AutoQuotes and SAP ERP Integration Transforms FES Sales and Operational Efficiency
Digital Transformation in FES: Meeting Modern Industry Demands
After a tumultuous start to the decade, FES companies must continue streamlining operations to protect profit margins. Industry veterans and newcomers alike are familiar with time-consuming and burdensome workflows, weighed down by manual tasks and lengthy decision-making processes involving multiple stakeholders. Even as equipment and supply sales volumes increase, these inefficiencies drive up labor costs and eat into companies’ bottom lines, making it difficult to grow and scale. This is where digital transformation comes in.
Solutions like SAP ERP have emerged as strategic pillars in the digitalization journey of FES companies, revolutionizing the capabilities of the modern food industry. At the same time, end-to-end solutions like AutoQuotes (AQ) from Revalize have created a central platform for sales, design, and other key workflows for manufacturers, dramatically streamlining processes. Integrating these two solutions could be the key to leveling up your operation.
Key Benefits of ERP- AQ Integrations
Platforms like AutoQuotes combine a number of tech capabilities into a single solution that is critical to sales, payment, and other FES manufacturing processes. Here are a few of the offerings:
- AQ CPQ, which stands for “configure, price, quote,” assists sales teams in configuring products according to customer specifications, pricing them appropriately (based on factors like volume, customizations, and regional pricing), and generating quotes. This tool has become critical for companies with complex product offerings, helping reduce quoting errors and shortening the sales cycle.
- AQ Pay streamlines traditional manual invoicing processes. With quote-to-order workflows, users can essentially automate the money collection process, turning quotes into orders with just a few clicks — essential for modern online and e-commerce sales.
- AQ Insights sales data analytics dashboards work in tandem with AQ CPQ to provide deeper insight into sales productivity, help identify market trends, and improve decision-making throughout the sales process.
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) platforms integrate all facets of an operation, including planning, inventory, purchasing, and human resources, into a single, unified system. This one technology has helped the industry streamline processes, enable greater insights, and enhance visibility across organizations, facilitating better decision-making and improved operational efficiency.
Now, imagine what happens if you’re able to plug CPQ and other critical software directly into your ERP. Utilizing ERP integration to unify workflows can provide teams with a number of benefits, including:
Accelerating Order-to-Delivery Through Real-time Integration
ERP integration allows for real-time data synchronization, reducing the need for manual data entry and handling. Once a quote is approved in AutoQuotes, the information can automatically populate in the SAP ERP system. This can trigger for procurement and production scheduling workflows without manual intervention, reducing the cycle time from order to delivery, with less risk of human error.
Beyond simply benefitting the manufacturer, this increased efficiency extends directly to customers. For example, if a restaurant’s custom oven breaks down, they’ll need a replacement to arrive as quickly as possible to minimize the amount of time their business is closed. ERP integration by the oven manufacturer could help fill their order in record time, minimizing impact to their business.
Enhanced Quote Accuracy Drives Customer Trust
ERP integrations help stakeholders ensure that all quotes are based on the most current pricing and inventory data to reduce quoting errors and order inaccuracies. As inventory levels and prices change, these updates show up in real-time in the CPQ platform, helping sales provide accurate quotes and ensure product availability immediately. This responsiveness not only improves customer satisfaction but also reduces the risk of errors and delays in order fulfillment, improving company reputation and offering a competitive edge.
Lori Harden, a sales operations manager at Wasserstrom who has benefitted from AutoQuotes and SAP ERP integration, is now able to adjust quotes in real-time directly from supplier data and inventory levels, allowing her team to deliver more accurate quotes with more competitive pricing to customers. As a result, she says this has enabled her company to be a “proactive partner rather than just a supplier.”
Unified Workflows Connect Teams Enterprise-wide
ERP integration enhances communication and workflows between sales, finance, inventory management, and other departments by creating a more unified, end-to-end platform for easy data sharing and accessibility. In an integrated workflow, the finance team could prepare invoices as soon as the order is confirmed in AutoQuotes, while SAP ERP could alert the logistics team to prepare for delivery without waiting for manual updates. This interconnectedness ensures cross-departments alignment, which streamlines decision-making and improves overall business agility.
Scale Operations With Powerful Integration Tools
As FES businesses grow, their operations involve increasingly larger transaction volumes and more sophisticated sales structures. ERP integration automates core processes to provide robust data-handling capabilities, allowing companies to manage higher operational demands, more order complexity, a broader product range, and expansion into new markets without increasing their overhead costs.
For example, an FES manufacturing company expanding internationally can manage multiple currencies, tax regimes, and compliance standards through SAP ERP, while still using a platform like AutoQuotes to handle the specific configuration and quoting aspects locally.
Sync AutoQuotes with SAP ERP Through Revalize Integration Hub
There are many platforms in the market geared toward the FES industry, but not all of them have:
- Seamless SAP ERP integration, plus over 50 pre-built connectors to other apps.
- Comprehensive CPQ, data visualization, analytics, payment processing, and more
- Advanced design capabilities with AQ Design, a CAD plugin for the FES industry.
- Seamless integration with Revalize’s KCL NapkinSketch to support flexible project sharing between the two platforms.
Thanks to the Revalize Integration Hub (RIH), users can sync AQ with SAP ERP, and virtually any enterprise system in the market. “The Revalize Integration Hub wasn’t just a technical upgrade,” said Lori Harden of Wasserstrom. “It was a strategic move designed to enhance our agility and precision in responding to customer demands across our entire operation.”
AutoQuotes redefines software for the foodservice equipment and supplies industry. For over 30 years, the platform has elevated manufacturers with a suite of capabilities, offering detailed product information, precise quoting capabilities, and a platform to manage sales activities.
Ready to optimize your workflows? Schedule your Revalize Integration Hub tour today.
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