Many companies are struggling and wondering how to deal with configurable products in engineering? Product modeling is a critical step in the engineering design process. Once the product features have been decided, engineers can begin creating the product design by utilizing various design tools like Computer-Aided Design (CAD) software and engineering documents. Additionally, creating new items, Bill of Materials (BOMs), and documents and saving them into VariSuite’s Product Data Management (PDM) with design tool integrations is a crucial step. VariSuite is an excellent choice for engineers since it supports modularity, allowing each module to have its own model. These modules can then be used in several products, with the product only adding a set of possible parameter values to the module. This saves development time by allowing engineers to create and test the product model during design instead of separately configuring the product. In VariSuite, engineers can combine the chosen product parameters with items, BOMs, and documents to create a product model. The product model consists of a MaxiBOM, also known as a SuperBOM or 150%BOM, where all product components are created as a product family structure with parameters, selection rules, and assignments. The product family structure levels are unlimited, and VariSuite allows configurability down to the lowest level of items or components. This means that the product doesn’t need to use standard components, and each component can be parametric. Once the design is ready, the engineering team tests and verifies the product model in VariSuite. The product is then approved or released with version control that supports changes to the product like any other PDM. The main benefits of using VariSuite for product modeling include: Time Savings: VariSuite saves development time by allowing engineers to create and test product models during the design phase, eliminating the need for a separate product configurator. Modularity: VariSuite supports modularity, allowing engineers to reuse modules across multiple products. Comprehensive Product Model: The product model in VariSuite includes a MaxiBOM with all product components created as a product family structure with parameters, selection rules, and assignments. Configurability: Engineers can configure products down to the lowest level of items or components, allowing for greater flexibility and customization. Version Control: VariSuite includes version control that supports changes to the product like any other PDM, ensuring that engineers can easily track and manage changes to the product model. Do you need help with these topics? Our team will help you with configurable products, do not hesitate to contact us! Get a demo!         Call us

The only right answer is to create configurable or modular product! First of all, when creating configurable product, you need to analyse the following: What are the customer needs? Can we create a technical solution and what it takes? Are there new enabling technologies to consider? Have we analysed competitors offering? Should we create a modular product that is brings reusable configurable components? Who are the sales users e.g., internal sales persons, resellers, customers? Based on these questions sales and engineering must come to a common conclusion what the product features are and what are the allowed feature values and what are the feature value combinations. These features are known also as customer questions. In our solution, VariSuite, these customer questions, or features, are modelled as parameters. To succeed with sophisticated Product Management, these parameters needs to be managed globally, which means these parameters can be used in multiple products or product families and modules or components. Parameters needs to be managed also so, that they have different status or lifecycle. The status will manage parameter usage in current products and ensure that it will retire when some parameters are no longer needed in the offering or they’ve replaced by another one. Parameters can vary, they can be value lists, ranges, single or multi-valued variables. When adding parameters to product model, parameter values can be refined, this means that parameter values can be limited from global parameter values in desired specific product. The constraints are added between allowed parameter combinations for example: with Forestry Trailer product: the payload value is requiring and/or limiting the necessary breaking power, and vice versa. Coming in the next blog-posts – where we’re opening the way how Variantum guides our customers and partners towards easier Configurable Products: How to model the product in engineering How to create sales model with prices and UI in sales How to fulfil manufacturing needs How to fulfil service needs How to make product process streamlined from sales to manufacturing and to service If you’re looking for help with modularizing or parametrizing your product family, do not hesitate to contact us. Interested to know more? Our team will help you out, so please ask for a demo or call us! Get a demo!         Call us

Does your configurator solution fulfill your current product needs: How to create and maintain the model easily? How to design, sell or manufacture it keeping up product changes? Can you manage your configurator without coding? How do you streamline processes between different organizations and co-operate with the company’s other IT-systems? Is your current solution secured and future proof? Do you have technology or resource risks with your current configurator solution? We have solved successfully several companies configurable product challenges. Variantum’s VariSuite system is an end-to-end configurable product solution, where companies can start to solve primary need and expand to other areas later. With Variantum’s configuration technology you can manage from simple to complex configurable products. Variantum’s services help companies with configurable products, we can do productization consultation, process consultation, roadmaps, and business case analyzation before solution selection as well. Do not hesitate to contact us, if you're struggling with the issues above! Interested to know more? Our team will help you out, so please ask for a demo or call us! Get a demo!         Call us

Perinteisesti räätälöidyt tuotteet ja palvelut ovat olleet kilpailuetuasemassa massatuotantoon nähden. Räätälöinnissä yksilölliset tarpeet voidaan ottaa huomioon, jolloin ostaja kokee saavansa enemmän valinnan mahdollisuuksia kuin massatuotannon valmisteilla. Moni on myös valmis maksamaan korkeita hintoja saadakseen yksilöllisesti personoidun tuotteen tai palvelun. Räätälöinti eli jokaisen tuotteen tai palvelun yksilöinti on kuitenkin kallista. Se on usein vaikeasti hallittavaa ja vaatii paljon resursseja. Vakiotuotteet ja -palvelut voidaan tuottaa kustannustehokkaasti, mutta niiden heikkoutena puolestaan on palvelutuotannon ja tarjooman jäykkyys. Nykyään on mahdollista mukauttaa tuotteet ja palvelut eri asiakasryhmien tarpeisiin, mutta kuitenkin tuottaa ne vakioidusti – tätä kutsutaan massakustomoinniksi. Se mahdollistaa eri variaatioiden luomisen kustannustehokkaasti. Massakustomoinnissa hyödynnetään teknologioita ja massatuotannon prosesseja sekä elementtejä niin, että lopputulokset ovat muokattavissa asiakkaiden määrittelyjen mukaisiksi erilaisiksi vaihtoehdoiksi. Hintataso pysyy kohtuullisena, koska massakustomoinnissa käytetään yhtenäisiä lähtökohtia ja komponentteja, joista muodostetaan joko yksilöllisiä tai esimerkiksi eri tuoteperheisiin kuuluvia lopputuotteita. Toimintatapa on modulaarinen: yhteensopivia elementtejä ja ominaisuuksia järjestellään, yhdistetään ja muokataan eli konfiguroidaan erilaisten lopputuotosten aikaansaamiseksi. Lopputuotos voi olla joko fyysinen tuote tai palvelu. Jos tuotteen tai palvelun suunnitteluvaiheessa otetaan huomioon vaihtelumahdollisuudet ja nämä piirteet lisätään tuotemallin vaihtoehtoihin, voidaan myynnissä ja tuotannossa varioida lopputuotetta etukäteen määriteltyjen yhteensopivien vaihtoehtojen mukaan. VariSuite-ohjelmisto tukee massatuotantoon soveltuvia valintoja, sillä ohjelmisto käyttää asiakkaan omaa datamallia kaikissa eri prosessivaiheissa, mikä mahdollistaa kustomoinnin myös massatuotannossa. Liiketoiminta voi näin kehittyä massakustomoinnin suuntaan kannattavasti eikä laajamittaisia järjestelmäuudistuksia tarvita. Käytännön esimerkkejä massakustomoinnista ovat vaatteet, autot, pakettitalot – tai jopa hampurilainen. Joillakin vaateketjuilla on esimerkiksi samasta housumallista kolme eri lahjepituutta. Tässä toki kuluttaja ei pääse itse tekemään valintaa ennen kuin ostovaiheessa. Joissakin verkkokaupoissa voi tilata t-paidan ja valita itse mallin, värin, koon sekä mahdollisen tekstin. Myös uutta autoa ostaessa voi tehdä paljon valintoja. Autoista on saatavilla eri malleja ja autoon sopivat materiaalit ja lisäosat voi itse valita: värin, lisävarusteet, penkkien kangasmateriaalit. Yritysmaailmassa toimistokalusteet ovat hyvä esimerkki konfiguroitavasta tuotteesta. Kalusteet voivat olla perusmateriaaleiltaan ja ominaisuuksiltaan samat, mutta mitat muovautuvat tilojen mukaan ja kankaiden värit tai kangasmateriaalit vaihtuvat noudattaen asiakkaan toivetta. Massakustomoinnin hyötyinä asiakas saa juuri toivomansa lopputuotteen sellaisilla ominaisuuksilla kuin on itse halunnut, joten asiakastyytyväisyys kasvaa. Ei tarvita ikäviä korjaus- tai palautusprosesseja, kun tuote on valmistettu asiakkaan toiveiden mukaan. Massakustomointi on tehokasta ja siinä pyritään välttämään turhia, keskenään päällekkäisiä kuluja. Tästä huolimatta siinä panostetaan kehitykseen, laatuun ja laajojen variointimahdollisuuksien luomiseen. Massakustomointi voi tarjota valmistavalle yritykselle kilpailuedun markkinoilla. Kun se hyödynnetään oikealla tavalla ja viedään oikein yrityksen prosesseihin, se tarjoaa merkittävää asiakashyötyä pitäen kustannukset kuitenkin järkevällä tasolla. Miten massaräätälöit tuotteesi? Ota rohkeasti yhteyttä! Varaa demo         Ota yhteyttä

