Configure One Provides Fantastic Solution to Halifax Fan
United Kingdom's leading manufacturer of industrial centrifugal fans selects Concept integrated to SAP Business ByDesign to enable faster growth

ESSEX, ENGLAND, September 14, 2011 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Configure One , a leading provider of web-based product configurator and electronic catalog software, today announced that Halifax Fan Ltd.—the United Kingdom's leading industrial centrifugal fans manufacturer—selected Configure One's Concept Enterprise Product Configurator after a comprehensive evaluation.

Halifax Fan Ltd. (www.halifax-fan.com) is regarded as one of the world's foremost manufacturers of industrial and centrifugal fans. As each fan is tailored to the client's specific application, the lengthy quote-to-order process was resulting in an inability to respond to customers fast enough, and had become a limiting factor in the company's ability to grow.

"Our existing quote-to-order process requires many labor-intensive manual steps," said Ian McEvoy, owner of Halifax Fan. "It takes about two days to generate a quote and that's too long. We can get away with that in the United Kingdom, but not in China. They expect an almost instantaneous response, certainly within 24 hours. In addition, we want to expand our operations in Asia, but the time it takes to train our staff and agents on how to configure a fan was becoming a burden and limiting our ability to grow.

As a result, Halifax Fan embarked on a search for a product configurator, and after a comprehensive evaluation selected Configure One's Concept Enterprise Product Configurator. "We had the option of selecting a software solution specifically designed for fan manufacturers, but chose Concept because of its flexibility," said McEvoy.
We didn't want to use the same type of software as our competitors. Although initially, it will take longer to build the configuration rules, with Concept we will have a solution that is unique to our fans, and more importantly Concept provides the flexibility to include other products. Also, because we have operations in China and Thailand multi-language capabilities were essential."

According to McEvoy, Halifax Fan is looking forward to streamlining the quote-to-order process, and dramatically reducing time it takes to respond to customers. "By automating the quote-to-order process we expect to reduce our quote lead time and compete for more business. Another benefit will be the integration between Concept and Autodesk Inventor allowing our engineers to spend more time on value-added tasks rather than routine paperwork."

Although the first users of Concept will be Halifax Fan's internal staff, the goal is to expand its usage to agents and finally direct to customers. "Currently, if we add another agent it's a huge investment and dramatically increases our workload due to the amount of training and support they require. Concept will enable agents to become self-sufficient faster and reduce our training workload. Eventually, agents and customers will be able to configure their own products."

"Companies are recognizing the benefits of reducing their quote-to-order lead time to win more business," said Jon Lidbury, general manager Configure One Europe, Ltd. "We are confident that Concept integrated to SAP Business ByDesign will help Halifax Fan meet their goals of reducing their sales training needs and ultimately grow their business."

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Configure One
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