows you to do this by designating parts within its database as “manual” parts (specifically, setting the ManualItem flag to “Y”). This tells SalesDoc Architect to utilize all of the data within its database – including labor hours and associated document sections – except for the pricing and costing data. When outputs from vendor configurators are imported into SalesDoc Architect, SalesDoc Architect pulls in the pricing/costing information from the input file, but pulls in labor hour, document association and other part-related data from the SalesDoc Architect database.
This is a great feature that enables our clients to substantially automate SalesDoc Architect without having to maintain lots of vendor parts and associated pricing. We recommend adding the top 25-50 vendor parts as “manual” parts to the SalesDoc Architect database, creating labor hour, document and other associations with each part as appropriate. The beautiful thing about this approach is that you don’t have to maintain the pricing/costing information – since that comes in from the imported vendor configurator file – and the other part-related information rarely changes.
Thus far, we’ve suggested adding automation on top of the basic level of automation suggested in “Customizing SaleDoc Architect with Basic Automation” to further reduce user keystrokes and required user input, which in turn increases ease of use, reduces errors and minimizes margin erosion. Yet we’ve kept the level of required customization to a reasonable level, mostly because we are depending on vendors to provide the pricing/costing information. However, in some cases, our clients (which can include vendors as well) are looking to use SalesDoc Architect as the turnkey, all-inclusive solution for configuration, pricing and proposal generation. For more advanced automation techniques, we invite you to take a look at our article on advanced automation.
Note: CorsPro is able to provide consulting services to assist our clients with implementing any of the ideas suggested on The Productivity Edge. In addition to our industry expertise and experience, we also save you time by condensing the required implementation time – enabling you to realize SalesDoc Architect’s benefits more rapidly – while offloading implementation work to us so that you can continue to focus on your day-to-day business activities.