Prosessien ja informaationhallinnasta on paljon määritelmiä liittyen tuotteiden ja palvelujen valmistukseen. Aina ei ole selvää, mitä alan termistöllä tarkoitetaan, joten avaamme tässä blogissa aihetta hieman. Variantum on tarjoomanhallintaan erikoistunut yhtiö. Tarjoomanhallintaan liittyvät usein käytetyt termit ovat tuotteen elinkaaren hallinta (PLM – Product Lifecycle Management) ja tuotetiedonhallinta (PDM – Product Data Management). Mitä nämä termit tarkoittavat ja mikä niiden ero on? Perinteisesti tuotteen elinkaarenhallinnalla (PLM) tarkoitetaan tuotteen koko elinkaarta: tuotteen suunnittelua, tekniikkaa, valmistusta, myyntiä, käyttöä, kierrätystä ja käytöstä poistamista. Joskus järjestelmät kattavat vain yrityksen sisäisen tiedon tuotteesta ja prosesseista myyntiin saakka ja päättyvät siihen, jolloin jälkimarkkinointi ja ylläpito jäävät paitsioon. Tuotetiedonhallinta puolestaan tarkoittaa tuotteeseen liittyvän informaation käsittelyä. Se on yleensä yrityksen sisäinen järjestelmä, jossa hallitaan tuotteeseen liittyvää teknistä dataa, sen eri versioita sekä materiaaleja suunnitteluun ja valmistukseen liittyen. Nämä materiaalit voivat olla teknisiä piirustuksia tai kuvia, komponentteja tai alihankintatietoja. Tuotteen elinkaari tarkoittaa koko sitä aikaa, jolloin tuotetta voidaan käyttää. Elinkaari alkaa jo esisuunnitteluvaiheessa, kun tuotteen vaatimuksia ja ominaisuuksia suunnitellaan. Suunnitteluvaihe voi koostua useista sykleistä, esimerkiksi uudelleensuunnittelun vaiheista. Kun tuote on viimeistelty, se valmistetaan asiakkaita varten. Jälkeenpäin tuotteelle saatetaan tarvita ylläpitopalveluita tai siitä voidaan tehdä paranneltu versio uusilla toiminnallisuuksilla. Viimeinen vaihe tuotteen elinkaaressa on, kun sitä ei enää voida käyttää, jolloin se joko kierrätetään tai siitä tulee jätettä. PLM-järjestelmät on kehitetty hallinnoimaan tuotteen elinkaaren vaiheita. Tämä ei kuitenkaan aina riitä. Tavalliset PLM-järjestelmät eivät aina maksimoi tuotteeseen liittyvää dataa parhaalla mahdollisella tavalla. Variantumin VariSuite -ohjelmisto tehostaa ja parantaa asiakkaan prosesseja käyttämällä yhteistä tuotemallia eli se laajentaa tarjooman datan elinkaarta kaikissa prosessivaiheissa: myynnissä, suunnittelussa, valmistuksessa ja ylläpidossa. Variantumin näkökulman mukaan perinteinen PLM kannattaa laventaa tuotehallinnasta kohti ’tarjooma palveluna’ -datan hallinnaksi. Tällöin yksilöityä tuotetietoa hyödynnetään siten, että se on kaikkien organisaation eri osien käytettävissä yhtenäisesti. Näin tuotteen jatkokehitys siihen soveltuvine palveluineen tai lisäosineen helpottuu, mikä edesauttaa lisämyyntiä. Tarjoomanhallinnan avulla yritykset voivat siis rikastaa konfiguroitavaa tarjontaansa ylläpitopalveluilla, ekosysteemeillä tai jopa tarjota tuotteitaan palveluna. Näin tarjooman elinkaari laajenee huomattavasti, mikä vaikuttaa myös hinnoittelumalliin. Kun tuotteen elinkaaren hallinta on kehittymässä data-ohjautuvaksi palvelumaailmaksi, asiakkaiden erityistarpeet voidaan täyttää entistä nopeammin. Variantum on auttanut yrityksiä asiakaskeskeisen tarjooman rakentamisessa jo vuodesta 2005. Kokeneet ammattilaisemme ratkaisevat konfiguroitavien tuotteiden tiedonhallinnan haasteita. Tarjoomanhallinta auttaa yrityksiä kilpailuedun saavuttamiseen ja ylläpitämiseen. Se helpottaa yksilöllisesti räätälöityjen ja elinkaarihallittavien kokonaisuuksien rakentamista laadukkaammin ja nopeammin. Autamme asiakkaitamme ratkomaan tiedonhallinnan kehityskohteita konsultointipalveluidemme avulla. Tarjoamme muun muassa CPQ- ja PDM / PLM -kartoituksia sekä soveltuvuustutkimuksia. Kuinka voimme auttaa? Ota rohkeasti yhteyttä! Varaa demo         Ota yhteyttä

