Founded in 1976, Balanced Body, Inc., is the world’s largest provider of Pilates equipment and education. Combining state-of-the-art engineering, materials, and technology with a modern understanding of human biomechanics, Balanced Body has been a true innovator in the personal exercise equipment space.
- Automate bill-of-material and manufacturing orders for custom products
- Configure orders automatically with less opportunity for errors
- Improve speed and accuracy of quotes for the sales team
- Provide integration between CRM and ERP processes
- Dynamically create custom BOMs and routings
- Allow trained business users to maintain configurations, rules and price lists
Challenge
With such a long, rich history of product innovation and expertise, Balanced Body needed a fully automated business system to match the success and vision that they set forth as company.
Additionally, having tens of thousands of varying product configurations in its repertoire, they needed an efficient and consistent way to process quotes and orders faster and easier.
“Because we sell both business-to-business and business-to consumer, we needed a solution that could dynamically and accurately create custom bill of material (BOMs) and Routings.”
“Previously, our CRM system was so archaic that it only had a pricing and quoting engine with no BOM or routing functionality,” noted Endelman. “We needed to change that.”
Salespeople would create the configuration, which would appear as a line item on the sales order with a description and price. After the sales order was submitted, someone in production planning would manually create the custom BOM in the back-office software to track inventory.
Copies of the order and descriptions were then printed and moved onto the shop floor.
“We needed to eliminate those paper travelers.”
Balanced Body needed to manage tens of thousands of varying product configurations.
The same product configuration environment needed to support multiple types of buyers and orders.
Production planners had to manually recreate BOM information after the sales order was submitted.
The existing CRM quoting engine lacked the BOM and routing functionality needed to connect sales with manufacturing.
Solution
Balanced Body requested proposals from over ten different independent software vendors (ISVs). Most responses focused on replacing or updating its legacy CRM and ERP systems without providing the CPQ integration and functionality Balanced Body needed. The company even considered writing its own configuration platform.
About a year into the review, Balanced Body determined that CPQ was the missing link to fully automating both its sales and internal business systems.
“The seamless integration with Microsoft Dynamics made our decision to implement Experlogix very clear.”
Balanced Body also needed a CPQ solution that could dynamically and accurately create custom BOMs and routings.
Experlogix connects configuration and quoting with Balanced Body's CRM and ERP environment.
Custom bills of materials can be generated from the configured product rather than recreated manually after the sale.
Manufacturing routing information can be created as part of the configured order process.
The sales configuration becomes part of a more automated path into manufacturing.
“Experlogix has given us the tools that we need to maximize our quote-to-order and manufacturing performance for custom products.”
Result
Adding Experlogix CPQ to its technology stack has been a real game-changer for Balanced Body.
“Since going live with Experlogix, our revenue has grown by 5%-10%, year-over-year, and orders have increased.”
Balanced Body also gained more flexibility in who can manage the configuration environment.
Trained end users with the right product knowledge can configure products, build rules and create price lists without requiring IT to administer every change.
“As an IT manager, one of the things that I love about Experlogix is that end-users with the right training and product knowledge can do the configuration and build rules and create price lists.”
“Experlogix doesn’t require someone from IT to administer.”
Balanced Body reports year-over-year revenue growth of 5%–10% after going live with Experlogix.
The company also reports that order volume increased.
Custom bills of materials can be created from configured products instead of being manually recreated after order submission.
Manufacturing routing information can be generated as part of the custom product process.
The connected process eliminates the need for the former paper-traveler workflow described by Balanced Body.
Trained employees with product knowledge can maintain configurations, rules and price lists.
“The seamless integration with Microsoft Dynamics made our decision to implement Experlogix very clear. Since going live with Experlogix, our revenue has grown by 5%-10%, year-over-year, and orders have increased.”
Adam Endelman Director of Business IntelligenceSpeak with one of our experts or download the complete Balanced Body customer success story.
