Customer story

HMF produces truck mounted cranes. Everything is produced in Aarhus in Denmark and sold in 35 countries around the world. The turnover is around 1 billion Danish crowns.

In Denmark HMF sell directly to customers, and in all other countries they work with distributors who have the exclusivity of their products.

- We work with complex products. When you buy a crane, you must make some choices. If you choose A, you will not be able to choose B.

For HMF customers it’s a big investment to buy a crane and it’s a quite complex product. A big challenge is that when a distributor needs to offer a crane they might make mistake, make a quote with options that are not compatible. In the worst situation a crane is offered that cannot be produced.

- That’s a big challenge, and that’s were CPQ and cpq.se was a great help for us.

Now HMF distributors have the possibility to configure their product directly in the system and make sure that what they offer is also what they can get.

Goals of the project

The goal was to have a tool for the HMF salespeople and distributors where they can make a quote without mistakes. That was the first goal.

The second goal was to integrate the CPQ-system into our ERP system to ensure consistent quality and avoid double work.

- We have integrations into our PIM (Product information system) to get the right texts, pictures and illustration into the quote document. It is very easy to get the PIM information into the quote documents and this makes it very recognizable for the distributors.

Helps the distributors

With Tacton CPQ our distributors will get help in their day-to-day work, and again they will work more efficiently and make sure that the quote that they are making today is completely correct. It will give them the possibility to answer questions right away when they are in front of the customers.

- When existing distributors have new employees it’s a lot easier to train and faster give new employees the responsibility to configure a crane. We can rest assure they will not make any mistakes.

What gives Tacton CPQ a competitive edge?

- One thing that we really love about the configurator is that when you make an incompatible choice, you’ll get a message from the system how to resolve any conflict. This helps the user understand what things are not compatible. It helps a lot.

- Another very positive thing we have experienced is that the quote section of the system is very flexible. It’s very easy to make customized documents for the different distributors. Now we also starting implement even more languages and once that’s finished the sales rep can get quote in Hungarian for example.

- I think what surprised us the most was the implementation process, that it was so quick and easy and so well accepted from our distributors.

Minimize the sales support

- After the first implementation I had no meetings booked, because I thought I expected a lot of calls from our distributors. But nobody called. This shows that the product works very well, it’s user friendly, it’s easy to use.

What is the best with Tacton CPQ?

• Easier for HMF to implement new products.
• Easier to train new salespeople.
• Easier to on-board new distributors.

It’s easier to be a customer and a distributor to HMF, and that’s a great thing. There are a lot of great benefits!

Everything is correct

All the orders HMF get from their customers are now correct.

- That’s a big change, because before we had a lot of mistakes or missing parts in the orders we got.

All prices are implemented in the Tacton CPQ solution and this a big advantage. When the product is configured, the distributor can rest assured that they have the right prices.

- It’s especially important these days when prices are going up and down all the time.

Working with Tacton CPQ is a big part of our digital journey. When we want to approach new markets, this is a big plus.

About the project

This project was started, executed and completed during the pandemic. Everything was done efficiently with online meetings, online workshop and online trainings. The first time we at cpq.se actually meet the customer was when this video was recorded.

The cpq.se team is presented below. In addition to this we got great support from Lars, Alicia and Kasper at HMF. All quotes above originates from the video with Alicia.