It’s very typical that people mix up the meaning of "configure", "configurator" and even "configuration". We can be easily talking about "configure" when we actually mean "configurator" or "configuration" and vice versa. Way too often we are talking too widely when we should stick to "configure", "configuration" or "configuration". Since these ‘boxes’ of terminology are not always clear enough for us, we thought it is good time to refresh the idea behind these terms. What does "configure" mean? One could say “let’s configure this”. The act of configuring specifies an individual product that takes into account customer needs and the possibilities of the product. Configuring can include typing the customer needs to the configurator or any other system like Excel. In a bit more contextual world “Configure” is the way to work and process that helps us to handle unique needs of our products and services. The output from this process is the specification of a needed solution. What does "configurator" mean then? A configurator is an information system that on one hand models product parameters and rules of a configurable product, service or solution in a configuration model. On the other hand, it helps user to configure products, services and solutions. "Configurator" might mean a complete tool with a configuration model, user interface etc. and it also could be just the “configurator engine” that is meant to manage numerous configurable products of different companies. And what does "configuration" mean? A configuration is version of a configured product or solution. Configurations can be on different level of detail. For example, a sales configuration is more abstract and compact than a detailed as-delivered configuration. Once a product is delivered, its configuration becomes part of the installed base. To support service operations, it is important to maintain installed base configurations up to date through configuration management and change management.     In Variantum’s VariSuite there are four main Configuration areas: VariSales, VariProd, VariPDM and VariTrace   VariSales – Sales Configuration When we are talking with the Customer about their new need and the corresponding setup of our offering, we’re creating the sales configuration for our offer. VariSales uses current product data, structures, configuration rules, and prices. This makes it sure that no matter what combination of available products and options is sold, we’re able to deliver it. With VariSales we can also visualize offered customer solution with real time 3D model for better understanding of the offered product and to improve the customer experience. VariPDM – the Product Data Management which handles for example Engineering Configuration Within VariPDM we are handling product information during design. Part of the design is typically fixed and part of it is configurable and necessary development process steps, rules, restriction, and relationships are managed with VariPDM. This helps us for manufacturing and/or delivering the configured solutions. Engineering configuration makes sure that we are not skipping those possible needs that require manual human touch during the production phase since not everything is possible to automate by robots and for example some soft adjustments might require human engineering during the production phase. VariProd – Production Configuration At this phase we are producing the manufacturing structure based on order parameters together with deep knowledge coming from Product Data Management configuration and making sure our ERP knows all the needed materials and our factories knows when we should produce and what exactly to whom. VariTrace – Maintenance or Service Configuration This is one of the key steps especially in future – we need to know what we have sold, to whom and when, and of course, if there has being any maintenance yet for the delivered product or service. We need to keep up how the entity of “offering” is being changed during its lifecycle. Why it’s important? We need to know when Customer needs the repair or maintenance, when they could get newer and better version of the product and so on. Needs for tracing your sold and produced items are unlimited. VariTrace makes sure your maintenance staff gets the up to date and relevant data of the current product in maintenance the way that is optimal for the users. With IOT capabilities you are able to connect current product data with measured IOT data. VariTrace installed base enables analyzing after sales possibilities for example modernization or service parts or replacements. Interested to know more? Our team will help you out, so please ask for a demo or call us! Get a demo!         Call us

xBOM has been lately raised as “hot topic” in PLM world. Variantum’s VariSuite covers solutions to whole product lifecycle from offering process to delivery and service. As a pioneer of a configurable product management, Variantum includes configurable products into its all VariSuite solutions: VariSales, sales configurator and quote tool for CPQ (Configure-Price-Quote) VariPDM, product data management system VariProd, production configurator and delivery structure generator VariTrace, product individual management known as installed base system In this article, different information structures, known as xBOM, is described to different solution and process areas. Variantum’s system supports all different BOM structures in one database. VariSuite xBOM for configurable products VariSales: Offer BOM: Offer consists rows for offered fixed or configurable products, product groups, discounts, additional installation and delivery services or any other miscellaneous items. Structure can be many levels, but typically 1-level. Sales BOM: When configuring a sales product, product can have 1 to N levels based on options and selections to get a price. Flat level is the simplest which means feature-pricing, rule pricing requires few level and cost pricing requires product structure until fixed parts or modules, which is called structure-pricing on in Variantum slang cost-plus pricing. Configured product is then added to Offer BOM as one row or sub-row. 3D BOM: VariSales includes option for visualization and specially 3D requires own structure for light-weight visualization which follows product pricing. 3D adjusts also for dimensional changes, because Variantum’s configurator technology allows ranges to be used as sellable option. VariPDM: Engineering BOM: Known as eBOM, is structure that defines design structure into PDM. This structure can come from design tools (ECAD or MCAD) but can be manually created as well. If company design rules target to make design as they are manufacture this can be call also as manufacturing BOM (mBOM), but in Variantum’s world, this is only BOM’s for fixed components or products.Configuration BOM: known as maxi-BOM, product-family-BOM or Super-BOM, is BOM for configurable product. This BOM includes all designed options in different positions with parameters, rules, assignments, and refinements. This determines product’s configurability and including modules, components, or items with all the configuration rules. Maxi CAD BOM: CAD can include configurations BOM and addition to Configuration BOM, CAD can include rules for geometry or feature manipulation. Configurator BOM does not typically include geometry features, but CAD BOM can include rules e.g. for positioning screw into hole when dimensions change. Maxi CAD BOM can be driven manually or automatically after product configurator. VariProd: Individual Manufacturing BOM: After production configuration, delivered product is generated to individual which has own structure. All changeable items will get own id and structure. Fixed items are included into structure, but these are only links or relationships to existing production revision. Some selections may be run during configuration, e.g. configured module weight might be selection rule for frame. CAD BOM: Based on production configuration, CAD can select only needed assemblies and parts and run own geometry configuration which creates manufacturing documents and files and attach these to Individual mBOM to be used in production. Delivery BOM: After production configuration, additional rules can be added for example to break individual structure to new structure. These might be needed, when product is manufactured in different plants, or logistic might require own structures for product delivery. Installation BOM: Installation structure can be generated based on these rules as well, but it might require own configuration setup. Implementations tasks can be configured as own structure based on individual BOM. VariTrace: Service BOM: Individual manufacturing BOM supports manufacturing, but service BOM re-structures that BOM as a service BOM. This means individual product structure to be built like service sees it. Service has typically own hierarchical categories for product levels or module/component visibility. Service BOM is updated, whenever product is been serviced with changes. Spare-part BOM: Spare-part BOM is BOM where only spare-parts are listed. Typically, there are similar spare-parts around product structure, and it is important to see where it can be connected to. Spare-parts can be component level, but also whole module can be spare-part replaceable. Every spare-part installation, product individual structure must be updated to know products history.Spare-parts might be changed during product in use, this means that updating and changing spare-part information must be easy. About Variantum Variantum is a pioneer of configurable product data management since 2005. We help companies to be more customer centric by enabling wider and effective product offering in sales with CPQ (Configure-Price-Quote), shortening time-to-market in R&D, simplifying order entry to manufacturing and enabling product individual data management for service and after-sales. Our advisory team will guide you to be successful with your product and process development over the organizations. “Variantum’s comprehensive approach ensures that a company’s configurable product definitions are understood, compatible, and available to sales, engineering, production, and throughout the maintenance lifecycle" —Peter Bilello, President & Chief Executive Officer, CIMdata, Inc. Written by Teemu Kaattari Head of Presales & Partners Interested to know more? Our team will help you out, so please ask for a demo or call us! Get a demo!         Call us

Nowadays, there are many definitions related to managing the processes and information regarding producing products and services. Often it is not entirely clear what is meant with this terminology. The most common terms related to Variantum’s focus area Offering Management are Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and Product Data Management (PDM). What do these words mean and what is the difference between them? Traditionally PLM means managing the whole product lifecycle: designing, engineering, manufacturing, sales, usage, recycling and disposal. Sometimes the company systems cover only the internal information about the product and processes until sales and end up forgetting the possibilities of after sales and maintenance. On the other hand, PDM means handling product data. It is usually an internal system to manage technical product data, different versions, as well as materials related to designing and production. These materials can be technical images, component or subcontractor information. Product lifecycle means the entire time that the product can be used. The lifecycle already begins at the pre-design phase when the requirements and features are mapped. The design phase may consist of several cycles i.e., redesign stages. Once the product is finalized it will be manufactured to customers. Afterwards, the product may need maintenance services, or it may be upgraded with a new functionality. The last phase of the lifecycle is when product can no longer be used, and it will turn into waste or is recycled. PLM systems have been developed to manage the product lifecycle. However, this is not always enough. Even with ordinary PLM systems the product data is not utilized in the most optimal way. Variantum’s software enhances customer processes by utilizing a common offering model to enrich and extend the lifecycle of the offering data in all process phases: sales, engineering, production, maintenance. In our way of thinking the traditional PLM is expanded from product management towards offering-as-a-service data management. This means that companies can enrich their configurable offering with maintenance services, ecosystems and even update it to as a service -model. In other words, the lifecycle of the offering expands significantly, and this may also affect the pricing model. As the product lifecycle management is evolving to data-driven service-world, the specified customer needs can be met faster than before. Interested to know more? Our team will help you out, so please ask for a demo or call us! Get a demo!         Call us

