Formula Air improves operations with Configure One’s CPQ

Formula Air, a global industrial enterprise striving for cleaner air, has enhanced its operational efficiency and improved its customer service by licensing CPQ software from Configure One.

Headquartered in the Netherlands and offering a website that’s translated into nine languages, Formula Air is known in the manufacturing sector for its environment-altering innovations. The firm designs, manufactures and markets systems to improve industrial ventilation. Its production sites span several continents, with sales and inventory concentrated in Europe and distribution primarily from Belgium.

CEO Jeroen Zweegers expects all locations — including France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Lithuania and Vietnam — to use Configure One’s products. Every location includes a sales subsidiary whose staff will be working with Configure One software, with each branch serving customers in their native language.

“We serve dust extraction solution in a wide range of industries,” said Zweegers, noting that most clients are small private businesses. “For example, the Netherlands is very active in the recycling and carwash industry, but our French subsidiary is very strong in the powder-coating industry.”

As far as rollout is concerned, the CEO related that implementation for use with NetSuite began just recently, with three colleagues having traveling to England to receive Configure One software training this month. He expects the company will quickly reap benefits from those employees’ new expertise.

“In our business we sell a lot of standard products, but in every installation there are also slightly modified items,” Zweegers said. “In our current system, it takes a lot of work to create, maintain and process these products. From what we have seen in the demos, we expect to save a lot of time [not only] in our sales department but also in the operations department.”

He predicted that Formula Air’s ordering accuracy will increase substantially with Configure One software. Currently, the company encounters errors due to manually processing modified items. Once the system is fully integrated, Zweeger anticipates that “this will be solved because … people will be guided through the system and can’t make mistakes or [designate] products which are not possible.”

Further, he said “we believe that we can shorten our lead times by 30 to 40 percent because less internal communication is necessary about these modified articles.”

Formula Air settled on Configure One after a thorough, systematic search for the right vendor and product. After drawing up a preliminary list based on SaaS criteria and previous CPQ experiences documented by other businesses, Formula Air selected NetSuite. From there, Configure One clearly emerged as the vendor of choice for its fully integrated CPQ solution.

“The sales staff was very helpful in elucidating the detailed capabilities and the integration of Configure One with NetSuite and were able to demo the Formula Air requirements within days,” Zweegers said. “This helped a lot to simplify the implementation.”

Formula Air expects to use Configure One both to modify standard products like pipes and to create new solutions by selecting and composing complex systems based on business criteria. Zweegers fully expects Configure One software to enhance the company’s mission for clean air and wellness in the workplace.

“With the CPQ, it will be much easier for our people to offer installation, and we also can offer easily with a few extra clicks alternative solutions and extra options which will make installation more environmentally friendly,” Zweegers said.

He acknowledged that, while not all customers require extras, “at least now we can offer them easily and we expect that once we offer them … sales will go up and we [will] reach our mission to have clear air in the workplace.”

About Configure One
Configure One is a leading provider of web-based product configurator and CPQ (configure price quote) software. Configure One’s Enterprise Product Configurator® is an enterprise CPQ application that enables companies to efficiently sell and process orders for configurable, multi-option, and customizable products and services. Configure One’s customers can increase revenues while reducing costs by automating much of the sales, order entry, and engineering processes. Customers include industry leaders such as Alstom, Dover Corporation, Rosenbauer, Masonite Corporation, Otis Elevator, SPX Corporation, Stanley Black & Decker, and Sumitomo.