Sell complex products
The three solutions here share one difficulty: the buyer does not arrive with your article number. A maintenance technician arrives with a serial number and a stopped machine. A project buyer arrives with a length, a material and a pressure rating. A corporate purchaser arrives inside Ariba and expects your catalogue to appear there, priced to their contract. In each case the shop has to translate what the buyer knows into what you sell, and the translation is catalogue work before it is anything else.
Start with spare parts if you build machines. It is the journey with the most urgent demand, the least channel conflict and the fastest payback, and it forces the bill-of-material discipline the other two need anyway. Start with punchout if a large customer is already asking; their timetable is short and their prices have to be right first. Take on configurable products last. It demos best and depends on the most, and the guided configurator screen is still planned, so the modelling and pricing underneath are what you build today.
- Sell spare parts online: identification, availability, and speed when a machine is down.
- Sell configurable products: length, material, coating, connection; products that need a specification before a price exists.
- Connect customer procurement via Punchout: sell inside your large customers' procurement systems, where their buyers already work.