This article was originally published in Valokynä, a quarterly publication for Finnish CAE & PLM professionals. You can now read the full story in English as well. Effective management of mass-customizable, i.e. configurable products, provides manufacturing companies with a significant competitive advantage, unnoticed by many. The reasons vary. Despite long-term, thorough research on configuration technology, there are few success stories. Early projects have mainly focused on modeling the products through programming. These configuration models have been unclear, too large and difficult to maintain, eventually leading to dropping the entire project. This article depicts Variantum’s solutions for data management of configurable products in business. Data management of configurable products is often scattered in various different systems. The reasons vary. Product Data Management systems are initially designed for product development and manufacturing in serial production. Sales pursue to make offers through a Customer Relationship Management system by using a tailored sales configurator, instead of using information gathered from the design of the product. Production relies on the data from Enterprise Resource Planning, as well as the production configurator. Maintenance uses additional systems for managing spare parts and jobs, configuring offers that consist of services and supply-specific spare parts. As a result, companies have several systems with overlapping information. They are unsynchronized, making configuration rules management of product models or product families complicated and inflexible. It seems that Master Data Management has gone unnoticed. Clarity eases maintenance Customized or locally developed configurators in sales and production are often expensive to maintain. Since the solutions are developed inside the company, only designated employees or collaborators can tweak them. This is in part due to the scarcity of commercial products on the market that enable versatile configuration. The maintenance of configuration models is a challenging process for companies. The most qualified employees are typically busy with the development of new products, leaving the maintenance of old configuration models fall by the wayside. The biggest stumbling block for released configurator projects has been the maintainability of the models. The initially programmed product family structure corresponds to the product at first, but since it can only be updated by the original programmer, it starts falling behind as the product develops. As a result, the configurator quickly becomes unusable. In the worst-case scenario, this already happens as the configurator is being built. Hence, understanding the clarity and intelligibility of configuration models is crucial. Common data model Since the foundation of the company 15 years ago, Variantum has developed a PDM-based system, which companies can use to manage configurative product families transparently, between product development, sales, manufacturing and maintenance, by using a shared data model. The ability to manage configuration rules with plain language makes maintenance easier. This enhances the operation between product development, sales and production, making development processes easier, shortening production lead times, reducing errors and keeping the product models synchronized in sales and production. Variantum product VariSuite includes all these capabilities: CPQ for complex pricing, quoting and visualization PDM for complex configurable products Automate order-specific BOM and document configuration Trace, maintain and analyse configuration data of installed base Though the Variantum product family uses a shared database, the modules can be acquired separately. This way companies can enhance the processes and expand their system step-by-step, starting from sales or production, for example. Even if a company already uses a PDM-system, the items and product model maintenance can be integrated between the PDM and the product model management database. This process is called Configuration Model Management, bi-modal PDM. Product configuration As the product development generates new items, the designer can choose and add product-specific parameters, dialing rules and limitations simultaneously with computer-aided design, for example. The product configuration rules are easy to learn without prior programming experience. This helps defining the technical abilities and preconditions for the product, as well as securing its productibility. Furthermore, getting rid of all the unnecessary building of project models following the design saves costs and production lead time. The product and configuration rule changes are quickly executable as well, resulting in a low cost-of-change. The same configuration parameter can be used for several products and product revisions by making use of product- and revision-specific limitations and rules. Hence, all the product and configuration changes are under control, regardless of the version or any process of change. Sales Configurator Sales require a fast output of offers, a visualization of the product and a process from order to production. In order to acquire these, the sales need to define frameworks for offering and pricing. These frameworks define how products and product families are desirably marketed in different market areas, how they are priced and what kind of offer and order documents are to be produced. In practice, this provides the sales with an ability to add rules to the product model, define product features or manage the layout of offer documents. The sales configurator is typically integrated in the company’s CRM. When the customer orders a product, the offer is labeled ‘in order’ and automatically exported to the ERP system by the production configurator. The user-friendly sales configurator then ensures that all the products can be technically produced before making it to the sales. After each action, the AI analyzes all the remaining options and the user interface displays the unsuitable ones in grey. The interface works in mobile devices and offline web browsers as well. Production configurator As the production configuration is carried out after the order, it generates a product unit with a serial number, a bill of materials and selected components. This product is then transferred to Material Requirements Planning system. If the product includes CAD standards, a CAD configurator is run to assign geometric customizations to production drawings and circuit board diagrams. The result of product configuration functions as gross data for the maintenance unit database, which includes a list of components of every product at the moment of manufacture. It also contains the parameters included in order and production, the components that were configured with new, order-specific items, as well as the revision that first included these items in the bill of materials. The tracking of customizable, CAD-configured products is notably straightforward. Otherwise, the products would be difficult to find, let alone figure out the original purpose for a component and how the order differs from others. The configuration also informs maintenance and other post-sales services with structure, spare parts and modifications to be carried out during the life-cycle of a product. The product units can be integrated with potential Internet of Things applications as well. This process from sales to delivery and maintenance is called a Digital Thread. It is a digital connection through the life-cycle of the product, keeping its master data intact. The resulting product unit is called a Digital Twin. As its name suggests, Digital Twin is a digital copy of a real-life device or system that includes the information of a delivered product at the time of delivery and during maintenance. Connected to an IoT-system, Digital Twin provides the system with information of the exact product unit. Parameter management In order to have functional configuration processes and parameters under control, a company has to manage their configuration parameters like any product data: how to combine technical, sales and service parameters and manage their development, alteration and correlation. This requires developed processes and permissions in order to prevent overlapping parameters. For this, a company needs organizers to determine the need for new parameters and define instructions for their operation. Otherwise there remains a high risk for multiple parameters with shared values, making them impossible for the company to manage. Dynamic modeling Variantum solutions come with a dynamic modeling system, making data model alterations easy to execute dynamically. Companies can maintain and modify their systems themselves. Product models and rules are based on information in a database, maintained by designers, product managers and sales product executives. It requires no programming skills.   Written by Teemu Kaattari Head of Products, Variantum Interested to know more? Our team will help you out, so please ask for a demo or call us! Get a demo!         Call us

When producing goods and services, there are many phases: engineering, sales, manufacturing and after-sales or maintenance. Companies need different systems for different process phases to be able to create, edit, find and collect data to produce the end-result. It may well happen that the people responsible for these different process phases are looking for information from different data sources. This may cause slowness or errors in production, double work in every phase, delays in sales, bad customer experience in customer service – the list is endless. Scattered data causes delays Especially in manufacturing companies the need for various systems is enormous. As the goods to be produced consist of many parts and components, and the number of product variations can be large, it is very important that the systems are well integrated, and data can be found easily and used systematically - and that it’s up to date and you can rely on it. The systems a company may have for these processes can be enterprise resource planning (ERP), various design tools e.g. computer-aided design (CAD), customer relationship management (CRM), configure-price-quote (CPQ), product data management (PDM) or document management (DM) systems to name a few. Very often the information is gathered separately from these systems by each part of the organization which makes everybody’s work slow and inefficient, as e.g. the sales department could be using product information differently from production. A common data source enables efficiency However, there are systems with which all product & offering related data and information can be integrated from every phase to a common data source. These systems help to organize the relevant data into a unified form so that it can be used in the same format via a common source by different parts of the organization. Therefore, all organizations and teams can utilize the shared and common data source for their exact needs: e.g. sales will see correct information in sellable way and maintenance will know exactly what was shipped to the customer even if the product model has changed multiple times ever since! Utilizing a common data source will impact all process phases making them faster and more efficient. This way all departments and members of the organization can utilize the same data and knowledge. All processes from design-to-order (DTO), engineer to order (ETO), configure-to-order (CTO) are more easily managed and the whole go-to-market process will get quicker. As all knowledge, models and designs are based on the same source and utilized in a commonly agreed way, the quality of the end products and services will be better and delivery times will speed up. In the end the customer satisfaction will increase which usually has a positive impact on turnover, market share and business development. VariSuite-software by Variantum is an Offering Management system that combines product development, configure-price-quote, order-to-manufacture and installed base processes and functionalities. With VariSuite you enhance processes and can achieve results quickly regardless of your product or industry. Interested to know more? Our team will help you out, so please ask for a demo or call us! Get a demo!         Call us

