TOMRA Fresh Food | Compac Launches 3D Design and Configuration to Accelerate the Sales Process
TOMRA Fresh Food | Compac Launches 3D Design and Configuration to Accelerate the Sales Process
TOMRA Fresh Food | Compac designs, develops, manufactures, installs, and maintains end-to-end packhouse solutions that reduce labor, increase throughput, improve accuracy and consistency, and provide market compliance and traceability. TOMRA Fresh Food | Compac provides integrated post-harvest solutions and services to the global fresh produce industry. The company’s mission is to enable its customers to improve returns, gain operational efficiencies and ensure a safe food supply via the application of smart, useable technologies.
The Compac team at TOMRA Fresh Food was struggling to get quotes out the door efficiently. The process was people-intensive, as salespeople were forced to work with spreadsheets to establish pricing in the quotes. Beyond inefficiency, this was also creating configuration errors in the data which resulted in production issues further downstream in the process.
In addition to taking too much time, the quotes also lacked something tangible. Customers were constantly asking to see a rendering of the system they were looking to purchase, along with the quote and pricing sales could provide. The demand was too intensive for the engineering team to be able to manually design it in AutoCAD and create a Bill of Materials (BOM) for every customer wanting it.
The biggest negative of this approach was the customer’s inability to see the full picture – to relate an actual sorting solution to the quote they were considering. They were never shown a solution – only the price against a bill of goods.
After over 20 years of doing business the same way, the TOMRA Fresh Food | Compac team decided it was time to get “off the page” and stop limiting design to 2D. They knew their customers needed to see 3D renderings and get quotes faster, to improve the buying confidence and to remove ambiguity during the purchase.
Alex Paradiang, Director of Global Solutions at TOMRA Fresh Foods | Compac, approached KETIV with this vision of a 3D configuration and selling tool. He was seeking a partnership and a creative approach in establishing a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for the organization.
Why this MVP approach? Primarily, his fixed budget for a first phase project forced Alex to focus on the most immediate and important goals – instead of undergoing a full Configure, Price and Quote (CPQ) solution implementation. Alex knew that with successful proof of concept, he could show the value of this heightened experience, and the automation behind it, to company leaders to gain further adoption (and funding) in this new way to do business.
KETIV started by carefully decoding the current processes and documenting the requirements. As they constructed the solution, the 3D models had to be prepared. KETIV trained the TOMRA Fresh Foods | Compac team on how to create some of the initial 3D models. This empowered the team to create almost all of their own models internally, saving on additional project budget. And, although they were modeled in SolidWorks originally, KETIV built intelligence into several of the models and figured out a way to use them without being forced to remodel them completely.
KETIV then established a library of these 3D components that could be assembled into a full 3D model of a customer’s system. The Sales Solution Engineers use the factory design capabilities of Autodesk AutoCAD and Autodesk Inventor to quickly and efficiently create a sorting system that can be sent to the customer along with pricing for consideration.
“We have a unique competitive in our specific marketplace with this solution….we’re the only ones in this space, doing it this way.”
The TOMRA Fresh Food | Compac can now quickly create 3D models that they can send to customers, accelerating the sales cycle. Their Solution Engineers can create 3D renderings in real-time, as they pitch the solution.
Customers can finally see how their sorting system connects to the rest of their factory and operations. TOMRA Fresh Food | Compac has an inherent competitive advantage now, as customers have a better understanding that they are buying a complete sorting solution, not just buying machines and parts.
The company’s configuration data is more accurate now, reducing rework and errors on the shop floor.
Alex and the TOMRA Fresh Food | Compac team are looking forward to expanding their solution to allow for real-time pricing as models are assembled. This will reduce the need for manually pulling pricing and will help in change management, reducing communication cycles and time-to-sale.
