Driving competitive edge at Siemens

Drivers for change: In the new manufacturing world, speed, scalability and agility are everything

Manufacturers face a series of challenges, including the need to shift to new business models, supply chain disruption, rising customer expectations, and competitive threats. As the largest industrial manufacturer in Europe with global reach, Siemens needed to accelerate the productivity of its sales team while improving the buyer experience for customers.

In looking for opportunities to improve speed to market, scalability and flexibility, Siemens Digital Industries in Sweden realized that their quotation management process was too slow and complex. They first tried to modify their existing systems to increase efficiency and improve the user experience, but they couldn’t produce the results they were looking for. Different business units in other countries attempted to solve the speed and complexity challenges by working with specialized CPQ software vendors, but costs were high and the ability to customize was limited.

Ultimately, the Swedish business unit decided that they needed to develop their own perfectly tailored application to support the entire end-to-end sales process. They also needed the application to integrate with legacy systems but didn’t want to rely on internal IT resources to kick off the project.

The innovative way forward: How low-code changed the game

The Business Excellence unit within Siemens Digital Industries in Sweden selected Flowfactory to build a tailored quotation management application using modern low-code technology.

Business users and developers worked together in a collaborative and creative way to quickly build the application. The features and functions they created provided the power and scale Siemens needed to simplify the CPQ process while speeding up quotation delivery. Instead of replacing existing systems or trying to modify them, the new application was built on the Flowfactory platform that served as an agile layer on top of their legacy ERP, PLM and CRM, connecting them in a new way that ensured the right data was accessed and stored at the right time in the right places.

Thanks to the low-code approach, the application is easy to continuously evolve based on new inputs from the business, futureproofing their CPQ process. Further, by using a low-code approach, Siemens enjoys a lower total cost of ownership than modified versions of standard systems, specialized CPQ software solutions, or traditional development from scratch approaches.

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“Our salespeople are perfectly supported throughout the process and customers get a consistent, professional experience every time.” 

- Dennis Stam, Global Project Manager at Siemens

Siemens’ new competitive edge: how their custom app helps sales win

Overall, the application accelerated sales productivity and pricing accuracy while improving the customer buying experience. By quickly creating branded quotes that are consistent and easy for customers to understand, Siemens has increased trust and profitability. Salespeople save up to 1 hour per quote – freeing them to spend time on higher value activities.

The application perfectly supports Siemens’ unique Offer to Order process in a way that couldn’t have been achieved with other approaches. Siemens’ internal analysis revealed that development projects built on Flowfactory are 10 times faster and cost only 1/10 of similar projects.

Based on a new organization-wide KPI that measured digital transformation success, the powerful results of the custom application that was created in Sweden led to a global rollout across 30 countries by 2024. 1000+ sales executives use the system to send 1000+ quotes every day.

Results