Listasimme tyypillisiä kysymyksiä myyntijohdolle: Mitä kaikkea myytte? Miten hinnoittelu vastaa kateodotuksiinne? Onko myyminen riittävän helppoa? Onko uuden myyjän sisäänajo nopeaa ja vaivatonta? Onko tieto myyjien ja asiantuntijoiden pään sisällä vai ohjaako järjestelmä valintoja helposti? Pystytäänkö myyty tuote ylipäänsä valmistamaan? Tarvitsetteko massaräätälöintivalmiutta? Teettekö tuotteita erikoiskohteisiin? Onko myynti odottelua ja ihmettelyä? Vastataanko asiakkaiden tarjouspyyntöihin riittävän nopeasti? Voiko tarjouspyynnön tehdä verkkosivulla? Haluatteko siirtää osan tehtävistä asiakkaalle itsepalveluksi? Voitteko generoida tarjouksen ja sopimuksen liitteineen automaattisesti? Voitko vahvistaa toimitusajan tilauksen yhteydessä? Voitteko johtaa tilannekuvaa oikealla datalla, vai ajatteko liiketoimintaa mutulla? Onko varaosa- ja lisämyynti uhka vai mahdollisuus? Tiedättekö mitä kullekin asiakkaalle on toimitettu? Kuinka voimme auttaa? Ota rohkeasti yhteyttä! Varaa demo         Ota yhteyttä

Toimiiko yrityksesi myynti täydellä teholla? Haluaisitko pystyä vastaamaan asiakkaittesi tarpeisiin ketterämmin? Digitaalisuuden myötä asiakkaat ovat tottuneet saamaan tuotteensa entistä nopeammin. Tämän vuoksi myyntityö on nykyään erittäin kiireistä. Myyjien pitäisi saada asiakkaidensa toiveet kirjatuksi ja toteutetuksi vikkelästi, ja tarjouksien tekemisen pitäisi olla hyvin nopeaa. Perinteisillä työkaluilla se ei välttämättä onnistu – varsinkin jos kysymyksessä on moniosainen, konfiguroitava tuote. Myyntiprosessin automatisointi auttaa toteuttamaan enemmän tarjouksia olemassa olevalla tiimillä. Jos myyjällä on käytössään ripeän työskentelyn mahdollistavat työkalut, näkyy se työaikasäästönä, kun tarjouksia saa tehtyä enemmän samassa ajassa. Tarkoitukseen sopiva ohjelmisto voi myös vähentää virheiden mahdollisuutta, joten asiakas saa sisällöltään juuri oikeanlaisen tarjouksen, mikä tietysti edesauttaa kaupan toteutumista. Tarjoomanhallintaan tarkoitetun ohjelmiston avulla on helppoa saada myyntiprosessia nopeammaksi ja tehokkaammaksi. Kun tarjousohjelmistoon on etukäteen määritelty yhteensopivat osat, myyjä voi jo asiakastapaamisessa valita asiakkaansa kanssa, minkälainen tuotekokonaisuus kyseiseen tarjoukseen halutaan. Ohjelmisto ohjaa valintoja ja ilmoittaa, mikäli jokin osa ei sovi yhteen toisen kanssa. Kun kaikki tarvittavat ominaisuudet on valittu, ohjelmisto laskee hinnan ja tuottaa tarjousdokumentin. Monet yritykset työskentelevät vielä laskentataulukoiden avulla konfiguroidessaan tarjouksia, mikä usein johtaa virheisiin myöhemmissä prosessivaiheissa. Tarjoomanhallinta tukee tuoteportfolion eri vaihtoehtoja hintamalleineen. Joillekin yrityksille perusvaihtoehdot ja ominaisuusperusteinen hinnoittelu riittävät, mutta osa yrityksistä tarvitsee kehittyneempää, sääntöihin tai kustannuksiin perustuvaa hinnoittelua, joka muodostuu tuoterakenteen mukaisesti. Joskus myynnissä on haasteena kääntää tarjoukset tilauksiksi sekä tilauksien toteuttaminen tuotannossa. Tyypillisesti yrityksissä vaikeuksia tässä aiheuttaa se, että myyntimalli ja tuotantomalli eivät tue toisiaan, jolloin myynti myy tuotteita, joita tuotanto ei pystykään valmistamaan. Tämä johtaa virheisiin tuotannossa sekä hävikkiin ja sekaannukseen tuotteen toimituksessa. Pahimmassa tapauksessa asiakas saa tuotteen, joka ei vastaa tilausta. Tuotemallidatan pitäisi siis olla käytettävissä prosessin jokaisessa vaiheessa samanlaisena. Kun yrityksellä on ajantasainen tuotetieto käytettävissään, on helppoa tehdä juuri tietylle tuoteyksilölle sopivaa lisämyyntiä osien vaihdon, lisäosien, ominaisuuksien päivittämisen, toiminnallisuuksien lisäämisen tai ohjelmistopäivityksen muodossa. Hinnoittelun ei enää tarvitse perustua kertakustannukseen, vaan se voi vaihdella asiakkaan käyttötarpeen mukaan. Tarjoomanhallintaohjelmiston avulla dataa voidaan myös jakaa jälleenmyyjäverkostolle tai muille yhteistyökumppaneille. Yksilöidyn, ajantasaisen tuotedatan omistaja hallitsee kuitenkin varsinaista liiketoimintaa tietäen tarkkaan käytössä olevan tuotteen tai palvelun ominaisuudet. Datanhallintaan perustuva liiketoiminta muuttaa tuotteen hinnoittelua sekä myynnissä että jälkimarkkinoinnin osalta. Kertainvestointi muuttuu jatkuvaksi kassavirraksi eikä huollettavia osia tai lisäpalveluja enää osteta erikseen, vaan ne sisältyvät esimerkiksi kuukausimaksuun. Dataan perustuva tarjoomanhallinta antaa siis yrityksille enemmän mahdollisuuksia erilaisten liiketoiminta-, hinnoittelu- ja myyntimallien luomiseen. Sen avulla voi kehittää myyntitoimintoa ja myydä enemmän kohtuullisilla kustannuksilla sekä saada aikaan enemmän tarjouksia samassa ajassa. Kuinka voimme auttaa? Ota rohkeasti yhteyttä! Varaa demo         Ota yhteyttä

