Visual South Insights

When is standard costing the best option?

The Visual South team works with hundreds of manufacturers with varying manufacturing modes. Many of our customers fall in the “to order” category. That means they are mostly make-to-order; and within that category they are either engineer-to-order, configure-to-order, assemble-to-order, project based, and mixed mode (they build some sub-assemblies to stock that can be used as a component part, finished good, or replacement part). The predominant costing method for “to order” companies is actual costing.

Reducing Manufacturing Lead Time

Many of the manufacturers our team speaks with have put improving lead time at the top of their priority list. That’s no big surprise—lead time can be a determinant in winning new customers, driving business growth, and achieving on-time delivery.

Can a configure price quote software solution help me?

If you aren’t sure about what configure price quote (CPQ) software is, or you want to improve your baseline understanding, you can check out my other blog, “What is CPQ?”. If you are specifically looking for Infor CPQ software, you can read a review here.

There are a lot of benefits provided by CPQ software, but probably the biggest one is the ability to make it easier for non-engineers to correctly configure a complex solution. As simple as it may sound, a lot of companies struggle with the issue of salespeople, customers, resellers, and others designing a solution (a part or material) that engineering cannot create, and one that manufacturing departments cannot manufacture. When there’s no CPQ solution in place, it creates very long lead times, and complex back-and-forth discussions due to the difficulty in managing all of the emails, drawings, and conversations that have to take place before actual manufacturing can occur. 

What functionality does CPQ have?

Before we jump into specific functionality, get up to speed on what CPQ software is by reading my blog on the subject.

Infor CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) is a solution that has five distinct modules:

• Infor Product Configurator
• Infor Customer Portal
• Infor 2D Design Automation
• Infor 3D Design Automation
• Infor Document Automation

You can learn more about each module below.

What does CPQ stand for?

The software industry has no shortage of three-letter acronyms, so let’s get right to answering the question.  CPQ stands for configure, price, quote.  More specifically, CPQ is a category of software that helps enable the business processes of configuring, pricing, and quoting a product or service.