Cincom Acquire Suite: CRM Growth in Manufacturing Solutions

Introduction

Cincom Systems has chosen to continue investing in its largest business unit, the Manufacturing Business Solutions Unit, as the Cincom Acquire suite of applications continues to be sold into manufacturing and services businesses globally. The decision was made in late September 2010 to reduce spending on previous-generation integration systems and document management systems that had struggled in the market. Cincom found that, given the prolonged economic recovery underway, manufacturing customers had become more focused than ever on price management, revenue management, quoting, and product configuration.

In conjunction with the needs of manufacturers and service providers for more efficient means of managing pricing, quoting, and product configuration, there is also a growing need for better management of digital content. Cincom found that its manufacturing customers require greater flexibility in managing inbound quotes that include pictures, images, and drawings. All of these factors led Cincom senior management to concentrate on the Acquire suite of applications, which holds the greatest potential of any product sold by the company.

The ascent of digital content management as part of broader knowledge management strategies within organizations (Bilek, 2010) presents a unique opportunity for Cincom to extend its Acquire suite into new workflows and processes that are growing today. The catalyst of this growth is the use of quoting, pricing, and product configuration systems by manufacturers whose dealers possess deep industry expertise yet are less familiar with web applications or PCs. A prime example is the specialty vehicles market, where it is common to find dealers who have previously been truck drivers, fleet owners, or in some cases, firefighters and emergency vehicle operators. These dealers carry high levels of credibility with their customers due to their industry backgrounds, yet they have limited experience or interest in mastering the details of a complex quoting system. In response, Cincom developed a quoting, pricing, and product configuration system that allows images to be uploaded directly from smartphones.

Factors Driving Cincom Acquire's Growth

Another factor is the optimization of pricing (Bilek, 2010) and the use of the Cincom Acquire suite for creating more effective customer loyalty programs within dealer channels. Several manufacturers are now using the Acquire platform to implement pricing loyalty programs. Related to this is the streamlining of the product configuration system within Acquire to allow for constraint-based optimization of product models — a dominant factor in the growth of lean manufacturing today (Banaszak, Zaremba, & Muszyński, 2009). The pricing optimization, product configuration, and constraint-based modeling capabilities of Cincom Acquire have all been combined to support the creation of loyalty programs at several industrial equipment manufacturers and specialty vehicle manufacturers.

Cincom has found that the entire go-to-market strategy of its manufacturing customers can be enhanced through the optimization of pricing, product configuration, and quoting on a single integrated platform.

Ahmed, D., Sundaram, D., & Piramuthu, S. (2010). Knowledge-based scenario management: Process and support. Decision Support Systems, 49(4), 507.

Banaszak, Z., Zaremba, M., & Muszyński, W. (2009). Constraint programming for project-driven manufacturing. International Journal of Production Economics, 120(2), 463.