A product configurator tool is a piece of powerful software that helps users choose a product’s features and components. The software functions by handling business rules that enable users to accomplish a task.
The Benefits of Product Configurators
Once a product configurator authenticates an input, a user can continue customizing the product. The refined simplicity of product configurators rests on a complicated process of creating and verifying rules.
Simplify Operational Processes
There are many aspects to selecting different product configurations — handling multiple features, such as pricing, quotes, quality of materials, etc.
Historically, vital data about sales was stored in different software solutions or on various desktop computers. This meant that the data would frequently become stale or faulty since there would be multiple versions of the same documents.
Unsurprisingly, this resulted in bottlenecks and oversights.
This is why product configurators were created –– to significantly cut down on faulty data.
Software solutions with integrated rules-powered product configurators guide users to features they can actually make, thereby optimizing the configuration process.
Improve Your Sales Performance
Salespeople need time in order to familiarize themselves with all the aspects, specifications, and compatibility issues of sophisticated products. Businesses can standardize and handle configuration tasks all in one place, regardless of the complexity of the product involved.
By making relevant information available to salespeople, product configurators free them up to focus their attention on customers. For example, a configurator can alert a staff member to an upselling opportunity.
Upselling is a proven way of driving revenue. However, it is also often difficult for sales representatives to find the right combination of features for every item. That’s why a rules-based configurator software solution can immediately display the right features for every possible customer need.
How to Know Whether a Product is Configurable
In essence, if a product can be customized, then it can also be configured. Items with many features or possible combinations can be personalized either by the customer or the company’s staff.
For example, a customer chooses a yellow four-wheel-drive car with a sunroof.
At the same time, the company(or manufacturer) uses a product configurator to ensure that the item complies with all the relevant laws and regulations— for instance, appliances sold in the European markets use a voltage between 220 and 240 volts while products in the Japanese market only need 100 and 127 volts to run efficiently.
When Should You Use a Product Configurator
If a company is undergoing difficulty in creating timely quotes or proposals, then a robust product configurator can streamline various time-draining processes.
Additionally, a product configurator can assist manufacturing businesses in auto-populating product information while cutting down on the chances of human error.
Large e-commerce brands use product configurators to empower their visitors and customers to personalize products according to their exact requirements.
The Bottom Line
Customers today expect personalized products and services along with a seamless online buying experience.
Product and pricing rules that power product configurator solutions guarantee that every configuration is custom-built to customers’ requirements.
Once they give their final approval for the specifications, buyers can then continue to finalize their purchase.
Every high-performance product configurator has a business rules engine running under the hood. A rules engine is a sophisticated piece of software that runs business rules in order to make different configurations possible. The ease of deployment and user-friendly interfaces are what make rules engines such an integral part of product configuration software.
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