As a business, TWG is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of industrial products that include winches, hoists, swing drives and more. Made up of the collection of seven brands, the TWG family includes Pullmaster, Tulsa Winch and more. With employees all over the world and a presence in almost all major markets, the scale that TWG serves is truly universal.
Because many TWG products are configured or engineered, their configure-price-quote (CPQ) solution was an essential part of their business strategy. When it came time to pick a new CPQ technology, they chose CDS Visual. To find out why, we interviewed Kirsten Oelrich, Director of Marketing and Sales for TWG.
Q: Could you tell us about TWG and the business situation that led you to engage with CDS Visual?
At TWG, we are proud of the fact that our innovative products help businesses all over the world become more efficient and productive. Simply put, our products make day-to-day life easier… whether it’s a winch or a hoist, hydraulic pump drive or electronic monitoring systems.
Of course, because almost all of those products need to be either configured or engineered-to-order (ETO), our configuration tool is really important for our sales cycle. As part of our digital transformation, we wanted to create a solution that reduced quote time and increased our customer service efficiencies. We knew that we were losing millions in potential sales opportunities due to our lead quote times being too long for certain types of orders—and that only a small percentage of our customers were aware of our breadth of products across all of our many brands.
CDS Visual was able to provide exactly what we needed: a solution that took quote times from weeks to minutes and created self-service and cross-sell opportunities for our customers. Our CPQ offers 3D CAD models for download along with 3D exploded views for easier part identification. We can also syndicate our CPQ solution to other websites easily, so we are better able to support our partners.
Q: How did CDS Visual help? What were the results like?
We began working with CDS Visual about three years ago to create a completely customized CPQ solution that works with our highly complex parts. Because many of our products contain literally hundreds of parts and are used in highly complex systems that rely on precise engineering, the intricacy of the information they built our CPQ solution on was truly astonishing. But they were able to handle it all in stride by using our STEP files to create 3D and 2D models that allow our products to be configured exactly the way our customers need them to be.
Our CPQ solution is up-and-running on our website, and we have found that the response has been extremely positive. Our customer orders are up and our customer engagement has been truly impressive. We have received lots of positive feedback.
Q: What made CDS Visual stand out from other vendors?
As I noted, our products are so complex that many vendors found it to be slightly overwhelming. Because the folks at CDS come from engineering backgrounds, they were better able to understand and meet our needs. Working with the CDS team was amazing – I received personal attention and experience what I consider to be a first-class, “customer-first” attitude that other visualization vendors can’t match. And the CPQ solution was built exactly to our needs… other vendors offer off the shelf, one size fits all products that are kind of take it or leave it. With CDS, we received exactly what we needed, in a seamless fashion. It truly made our lives easier and has had a major impact on our success.
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