Engineers and sales teams in manufacturing use separate systems, PLM for design and CPQ for pricing, but they don't talk to each other. This creates mismatches between what gets built and what gets sold. The fix is integrating data from both sides into one shared space instead of replacing the tools.
Really, the actual issues lie between them. You see, if the engineers are seeing it, they're trying to do a new PLM module or something like that, they're buying a new engineering tool so they can maybe take more control earlier. If it's on the sales side, and we see this a lot, you see a lot of manufacturers going through their 2nd, 3rd, 4th CPQ system trying to get that to solve the problem. And really, the actual issues lie between them. It's because there's a misalignment between what the engineering designed and what sales are offering because those systems are not connected. They haven't got a common data foundation between them so they can agree on what we're offering and how we're offering it. So that is part of what we try to address. So we are a cross-functional solution. We're not trying to replace anything, but we're trying to work with the existing systems and the data and trying to bring all of those, all that data that's relevant together in a place where it can be managed and everyone can collaborate on it.