Suomalainen Variantum tunnetaan joustavasta tuotetiedonhallinnasta (PDM) sekä monipuolisesta konfigurointikyvykkyydestä. Uusin tuotteemme VariPDM Basic on suunnattu yrityksille, jotka haluavat saada tuotetiedonhallinnansa kuntoon helposti, eli kuvattua tuotteensa nimikkeillä, tuoterakenteilla, dokumenteilla ja monipuolisilla tuotesäännöillä halliten samalla versioinnin, hyväksynnät ja käyttöoikeudet. Tuotetietoa voidaan jakaa myös yrityksen ulkopuolelle joustavasti, käyttöoikeudet voidaan antaa käyttäjille rooli- ja ryhmäkohtaisesti tai vaikka vain nimike- tai dokumenttikohtaisesti. Hyödyt Suurimmat hyödyt tulevat siitä, että yrityksen tuotedata on yhdessä paikassa ja että se on helposti löydettävissä. Tämä lisää läpinäkyvyyttä ja luottamusta omaan tuotedataan sekä tietysti vähentää virheitä. Tuotteiden suunnittelijat voivat itse rakentaa ja testata tuotemallin samalla, kun he tekevät suunnittelua, eikä erillistä konfiguraattoria tarvita – tämä vähentää virheitä ja nopeuttaa tuotteen tuomista markkinoille (time-to-market). VariPDM:n avulla tuotanto voi varmistaa että oikea tuotetieto on myös alihankkijoilla käytettävissä. VariPDM Basic tukee standardi-integraatioilla MS Office -työkaluja tehostaen dokumenttien käyttöä tuotteelle sekä useimpia CAD-ratkaisuja, jolloin voidaan varmistaa, että nimikkeen perustiedot ovat ajantasalla ja että dokumentit ovat kaikille saatavilla. Nimikkeet ja nimikerakenteet voidaan siirtää helposti toiminnanohjausjärjestelmään, jolloin nimiketiedot ovat kunnossa ja asiakaskohtaiset tuoteyksilöt ovat löydettävissä. Käyttöönotto Järjestelmän käyttöönotossa asennuksen pilveen teemme me, lopun pystytte itse hoitamaan, sillä VariPDM Basic -järjestelmän tietomallin asetukset on tehty helpoksi ja ne muokataan datalla. Samoin tuotteen mallinnus ja käyttöliittymän asetukset asiakas pystyy tekemään täysin itsenäisesti. Autamme teidät alkuun ja tarvittaessa enemmänkin, mutta jos tunnet yrityksesi toimintatavat ja prosessit, selviät VariPDM Basicin käyttöönotosta jopa itsenäisesti! Referenssit VariPDM on laajasti käytössä alansa johtavissa yrityksissä, mm. yritykset KONE, Abloy, Chiller, Stera ja Elematic käyttävät ratkaisujamme. Laajennettavuus VariPDM Basic on laajennettavissa koko yrityksen käyttöön, kun halutaan laajentaa tiedonhallinta myös muutoshallintaan (change management), sekä myyntiin nopeuttamaan tarjousten tekoa (CPQ - Configure Price Quote), että tuotantoon (ERP/MRP) nopeuttamaan asiakaskohtaisten tilausten siirtoa automaattisesti tai tuoteyksilöiden seurantaan tukien huollon ja jälkimarkkinoinnin (after-sales) tarvetta tuoteyksilöille (VariTrace). Lue VariPDM Basic koko tuotekuvaus täältä (englanniksi) Tunnisteet: tuotantokonfiguraattori, konfiguraattori, tuotetiedonhallinta, konfiguroitava tuote, säännöt, tuotemalli, dokumentit, nimikkeen hallinta, tuoterakenteen hallinta, dokumentinhallinta, tiedonhallinta, PDM, PLM, varianttien hallinta, tuotevariantit, tuotevarianttien hallinta, CAD-integraatiot Kuinka voimme auttaa? Ota rohkeasti yhteyttä! Varaa demo         Ota yhteyttä

Our dear partner Share PLM – the team humanizing PLM – wrote an excellent article about 13 Common PLM Implementation Problems And How to Avoid Them and we can easily agree with these main points from the story and suggest everybody interested about PLM/PDM world to read it! We want to highlight especially these important ones from the story, and we would like to add few more comments from our side: "#2 – The system is seen as ugly, too slow, and expensive." For instance: does your PLM solution support product model needs? The most effective way is to let engineers create the product model with the design simultaneously! This will save Time-to-Market and increase product quality and consistency.If PLM needs to be extended to also support sales (Configure-Price-Quote, CPQ) or service lifecycle management (SLM) or digital thread how can management take these into consideration of future needs? "#4 - There's a war going on between your systems." Where do you create and manage the original data? How could the same data support or be used from other systems and managed centrally from one source of truth? The most important is to have great integration capabilities since the data is still the nowadays competitive advantage. "#11 - There's little excitement about data." We could not agree more with the statement: “Product data is power – but only if the data is correctly collected, processed, and managed.” and this requires a lot of human effort and policies to keep it in a good shape! How can you imagine sharing the data with suppliers or with the service organization if the data is not fulfilled and up to date? "#12 - It's time for the dreaded system upgrade." To reach the low cost of ownership (LCO) you must select a system where additional customizations does not ruin the core application and its upgradability. Otherwise, you will create a such a mammoth that version upgrades are either huge projects or even impossible costly-wise. One important think is that Companies could create and manage simple development by themselves without expensive 3rd party consultancy.   We highly suggest you read the whole blog-post from here: https://shareplm.com/13-common-plm-implementation-problems-and-how-to-avoid-them/ Interested to know more? Our team will help you out, so please ask for a demo or call us! Get a demo!         Call us

Viime aikoina esillä on ollut tiedonhallinta ja datan pirstoutuminen digihälyksi ja digiähkyksi. Helsingin Sanomat kirjoitti hiljattain erinomaisen jutun, miten kommunikaatio ja tiedonjako on pirstaloitunut yrityksien sisällä äärimmäisen moneen kanavaan epäjärjestelmällisesti. Asiaan vihkiytyneet konsultit ovat havainneet, että työntekijä käyttää helposti 30-40 eri työkalua tai viestintätapaa hoitaakseen tehtäviään. Jopa tieto-osaajat, joille uusien järjestelmien käyttö ei yleensä ole ongelma, painivat eri järjestelmien välillä tuskastuneena. ”Koronan aikaan monet työkalut on repäisty kuin seinästä.” - Helsingin Sanomat 13.9. Yhtenä ongelmana pidetään huonosti harkittuja ja sinänsä liian helposti käyttöönotettuja ”vakio-ominaisuus”-pilvipalveluja, joiden käyttötarkoitusta ei kuitenkaan ole harkittu tai mietitty siitä näkökulmasta, miten ne istuvat yrityksen kokonaisviestinnän hallintaan. Heikko tiedonhallinta syö työaikaa Olen törmännyt moneen yritykseen, joissa varsinkin tuotetieto on pirstaloitunut eri järjestelmien välille: tiedon integrointi puuttuu, jonka vuoksi käyttöön on otettu erilaisia omia järjestelmiä tai verkkolevyjä, joilla paikataan aukkoja. Usein asiakkaiden huulilla ovat samat ongelmat: on aikaa vievää ja turhauttavaa etsiä monesta paikasta, ja kun tietoa löytää, niin voiko siihen luottaa? Millä varmistan, että tuotetieto on joka paikassa oikein ja ajan tasalla? Voinko käyttää löytämääni dataa ilman, että työpäivä muodostuisi yhdeksi kaaokseksi? Luo ja löydä helposti – lisää tehoa ja vähennä virheitä Yritämme tuoda esille asiakkaillemme, että tuotetieto on tärkeää hallita yli organisaatioiden. Tuote, joka muuntuu asiakaskohtaisesti eli on konfiguroitava, vaatii erityisesti eri organisaatioiden yhteispeliä, koska muuntuvat tarpeet tulevat asiakaskunnasta. Tällöin tietoa pitää hallita ja tallentaa yhtenäisesti kaikissa eri prosessivaiheissa: tarvekartoitus, tuotekehitys ja -muutokset, tarjouksien sisältö, valmistus ja toimitus. Samalla pitäisi huolehtia siitä, että tieto on ajantasaisesti käytettävissä kaikissa tuotteen elinkaaren vaiheissa ja että se tukee yrityksen muita järjestelmiä. Oikealla tavalla järjestettynä tuotetieto: vähentää erillistä kommunikaatiota eri organisaatioiden välillä, helpottaa ja säästää työntekijän päivittäistä työtä, pitää tuotteet, tuotesäännöt ja hinnoittelun kunnossa, automatisoi turhat manuaaliset työvaiheet ja vähentää virheitä, ja pystytään jakamaan hallitusti yli organisaatioiden. Yhdellä tiedonhallintajärjestelmällä voi korvata monia pienempiä aputyökaluja ja viestintäkanavia – ja näin ollen vähentää digiähkyä. Teemu Kaattari, Head of Products, Variantum Kuinka voimme auttaa? Ota rohkeasti yhteyttä! Varaa demo         Ota yhteyttä

