QAD : The Customer Experience in Manufacturing

Published: 2021-10-19 12:31:13 ET QADA

For many years, the customer was almost an afterthought to manufacturing companies. The managerial emphasis was on increasing operational efficiency, improving productivity and controlling costs - all good things.

But the customer doesn't care about any of these things. The customer wants the product. On time. At a good price and with acceptable quality. So yes, these priorities helped satisfy the customer, but not in a way that mattered to them.

Fortunately, manufacturers have realized that without a customer, it doesn't matter how productive the operational team is. Ensuring an outstanding customer experience must be a manufacturing company's highest priority, and adaptive manufacturing enterprisesare taking steps to provide that superior experience.

The customer experience begins before the sale, and it continues after the sale, so to ensure a consistently excellent experience, manufacturers need to be sure they have procedures in place that put the customer's needs first. And they need business systems that can support those procedures, and that can change quickly as the customer's needs change, or if different customers have different needs.

QAD has solutions for complete customer management, starting from the first contact and continuing through after sales service, support and warranty management. Regardless of your manufactured product or your customers' demographics, QAD has tools that increase visibility across the entire customer lifecycle to provide a better, more cohesive customer experience.

QAD CRM provides a 360 degree view of all interactions with customers, leads and suspects so you always know exactly where you stand and what the customer's expectations are. Nobody enjoys calling a company and having to explain a question or concern repeatedly, but QAD CRM captures the information seamlessly, whether it's a functional inquiry, a question of product availability or price, or a support issue. This enables every member of your team to know exactly what's on the customer's mind so they can hit the ground running as soon as they pick up the phone or receive a message.

The customers of manufacturing companies are highly variable. In some industries, they may be distributors or resellers. In others, the product is a component in their own products. Still others may have end users as customers. Regardless of who you sell to, it's imperative that you make the ordering process as simple as possible.

For example, if your customer is a global manufacturer, a retailer, or a distributor, they may want to place an order and have it shipped at various times as needed, or shipped to multiple locations to replenish local inventories. In this case, you would need an order management system that easily handles blanket orders or multiple ship-to and bill-to addresses, or that enables custom configured products.

Some customers request detailed quotes before they place an order. Others want to place or check on their orders themselves. Regardless of what your customer needs or wants, QAD customer management can handle it. Other customer management systems that say they can do everything may not allow you to mix-and-match processes and order handling procedures by customer, product or region. With QAD, the system adapts to work the way your customer wants it to work.

Some manufacturing industries have unique trade practices. If your customers are in retail or distribution, they expect rebates when they reach certain sales thresholds. They may expect discounts across multiple products and orders that most order management systems wouldn't see as related.

In other industries such as health care, they may belong to buying groups - powerful organizations of multiple customers that negotiate prices and terms on behalf of all the organization's members. And your system needs to keep track of the membership and all the contractual nuances.

QAD Trade Activity Managementis designed to do exactly that, so you can provide the customer with the right price on every order, and so rebates and promotional prices are applied correctly every time.

Many customers would love your product - if only it had an additional feature or came in another color or had their company logo on it. The list of potential variations can be endless and keeping track and communicating those variations to manufacturing can be complex. Mistakes can be costly, but with a product configurator, you can be sure that customer requests are possible, and that the requests are accurately priced and communicated to manufacturing. The result is happier customers, higher sales, fewer returns and less rework.

Sometimes customers just want to browse your product catalog or check on an order. They don't want to wait for an email or sit on the telephone waiting for a response. They want to do it all themselves, and QAD provides a web storefront that enables customers to manage their own orders.

The cost of after-sale service and installation, warranty tracking, returns and exchanges, managing maintenance contracts - all the post-sale customer interactions - can be steep. Many systems either have separate modules for each type of post-sale interaction, or they offer an incomplete suite of services that doesn't cover key requirements. This can force you to use multiple systems to support your customer, but it provides a disjointed experience to the customer, and it's slow and cumbersome for you.

QAD Field Service Management offers everything you need for post-sales support, from depot repair to spare parts management. You can schedule service technicians and ensure the technician you send is qualified and has the right parts to make the needed repairs.

As a result, costs of post-sale service and support are reduced by using an integrated solution to manage people, skills and spare parts inventory.

Unlike many other ERP systems, QAD Adaptive ERPincludes advanced capabilities to address customer needs at every point in the customer lifecycle. A complete overview is available whenever a user accesses a customer record, so your team can provide a quick and effective experience for the customer every time.

Disclaimer

QAD Inc. published this content on 19 October 2021 and is solely responsible for the information contained therein. Distributed by Public, unedited and unaltered, on 19 October 2021 16:30:02 UTC.