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Guiding salespeople
We have talked a lot about how configurations and complexity affect an organization, but often we forget to look at customer-facing roles. While managing product complexity is important for product teams and production teams, it should also extend to the sales force.
At the end of the day, the number one mission for your sales team is to SELL. And often this push for revenue brings additional complexity back into the organization through new one-off configurations salespeople have promised to customers. Even worse is that these configurations might be one or two small changes away from a very popular and maybe more profitable configuration.
Product configurations can be used to shape not only customer demand but also sales behavior. Using a set of pre-ranked configurations based on metrics such as margin, days to sell or current inventory level, you can offer your sales team a structured plan that incents sales through tiered commissions.
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What is sales history, exactly?
We often talk about the sales history of a product, so let’s explain exactly what it means. There is a raw sales history and a collapsed sales history. The sales history, raw or collapsed, is the starting point for all the analytics we will be introducing later.
Raw sales history
A product is a collection of features, where each feature has a set of mutually exclusive options (one of which may be “no,” “none” or “none of the above”). A sales history consists of a record for each unit of the product that has been sold, with a list of the options that were included. Since each record is for a specific unit, there may be a serial number feature. So imagine a table with a row for each unit sold and a column for each feature. The entries in a column are the different option choices for the corresponding feature. Blank cells indicate a “none” choice.
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Understand product choices to manage complexity
A product is a collection of features, and each feature has alternative options. Understanding features helps determine strategies such as late staging. Some features are tangible, material things about the product: which engine, how much memory, Bluetooth. Other features are abstract or soft, like geographic region or sales channel. Among tangible features, distinctions can be made on the basis of the degree of postponement possible.
Pin-on features can be added to the product at the last minute, after a specific order is received. The classic example is the power cord for a printer. Hewlett-Packard avoided having different printers for different countries by attaching different power cords to a common printer.
Reconfigurable features can be changed after a real customer order is received. There are literally hundreds of different kinds of tractor tires, depending on the work a tractor will be used for. A tractor has to be built with some kind of tire just so it can be driven off the assembly line, and it’s easy to change the tires to suit the customer.
Line features, by contrast, are so basic to the product that they can’t be changed, such as the chassis or transmission for a vehicle or the motherboard for a computer.
Abstract or soft features are really attributes of the order rather than of the product itself. But they may be very valuable in understanding customer demand. The pattern of choices for tangible features may vary considerably by geographic region, which is a soft feature. For example, engine block heaters are popular in North Dakota and convertibles are popular in Florida, but convertibles with engine block heaters are almost non-existent.
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8 more definitions you need to know for product complexity analysis
1. Kit
A kit is a collection of parts that are used together for some purpose — for example, all the parts needed to implement air conditioning on a particular model of a car. A kit is assigned its own part number.
2. BOM
BOM stands for bill of materials. When a customer makes a selection of choices chooses a configuration (i.e., makes a complete set of option choices), the manufacturer translates the order into a collection of parts that are needed to assemble it. The BOM is expressed in terms of part numbers. These part numbers may refer to whole kits, composite parts or specific atomic parts. A complete vehicle, or washing machine, will contain many parts that the customer has not chosen. But these parts appear in every instance, or else they are implied by the combination of choices that the customer made.
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Stop product complexity at the door
In any manufacturing company that builds configurable products, there is a lot of discussion around what product complexity is. What’s interesting is that when times are good and there are lots of sales, the discussion is usually around how to simplify or streamline with the goal to sell more product even faster, that complexity is keeping sales from going even higher. In bad times, the discussion typically moves to how complexity is causing undue stress on the supply chain, creating problems with parts forecasting, quality and finished goods inventory.
Rarely do these discussions end with participants really agreeing about exactly what complexity is or how to reduce it. Solutions are attempted with internal projects like SKU reduction and part number reduction initiatives driven by Six Sigma teams that mean well and do good work, but usually are chasing the tail of the complexity dog, rather than leashing it for good and guiding it to higher profits, lower forecasting errors, even shorter sales cycles.
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Why product complexity matters
I was telling some friends at a brunch about what I do, and how variety drives cost in manufacturing. “But all the manufacturing has moved to China,” commented one person. I’ve heard this comment over and over.
A picture is worth a thousand words — and here’s one that fits the bill.
- Commoditization of labor in manufacturing
- Higher output per worker
- The percentage of cost in goods is much higher
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