B2B Manufacturing Insights | Q4 2024
Manufacturers of complex, configurable products rely heavily on their product configuration data. When the software platform housing this data reaches its end-of-life (EOL), it isn’t just about the challenge of getting a system replaced. It is an opportunity to safeguard your business continuity and unlock new opportunities for modernization.
With careful planning, IT leaders can turn this end-of-life challenge into a strategic advantage by taking this opportunity to consolidate product configuration data from multiple systems to a shared source of truth that:
With a full end-to-end view of configurable product options and rules, manufacturers can smoothly migrate only relevant data for a more agile response.
Using Configit Ace®, manufacturers can create a centralized repository of all product configuration data, enabling a smoother product configuration process that is not only more robust and easier to maintain but also provides more agility to respond quickly to market demands. By modernizing the product configuration processes across functions you will ensure a smoother, more seamless operation while exceeding customer expectations as a value add.
End of life is a powerful opportunity to future-proof your product configuration processes cross-functionally and accelerate innovation.
This edition of our B2B Manufacturing Insights Newsletter brings you the latest trends, expert analysis, and actionable advice on the challenges facing B2B manufacturers.
💡 Analyst Insights
Deloitte | The future of the digital customer experience in industrial manufacturing
To better lead in the future, Deloitte research suggests companies may need to put the customer at the heart of digital transformation.
An enhanced digital customer experience is now considered “table stakes” according to industrial manufacturing and construction companies surveyed and offers the potential to add value across the organization, from presales, design, production, and delivery to aftermarket and operate services.
Gartner | Priorities CIOs Must Address in 2025
CIOs face immense pressure to deliver successful digital initiatives while navigating budget constraints and increasing demands from senior executives.
Download the Gartner 2025 CIO Agenda eBook to learn actionable strategies and best practices that distinguish the digital vanguard — a group of CIOs and executive leaders outside of IT (CxOs) who consistently achieve higher success rates in their digital initiatives.
📖 Latest Blog Posts
As a global leader in enterprise applications, SAP has over half a million customers and nearly 300 million cloud users worldwide. Many of these customers use SAP’s LO-VC module to manage configurations of their products.
With the support of SAP LO-VC ending in 2027, companies using SAP need to start a migration of their LO-VC models to the new AVC.
Learn about the options for creating a smooth transition from LO-VC to AVC in this blog by Configit Director of System Architecture Jesper Blak Møller .
Over the last number of years, B2B manufacturers have made considerable investments in digital transformation initiatives.
But not all digital transformation initiatives are created equal.
In this blog post, Holger Senn, principal consultant and industry advisor at Configit, explains how manufacturers run the risk of building multi-layered, volatile foundations that can quickly become burning platforms.
🗞️ In the News
Laying the Groundwork for Successful CLM Projects
Dr. Jan Göpfert, Partner, PwC Deutschland and Holger Senn , director and industry advisor, Configit describe how CLM provides the blueprint for success.
Recommended by LinkedIn
Configuration Management Software Facilitates Customization
In this ASSEMBLY Magazine article, Configit CEO Johan Salenstedt explains how manufacturers can overcome the challenge of today’s complex configurable products using a CLM approach.
📺 Webinars and Tech Talks
Configit VP of product management Henrik Hulgaard explains how the latest innovation of Configit Ace®, the Configit Ace® Thread, establishes Digital Configuration Threads for analysis of configurable product complexity across the lifecycle.
In this Tech Talk, Tom Davidson, Senior Sales Engineer at Configit, explains how a well-tuned configuration engine can handle complex feature interactions and dependencies, adapting seamlessly to changes over time.
🔦 Customer Spotlight
IVECO | Enhancing Connected and Non-Connected Services Beyond the Truck
In this presentation, Marco Lala, IT Customer Service - Warranty & Product Support Team Lead, and Gianluca Vayra, IT Customer Service Truck & Powertrain BU - Warranty & Product Support-Horizon A3 PM, explain how Configit’s Virtual Tabulation® enables Iveco Group’s HORIZON Project to manage both service master data and the quotation process, enabling the integration and management of various enterprise services with high efficiency and scalability.
Sidel | Streamlining the Quotation Process: Sidel’s Digital Transformation
This presentation by Andrea Pancirolli, Director Equipment Quotation Transformation Project, Equipment Solution Excellence at Sidel, outlines Sidel’s Smart Quote tool, using Configit Ace® SaaS for the technical configuration, to optimize the configuration and selling of complex products using one tool for master data, technical configuration smart pricing, and more.
⚙️ Product Update
CLM-as-a-Service: Foundation for Next Generation CLM
The latest release of Configit Ace® provides new SaaS-optimized capabilities that will transform product modeling and configuration user experiences. Configit Ace® 7, together with Configit Quote® 13, provides CLM-as-a-Service and the foundation for the next-generation of CLM.
Configit Ace®7 introduces two new major capabilities:
Configit Ace® Thread – A new, hosted repository for saving and retrieving all configurations made by users from multiple front-end applications. The saved configuration information captures the entire lifecycle from as-designed to as-configured and, ultimately, as-built and -serviced.
Configit Ace® Configurator – This new SaaS-based, multi-tenant product configurator application allows customers to build a product configurator in minutes by simply providing the location of the already-compiled product model in Configit Ace® and then choosing the layout theme and other options to create a fully functional product configurator.
Transform the configuration experience and lay foundation for digital configuration threads with Configit Ace® 7 and Configit Quote® 13