VariSuite helps boosting your offering management: it is unique system to manage configurable products effectively in Sales, Engineering, Production and Maintenance using a common product language. Variantum has released a new solution: VariSuite Offering Management system. VariSuite is an exceptional system that combines product development (PDM), configure-price-quote (CPQ), order-to-manufacture automation (production configurator) and installed base processes and functionalities (digital twin/digital thread). It is developed to support configurable products whether they are simple or complex. VariSuite is a modular system: modules work independently or together in a single database and share a common framework and API. With VariSuite your company can: manage a product model already during design; create more offers with existing resources; automate orders to production fast and error-free; reuse individual product information in service and after-sales; and control product information and processes across your own organization and partners. VariSuite adapts to the needs of any business with dynamic data and product model which supports maintainability. The beauty with VariSuite is that you can achieve results quickly regardless of your product or industry! Learn more about VariSuite! Interested to know more? Our team will help you out, so please ask for a demo or call us! Get a demo!         Call us

Yritykset hyötyvät helppokäyttöisistä ja nykyaikaisista tietojärjestelmistä ja dataan pohjautuvasta johtamisesta. Huolta on kuitenkin viime aikoina tuottanut tietojärjestelmien käyttämiseen kuluva aika, joka on aina pois itse tehtävästä työstä ja asiakkaaseen käytettävästä ajasta. Erityisesti haasteita syntyy, jos samalla yrityksellä on lukuisia tietojärjestelmiä käytössä ja pahimmassa tapauksessa työntekijä joutuu päivittämään kaikkiin järjestelmiin samat tiedot erikseen. Digitalisaatio on helpottanut monien yritysten johtamista, sillä päätökset voidaan tehdä reaaliaikaiseen ja luotettavaan tietoon perustuen, mikä pienentää riskejä ja säästää työaikaa. Yrityksen johdolla on oltava kuitenkin selkeä visio, miten  IT-strategiaa kannattaa suunnitella – mikä on oikeasti tarpeellista? IT-strategialla tarkoitetaan tietojärjestelmiin liittyviä päätöksiä, esimerkiksi sitä miten yritys valitsee käytettävät järjestelmät ja mihin liiketoiminnalliseen tarpeeseen. Liian monien järjestelmien päivittäminen voi olla turhauttavaa ja viedä fokuksen pois oleellisesta eli itse työstä. Tärkeää onkin päättää, mitkä järjestelmät ovat oleellisia ja miten ne integroidaan toisiinsa, jolloin tieto on kaikkien järjestelmien käytettävissä. Näistä hyvin erilaisista digitalisaation haasteista johtuen VariSuite on suunniteltu toimimaan saumattomasti koko asiakkaalle tuotettavan tuotteen tai palvelun elinkaaren hallinnan läpi. Tuotehallinnan käyttöönottoa varten tarvitaan selkeät strategiset päätökset; mitä järjestelmiä käytetään, miten ne integroidaan toisiinsa ja kaikista tärkeimpänä, miten koulutetaan henkilöstö ymmärtämään tietojärjestelmän käyttötarkoitus ja hyödyntämään niitä työssä. Onnistunut digitalisaatio useimmiten tarkoittaakin, että liian monen järjestelmän sijaan käytetään korkeintaan muutamaa hyvää järjestelmää, jotka on oleellisilta osilta integroitu toimimaan keskenään saumattomasti. VariSuite mahdollistaa myyjille tarpeellisen työkalun, joka toimii saumattomasti esimerkiksi suunnittelijoiden tuottaman tuotemallin mukaisesti ja pitää huolen, että myyjät myyvät vain sellaista tuoteversiota, jonka yritys pystyy toimittamaan. Samaan aikaan VariSuitella pystytään tuottamaan ja ohjaamaan muun muassa tuotantolinjalla työskenteleviä robotteja, eli tuottamaan kullekin taholle tuotteen relevantit tiedot silloin, kun niitä tarvitaan. VariSuitea voi hyödyntää tuotedatan ja -tiedon sekä tarvittavien rakenteiden ja järjestelmien "siltana", jolloin kaikki yrityksen strategian toteuttamiseen tarvittavat järjestelmät saadaan toimimaan yhdessä helposti ja reaaliaikaisesti – ja tehostetaan kaikkien tekemistä! Variantum on auttanut yrityksiä asiakaskeskeisen tarjooman rakentamisessa jo vuodesta 2005. Kokeneet ammattilaisemme osaavat ratkaista konfiguroitavien tuotteiden tiedonhallintaan liittyvät haasteet. Tarjoomanhallinta auttaa yrityksiä kilpailuedun saavuttamiseen ja ylläpitämiseen. Se helpottaa yksilöllisesti räätälöityjen ja elinkaarihallittavien kokonaisuuksien rakentamista laadukkaammin ja nopeammin. VariSuite tarjoomanhallintajärjestelmä toimii yhdistävänä liimana eri prosessien välillä. Se hyödyntää samaa yrityksen tuotemallidataa kaikissa prosesseissa, jolloin myynti, suunnittelu, tuotanto ja ylläpito yhdenmukaistuvat ja tehostuvat. VariSuite tukee liiketoimintaprosesseja saumattomasti; näin täytät asiakkaiden erityistarpeet helpommin ja saavutat tuloksia nopeasti tuotteesta tai toimialasta riippumatta. Kuinka voimme auttaa? Ota rohkeasti yhteyttä! Varaa demo         Ota yhteyttä

