For ETO manufacturers, setting up every project for success right from the start is key to ensuring better outcomes for their customers. Starting with an RFP, the preliminary work to create a proposal can be challenging. It requires many departments including sales, engineering, estimating, design, and production to collaborate and deliver a proposal that is not only cost effective, but also meets the customer’s expectations.
Since every product ETO and contract manufacturers deliver is tailored to meet their client’s specifications, it can be difficult to produce cost estimates, project schedules, and financial estimates fast and accurately. Oftentimes, salespeople and project managers spend a lot of time and resources creating project proposals based on mere guesses, instead of ensuring accuracy through models that encapsulate best practices.
Now there’s a way to improve the process of project inception that will increase speed and agility, while enhancing project governance, a standardized approach to the management of processes and data.
Project Modeling is a game-changer for ETOs. Similar to a product configurator, a Project Modeler is a project configurator. Adeaca invented Project Modeling as an extension of Project Business Automation (PBA). It is a new way to think of CPQ Software for Manufacturing and has the potential to revolutionize how projects are built for ETO manufacturers.
How Project Modeling Helps ETO Manufacturing Companies
Knowing project success starts with sales, it’s critical to create optimal project schedules and financial estimates from the outset.
Project Modeling is an entirely new approach to the sales and initiation phase of a project. Now ETO manufacturers can develop more accurate plans in less time, accelerate the sales process, and ultimately, drive better outcomes for their customers.
The Project Modeler is like a product configurator in the sense that it builds the components (i.e. the tasks and costs) of a project from a predefined set of models. Project Modeling creates a streamlined planning and estimating process that enables ETO manufacturing companies to scale and automate best practices from project sales through execution.
Any type of project can be modeled. Even though ETO manufacturers produce one-of-a-kind products, there’s always some level of repeatability in their project process. These repeatable steps is what Project Modeling standardizes and automates.
Configure a Complex ETO Project in Minutes
The traditional route of building a project can take hours or even days, seeing as the project manager has to construct and edit each task, and gather information from various stakeholders to build the project plan and cost estimates. This is a very tedious and time-consuming task.
With a Project Modeler, a user can configure an entire project in minutes through predefined components and rules. What does this mean? Anyone from a salesperson to a project manager to an engineer can build an accurate project plan and estimate in just a few clicks.
Reduce Human Error
By encapsulating and scaling best practices across the company and from the beginning of the sales cycle, they reduce human error. Salespeople utilizing the Project Modeler to build quotes and proposals can create the optimal plan right from the start. And since the plans presented in the sales proposals are based on accurate models representing the best practices, the transition from sales to execution is seamless. Keeping in mind the possible tweaks and changes ETO manufacturers have to account for when building a product to meet their customer’s demands, Project Modeling reduces errors as the project progresses, and is flexible enough to make any changes if necessary.
Generate the Right Numbers Immediately
Project Modeling helps teams generate the right numbers as soon as they engage with prospects. They are not guesses, but rather accurate representations of the project that will be performed. A sales team can expect to reduce or eliminate poor project plans, accelerate response times, and increase sales capacity.
Eliminate the Potential for Issues Down the Road
Oftentimes, project sales teams promise costs or schedules they think are reasonable at the time, only to find out these expectations cannot be met by the execution team. Eliminate this confusion by using Project Models that represent accurate project work. Now ETO manufacturers can promise customers reasonable prices and schedules that operations can adhere to.
Operate Like a Well-Oiled Machine
Teamwork is the dreamwork. By using standardized Project Models, ETO companies can improve collaboration. Since each project utilizes standard components and processes, project managers, planners and controllers are familiar with how all projects work across the company. This makes it so they can move from one project to another easily.
Better Project Plans Means Better Outcomes
Speed isn’t enough. But when you can ensure speed, accuracy and a process repeatable by everyone, it’s a win-win situation all around. Creating a streamlined and controlled planning and estimating process from the very beginning sets your ETO company up for success. Now there’s a solution to develop more accurate plans in less time and accelerate the sales process.
Download the Project Modeling Whitepaper to learn how to create a streamlined and controlled planning and estimating process for your company.
Henrik is Adeaca's Head of Product Development. Henrik has deep roots in Microsoft Dynamics, having been part of the original Axapta ecosystem and Microsoft’s team after it was acquired. His knowledge of project industries and his systematic process design approach is a crucial component of Adeaca’s customers' success.
