The product data and rules are maintained by the people that have the knowledge, not by it-people. Though 'off-the-shelf', the tool is highly flexible and easy to use. We could not perform without it.
Pros
The Aebi Schmidt Group (www.aebi-schmidt.com) manufactures outstanding, world-wide-distributed agricultural, municipal and special equipment.
With a customized range of products and services we offer our customers appropriate solutions for almost every problem.
All our products (silo spreaders, snowploughs, snow clearing machines, compact sweepers, mounted sweepers, implement carriers, transporters and mowers) are configurable, from a few options to many highly complex options with multi-level dependencies and calculations. We use Sofon to maintain and spread the product knowledge amongst all our sales offices all over Europe. With Sofon a salesman is able to make a good-looking quotation in a short time without much product knowledge. Sofon supports the whole quotation process, and when a quotation becomes an order, a sales order and the complete bill of material and routing is created in our ERP system (SAP). Changes are handled too.
Cons
no real Cons
Rating breakdown
I use SOFON as an end user. There is NO possible way to overstate how VERY bad this product is. It is counter-intuitive, buggy, and designed in such a way as to require massive amounts of additional unneeded keystrokes ans rework. Run the other direction.
Pros
None
Cons
Far too many to list, see above.
Rating breakdown
E. van Wijk Logistics is an international logistics service company with branches in the Netherlands, Romania, Moldavia and Ukraine. Before Sofon our quotations and calculations were produced manually in Excel. This was time-consuming and prone to errors; it was for example easy to forget a change in rates. This is why we wanted to simplify the way the rates were put together. We also wanted more insight into client-specific rates and outstanding quotations. We now make use of the Sofon Sales Organizer (CRM package) and the Sofon Proposal Organizer (quotation generator). We use Sofon to quickly produce uniform and error-free quotations, including the accompanying calculations. Our price agreements with our various customers are now clearly defined and our price adjustments are greatly simplified. Sofon also offers us insight into the quotations we have issued to date and the effectiveness of our sales reps.
Pros
Quickly produce uniform and error-free quotations
Offers insight into the quotations we have issued to date and the effectiveness of our sales reps
Price agreements are now clearly defined and our price adjustments are greatly simplified
Cons
no real Cons
Rating breakdown
Voortman develops, manufactures, installs and maintains CNC controlled processing machines for the steel fabricating industry and steel service centers. Because of our growing international clientele, we were looking for a complete sales support system. Sofon turned out to be very complete, so we use all of Sofon: from CRM to quotation generation and everything in between. The implementation of Sofon took only a few months. I had expected that we would need far more time, but my expectations were definitely proved wrong. All the Sofon-users in our company are very pleased with the ease of use the system offers. Since the introduction of Sofon we have the years of customer history visible at a glance. We also have a link to and synchronization of our e-marketing package, we have the possibility to manage our opportunities and our management reports are available, thanks to Sofon.
Pros
quick implementation
ease of use the system
customer history visible at a glance
Cons
No major cons.
Rating breakdown
MarFlex is a developer and manufacturer of electrical deep well pumps for the shipping and offshore industries. The abundance of options and combinations made it difficult for the sales staff to provide an accurate quotation quickly; they often needed the help of our Engineering department. We searched for a provider who could meet all of our needs and Sofon turned out to be the best option for us. After an implementation of six months, we went live with Sofon. With Sofon, Sales no longer requires the help of Engineering for 90% of quotations. Sofon makes sure we do not make any errors and offer the correct combination to our customers. We are extremely pleased with the results we achieved with Sofon. Our quotations are of excellent quality, both in terms of contents and lay-out. We often simply copied text from old quotations and spend time at checking through the entire text. Now we know… Sofon is always right. We no longer have to read through the text and can send it off with confidence.
Rating breakdown
User + server based license or subscription model
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