Founded in 1963, Takeuchi was the first company to introduce the compact excavator to North America, transforming the North American construction equipment market and positioning Takeuchi as a leading provider of compact earthmoving equipment.
- Quote and order configurations reduced from three hours to 10 minutes
- Order errors dramatically reduced
- Faster time-to-market for new products
- Sales administrators maintain configurator versus software programmers
- 2,000+ daily customer sign-ons do self-service order configurations
- Appropriate product branding ensured throughout dealer network
Challenge
Takeuchi was poised to launch several new, compact equipment models but recognized that its time-to-market was seriously constrained. Takeuchi’s existing enterprise technology platform was over-taxed – especially its labor-intensive product configurator.
Takeuchi’s existing product configurator was entirely menu-driven. Every feature selected in one menu had to be properly linked to desired items in other menus. It was common to end up with thousands of permutations – with numerous errors. Those had to be found and corrected before the configuration could be released to production. The process took hours.
The company also lacked a state-of-art customer portal where dealers and customers could access real time pricing and configure their own orders.
“Takeuchi is a premium product, and we wanted customers to also know that we are very competitive.”
“The company was at a crossroads. We were faced with either adding more programmers (to rectify system deficiencies) or find a new product,” Pollard says. “We run very lean, and adding more programmers went against that.”
Long term, the existing configurator simply didn’t provide the foundation needed to scale with company growth.
The existing menu-driven system could require hours to complete and validate a configuration.
Configurator complexity was constraining Takeuchi’s ability to bring new equipment models to market.
Scaling the existing configurator would have required adding more programmers.
Dealers and customers lacked a state-of-art portal for current pricing and self-service configuration.
Solution
Takeuchi started by selecting Microsoft Dynamics NAV ERP as the base of its new technology platform. When Pollard searched for configurators that integrated with it, Experlogix Configurator always came up top of the list.
“As a twenty year technology veteran, I immediately appreciated the level of support, confidence, and knowledge that Experlogix offered. It really stood out.”
The company invited a short list of vendors to showcase their products. They asked other providers how their products handled certain requirements, and “they told us they didn’t really know.” This was a situation, Pollard knew, made for a high potential of implementation cost overruns.
“Experlogix came in and wanted to know to how we run our business. They wanted to understand what our requirements were. They listened. And then they told us how much it would cost. They molded their product around our needs,” he says. “They did some pretty interesting integration work to make it all work. I wish all my vendors were like that.”
Takeuchi selected Dynamics NAV as the ERP foundation for its new technology platform and implemented Experlogix alongside it.
The implementation was built around Takeuchi’s actual requirements and operating processes.
The new environment supports quote and order configuration through a customer-facing portal.
Equipment and component pricing can be maintained online rather than through paper-based price sheets.
Result
By implementing Experlogix CPQ for Dynamics NAV, Takeuchi is seeing immediate benefits internally and externally. From an administration perspective, Takeuchi was able to shift responsibility for, new product configurations, and maintenance of existing models to the sales department. Instead of requiring programmers to handle configurator maintenance, one product specialist trained in Experlogix now easily manages it all.
Responsibility for new product configurations and maintenance of existing models shifted away from software programmers and into the sales organization.
Externally, customers and dealers now create all quotes and orders using Experlogix CPQ through a portal. Previously, according to Pollard, it used to take three hours to configure an order. Today, it takes 10 minutes.
Pricing is also simplified. All equipment and component prices are maintained online, rather than on paper-based price sheets. This makes it easy for end users to look at pricing via the customer portal. The single system sign-on ensures that customers are directed to the proper pricing schema for the class they’re in. In this way, pricing is more tightly controlled.
Equipment and component pricing is maintained online, while single sign-on helps direct users to the pricing schema associated with their customer class.
The company’s website typically receives more than 1,000-1,500 daily log-ins. All customers visiting have direct access to configure their own orders using Experlogix CPQ.
Experlogix CPQ also helps Takeuchi control and monitor the critically important issue of product branding. Fonts, colors, and logos can be changed, added, or deleted through a common tool set. This also helps Takeuchi ensure that products are going to market as advertised.
Quote and order configuration time dropped dramatically for dealers and customers.
Takeuchi reports that order errors were dramatically reduced.
A more manageable configuration environment supports faster time-to-market for new product models.
A trained product specialist can maintain new and existing configurations instead of relying on software programmers.
Customers and dealers can configure their own quotes and orders through the portal.
Takeuchi can maintain fonts, colors and logos through a common tool set to help ensure products reach market as advertised.
“We received excellent support throughout the Experlogix implementation – and continue to receive excellent support. There’s never been an issue that they’ve not been able to resolve. From a business, budget, and engineering perspective, I couldn’t be happier.”
Jonathan Pollard IT ManagerSpeak with one of our experts or download the complete Takeuchi customer success story.
