Fundamentally, we sell energy products such as gas and power and also non-commodities such as smartphones, wall boxes, or solar panels. In the legacy system, we have to create a new customer-facing product that includes configurations such as green options or price guarantees. This involves a lot of work in the product management and pricing departments and also reduces the customer’s flexibility in choosing and deselecting these options. So we were looking for a product management system to improve and optimize this problem.
The goals set forth were:
- Modular Product Catalog
Create a modular product catalog that would allow us to flexibly define add-ons, discounts, and options.
- Autonomous configuration
Empower corporate product managers to independently configure and manage the product creation process, without the support of the IT department.
"Bit2win is a very customer-centric CPQ system that fits the energy market. The team is constantly improving the solution, taking into account our goals and targets to dynamically meet our needs."
We implemented Bit2win’s CPQ solution, which helped us be more flexible and gain speed on the market.
An important benefit was the incredible support in the project and operations: whenever we had a problem we put it on the roadmap and the Bit2win staff implemented it very quickly, and whenever we had emergencies they resolved them promptly.
There are 4 groups of people using the Bit2win solution:
They focus on implementing the E.ON product model and connecting to sales channels. The software is is perceived as very flexible to meet customer requirements.
Energy products regularly undergo updates to new versions of Terms and Conditions and prices. This process was supported by the implementation of a customized E.ON process for version updates. Automation was greatly increased and the process duration was reduced from weeks to days.
Channel managers need a reliable central point for product data and pricing. We implemented Bit2win as the central source. Performance issues have been improved by implementing a more specific interface with less payload. Here, the benefits of the modular product catalog come to show as we are now able to provide flexible add-ons to the core products.
They need a self-explanatory shopping cart-based system to configure and sell products. Again, the modular product catalog functionality is the main difference from the past. This allows us to do better up- and cross-selling.
The Benefits
Bit2win is a very flexible CPQ system that adapts to the energy market. It requires an initial investment to set up the industry- and company-specific rules set by experts. Bit2win is very customer-focused and improves its product directly on the feedback we provide.
One of the most important benefits is found within the “Neuauflagen” process, a process in which we update product settings and specifications, for which we have been able to greatly optimize run times.
Today we can enable a modular product catalog with cross-selling and up-selling, implement a rigorous and rapid process for regular product updates (Neuauflage) with reduced time-to-market, and have greater flexibility in product configuration.
