Implementing An Efficient Quote Management System

How NEC implemented a custom quote management software for a faster sales cycle.

One of the biggest factors affecting the growth of a company or even an industry is efficiency in its operations and management. Without efficiency, whether in a single process or the management as a whole, growth is pretty much impossible. Although, this is something that all of us know, sometimes we fail to achieve the same for some reason. Sometimes it is in our internal processes or sometimes in our customer management processes. We resort to using technology to overcome our challenges when such things happen. Here we discuss one such instance where a multi-million dollar organization, NEC used technology to overcome its inefficiencies in quote management.

NEC Corporation is a Japanese multi national provider of information technology (IT) services. It provides IT and network solutions to business enterprises, communications service providers and to Government agencies. The company was known as Nippon Electric Company Limited before rebranding in 1983 as just NEC.

The challenge

The challenge that NEC faced was in its Quote management system. The inefficient practices in the management by the dealers and vendors led to huge resource leakage for NEC. Their dealers were using outdated methods of generating quotes for their lease and sales processes. Such manually generated quotes were then forwarded to prospective clients. Such inefficient practices proved to be time-consuming and ineffective. The dealers did not have a central database from which to track past quotations and since there was no standard calculation method for quote generation they found it hard to maintain continuity. On the whole it affected the sales cycle of the company. What NEC needed was a solution that accelerated their sales cycle.

The solution

They found the perfect solution in a scalable web-based application developed by Fingent Technology Solutions. It was developed after a thorough analysis of the processes involved in NEC’s quote generation as well as an understanding of the maintenance and management methods of the quotes by the dealers.

Through the so developed custom web application, NEC was able to simplify a lot of its processes by automating a number of its quote generation practices. The application enabled NEC to oversee the quote generation process completely and respond to dealers’ requests almost immediately. It also enabled quick, effective and transparent communication between NEC and their dealers. Dealers also found it easier to generate quotes for prospective clients. Some of the essential features of this application were:

• Payment calculation engine
• Roles and permission management
• Simplified report sharing
• Personalized dashboard
• Custom calculation creator
• Custom quote development process
• Quote archival history
• Simplified search
• PDF report generation
• Application audit log

All of these features played an important role in making quote management for NEC, a much simpler process.

Through this application, NEC was able to invigorate their sales cycle and reduce wastage of resources by almost 50%. Their dealers could rapidly follow up on quotes sent thereby increasing the chances for a better sales success rate. Archival history of quotes also helped NEC, better understand its targeted industries. On the whole, It helped them to plan for the future and improve productivity, while maintaining efficiency.

Do you have a business challenge in quote management systems and are none of the existing technology solutions helping you solve your problem? Talk to our team of specialists! We can help you develop and implement a custom software for solving your business challenges.