Direct Conveyors has teamed up with Helioz Technologies in a transformative collaboration to elevate their sales process and simplify the buying process for the customer.
Direct Conveyors is a company with a robust focus on offering effective solutions for various conveying applications. Since its inception in 2006, Direct Conveyors has been a prominent player in the industry. Headquartered in Franklin, Indiana, they operate from a substantial 35,000 square feet facility, allowing them to maintain complete control over the assembly process of all their products.
Direct Conveyors was looking for a solution that would simplify their complicated quoting process, automate as many steps as possible in their manual processes, and improve the customer journey by enabling users to configure products themselves and improve response time for complex proposals.
The company devoted much of its time to generating customer quotes and product information. Direct Conveyors handles a large variety of custom-made and complex equipment. Amongst their products, there are many possible configurations. Their existing solution on the website failed to fully support their needs. Helioz Technologies developed a complete solution that includes website and product catalog development. The Helioz Team put together a detailed website development plan in the first step.
"In order to keep up with our industry, we had to get online configurators of our products. We currently had 1 configurator online that was living on someone else s server."
-Tyler Wood, Vice President at Direct Conveyors LLC
Direct Conveyors wanted a new and fresh look that would be in line with modern web design trends. The goal is to have a clean and professional website that will be user-friendly, intuitive, and SEO-friendly. Their old website had an online store. On the new website, it would be replaced with catalog pages. A Catalog Page feature was added to enable users to navigate the different products on the Direct Conveyors website. Product configurator functionalities were made to match the functionalities of the existing solution.
The 3D view was made to present the fully configured product with its physical features and configured options. It allows the user to preview the product by spinning the model around, zooming in and out, and seeing all the configured options. By using the 3D view, Direct Conveyors customers have a better representation of the configured product. This tool enhances their understanding of the product, making it easier to make informed decisions
"Our initial setup and release of our new website has been going really well. These types of projects take a lot of communication and effort on both sides. Between daily emails and weekly meetings, Helioz has been fantastic to work with on our project."
-Tyler Wood, Vice President at Direct Conveyors LLC
This project was based on the proposal to build configurator logic in Onshape, pull the logic with the zipCPQ Onshape Integrator, and convert it to the standard zipCPQ web configurator with the 3D viewer and 2D/3D CAD download functionalities.
CAD integration with Onshape technology provides 3D visualization of the configured product. It s possible to download the CAD file in available Onshape formats or a PDF file with 2D drawings of the desired configuration.
Helioz team integrated the product configurator with Onshape, and that integration resulted in the 3D preview and 2D/3D CAD download functionalities. Helioz viewer is connected to Onshape and updates the model view based on the user selections in the Product Configurator.
The product configurator on Direct Conveyors website allows users to configure Flat Belt Conveyors, Modular Plastic Belt Conveyors, Timing Belt Conveyors, Flat Top Chain Conveyors, and Roller Chain Conveyors. Each product within the category has a description page that notifies the users about the product and its key features and components. Clicking on the button Configure switches the view to the configurator, where the buyers can enter values and customize the conveyor. Below the configurator and the description are Tech Specifications, Belt information, Documentation, and Accessories. Customers can browse through accessories and directly add them to the quote request. In short, customers are able to navigate through the Digital Product Catalog, select and configure the specific product, add to the quote request, send a quote request, and, if configured that way, automatically get the quote.
"As a small rapidly growing manufacturing company, we need to be able to adapt with the market, and this gives us the ability to do so."
-Tyler Wood, Vice President at Direct Conveyors LLC
A special feature on the Direct Conveyors’ website is the Catalog page. The catalog contains products and that are not entirely configurable. Such products are Extrusions, Angles and Connectors, Side Rails Components, and Stand Components that are sold as additional components to conveyors
Extrusions and Side Rail Components can only be configured in a way that a customer enters the desired width. The customers can choose the quantity of the products and add them to the quote request. Each of these products has a designated part number and a short description, whereas configured conveyors get a customized part number based on the configuration.
zipCPQ's Pricing module enables administrators to add the list price for each part number. Depending on the pricing complexity, this can be done either by creating pricing rules, adding pricing spreadsheets, or by combining both approaches. Such an approach makes price maintenance very simple. The pricing module can be connected to different systems and pull the prices from existing tools CRM and ERP. Once the customers configure their product and add it to the RFQ, selected configurations are loaded into Quote Management, where the configured part numbers are combined with pricing and order quantities. When the RFQ is sent, the Salesperson can add or change the discounts and automatically create a quote that is ready to be sent to the customer. It is also possible to add discount rules that can be applied to different types of customers. With the quote management module, Direct Conveyors always has a full overview of all the quotes status.
"Until we found zipCPQ, we didn t have really any options."
-Tyler Wood, Vice President at Direct Conveyors LLC
Robust CPQ solution
Direct Conveyors now benefits from a robust CPQ solution that efficiently handles product configurations, ensuring that even the most complex customer requirements are met seamlessly.
Improved speed and accuracy
With zipCPQ implementation, the quoting process has been transformed significantly and has become significantly shorter. This change accelerates the sales process and ensures higher accuracy in customer quotes.
Affordable solution
zipCPQ presents an affordable investment for our clients, proving to be a strategic and easily justifiable addition to their operations. By optimizing the sales process, it contributes to a notable increase in overall revenue.
Updated Website
As part of our solution, we designed and implemented a new, modern website for Direct Conveyors. This website version offers easy navigation, ensuring visitors can effortlessly explore their product catalog.
Self-service
Direct Conveyors enjoys the benefit of a selfservice model, ensuring they handle all aspects of their information and website management through zipCPQ.
Improved Customer Experience
Every customer gets a personalized and fast buyer experience that is hard to achieve with manual quoting processes. They can create tailored quotes and proposals.
"The integration is going really well. We are receiving a lot of positive feedback from customers, vendors, and partners regarding the ability to download models online. (...) We believe our new website and the integration of zipCPQ is critical to our growth in 2024. "
-Tyler Wood, Vice President at Direct Conveyors LLC
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