At Variantum we quite often see that companies have built a configurator with Excel for their own use. Excel actually might be the biggest CPQ (Configure-Price-Quote) player in the market. Everybody certainly knows Excel, and it is the first tool in our minds when we think about configuration needs. Excel is a perfect tool for calculations, and in the beginning, it seems to solve the configuration challenge. But as time goes by and you need to make development steps with Excel as a CPQ, you will face problems in many areas pretty soon. You will need a lot of development hours to make Excel work like standard CPQ which, in fact, has the features you need as out-of-the-box. Before making a decision to continue with Excel, you should ask yourself the following: When you need to create new products with logical rules, refinements or constrains, Excel doesn’t support this – without coding visual basic. New product and product changes require a system in which you can test your new product versions as well as manage options and parameters for multiple products and their release process. Separate product Excel files do not support common definitions, but for almost all commercial CPQ’s this is a standard. Secondly, Excel doesn’t give an easy-to-use web-interface. You’ll be stuck with Excel tool and its end user experience - even if you could create visual basic to create decent user-interface, it requires a huge development. CPQ’s have web-based user-interface as out-of-the-box standard feature. Thirdly, you need to follow Excels’ logic to process with selection order – there is no possibility to proceed in any other order. Inference engine analyses product option dependencies and guides end users which product options are compatible and enables these selections in user interface in any order. Advanced CPQ’s support this feature. You need a skilled person to create and maintain the Excel configurator. This might be an issue inside the company, as quite often there’s only one person who’s capable of maintaining or developing your product or pricing model with Excel. What if this person leaves the company or something else unfortunate happens? This possesses a huge risk for the company. Who can help you with your customized solution in the case of emergency when huge part of your company volume is tied with a single customized tool? In contrast, commercial CPQ companies will help and support your business. How to resolve conflicts in Excel? It’s really annoying to try to resolve them by yourself. There is no easy way to fix conflicts by the end-user or even key-user. Advanced CPQ’s includes a tool which helps the end user when conflicts occur and guides how to resolve these. Somehow you should be able to secure that people will use the latest released Excel-version. Quite often we see that offers or orders have been created with outdated Excel and with outdated product options, prices or currencies. This will generate turbulence in sales and specially in manufacturing. This could be managed with centralized CPQ which takes care of that latest product rules, options, prices, offer templates and currencies will always be up to date for every user. CPQ means Configure-Price-Quote. Quoting does not mean the offer letter only, but also offer terms and conditions management. There might be several different options and rules that you need to support for your sales team in your market area. CPQ solutions can provide you functionality to support different offer terms and conditions with rules. When you want to create offer letters with better tool than Excel, e.g. with MS Word, you need to develop additional functionality. This increases your customized solution complexity. Instead, you could use CPQ’s basic feature: offer letter creation. Typically, CPQ’s support MS Word or PDF-templates that are easy to map with product parameters, features and price calculation information. Even if Excel has a kind of database structure with tables and indexes in it, it is not really a database. Especially when you have concurrent users who are geographically located in various countries, working with Excel as a database is problematic regarding connectivity and simultaneous updates. In the end, management is interested in offer and order book, sales and sales channel activity and these require a sophisticated database. CPQ’s always work with a database and today there’s a cloud option as well, which will secure availability and performance when needed. Localization is often needed in sales organization. This means that product might have different options for different customers or market. Currency and languages need to be supported as well, which means that user interface, offer letters and currency must be offered for your sales channel. This is not easy to do with Excel, but advanced CPQ’s will support this, even with real time currency converter. Variantum’s CPQ product VariSales supports these features as out-of-the-box, so we already have solved all of the mentioned issues for you. You only need to focus on creating and managing your product and pricing models with defined options and rules. User interface is built automatically with your defined product data. Anyhow, we will help you with your challenges in your CPQ-journey.   Writer Teemu Kaattari works as a Head of Products at Variantum (teemu.kaattari@variantum.com) Interested to know more? Our team will help you out, so please ask for a demo or call us! Get a demo!         Call us

This article describes Variantum’s point of view for different processes to manage customer-driven products from design to sales and to manufacturing based on product volumes and design- and sales strategies. Many manufacturing companies have found benefits of shifting to order-driven production (MTO = Make-to-Order) instead of the inventory-driven output (Make-to-Stock), because it has allowed lower value of inventories. Sometimes to fulfill customer or market needs make-to-stock is needed, for example during campaign, and the combination of both might support the product strategy fully. In general, companies that do not have standard products tend to operate in an entirely order-driven manner. For the Make-to-Order process to be effective, customer needs should already be broadly covered by what the company offers. This is called mass customization, and it allows highly automated product offer-order functions. In mass customization, the features which are the customer needs are pre-designed, and the company designs and manages product families. The higher the volume the more useful automation is for the company as a faster operation in the quotation, ordering and manufacturing phase. Mass customized products are designed with design tools and accompanied by selections, product rules and, for dimensionally variable products, possibly also CAD robotics. Creating a product family and its rules requires resources, but with a production volume of dozens of individuals per year, it is already profitable. The companies have described order-driven production for the needs of different products. If the product’s volume is small, it may be left entirely for design as an Engineer or Design-to-Order process. Higher volume products, on the other hand, are manufactured using the configure-to-order process. In different companies, these processes can be divided into different products or product types, e.g. A, B, C and D processes. For example, the A process is a fully configurable product from quotation to order and manufacturing. In contrast, the D process is customizable according to the customer's needs and requires order-specific design and corresponds to the Design-to-Order process. The Make-to-Order process can be roughly divided into three different approaches: CTO, or Configure-to-Order, means that the product is pre-designed, and sales only sell pre-designed configurable product variants to meet customer needs. CTO is what many companies strive for, as it allows the overall offer-order-delivery process to be optimized and automated. However, this might pose challenges for product development. The product development process (Idea-to-Product) must be organized well. Ideas for product development need to be actively collected from different sources, for example from customers and competitors. Additionally, new available technologies or components have to be taken into account as well. Product development adds product rules that can be utilized in sales and production configuration. Product changes and updates from sales to maintenance are updated automatically. The bottleneck in this process is typically sourcing and/or manufacturing capacity. ETO, or Engineer-to-Order, means that the product is pre-designed as in the CTO process, but small changes are allowed. Small changes mean changes that can be made by the sales or sales support. In this case, the aim is to offer the product flexibly so that price and product changes are possible, and the customer's special needs can be taken into account without changing the basic product. It may be challenging to update the changes to production. DTO, or Design-to-Order, means that a product or part of a product is configured close to the customer's need, but redesign or additional design is needed to meet the customer's need. In this case, the co-operation of sales and product design is required already at the tender stage. The result of the configuration has to be usable so that it is easy to make customer changes to the product with the design tools. These changes can then be saved and utilized into manufacturing. Sometimes the need for a change is so extensive that the product model cannot be utilized, but the product has to be developed almost completely or the order is processed as a project delivery. In DTO, design capacity can be a bottleneck, also updating to production with changed data and ensuring the quality of design can be challenging. After delivery, the technical information of the products should be managed for service and after-sales needs, especially if the company has maintenance or spare parts business. As the product changes and evolves over time, it is a good idea to see revision or component changes to the base product as well as customer-specific changes. Sometimes spare parts or product modules contain customer-specific ordering parameters and require configuration in order to be offered or delivered to a customer-specific product. In this case, we are talking about reconfiguring or configuring the spare part. Variantum supports especially MTO customers because product information management (PDM / PLM), sales configuration (CPQ - Configure-Price-Quote), product configuration for production and product individual management are our key areas of expertise, and we have a flexible software solution for them. Variantum's solutions are used by many well-known Finnish companies. Variantum helps in different areas of the MTO process as well as in consulting. VariSuite manages the offering and MTO processes of different product types in the single database, integrating with the company's existing systems, such as CRM, ERP, maintenance systems (EAM = Enterprise Asset Management) and design tools. Our solution manages the same product information jointly between different systems and organizations: this makes optimizing and automating quotation-order-delivery-maintenance process possible. At VariSuite, product and price modeling is done quickly as modifying product data can be done by your own organization, making rapid changes possible and cost-effective. This article was written by Teemu Kaattari, Head of Products who has been working for better Product-Life-Cycle-Management for over 15 years. If you would like to talk more about the story, do not hesitate to contact Teemu.Kaattari@variantum.com Interested to know more? Our team will help you out, so please ask for a demo or call us! Get a demo!         Call us

Variantum has released new version of VariSuite! R202209 - VariSuite 4.0 Release highlights VariSuite SaaS - VariSuite as cloud based service Sales configurator improvements (VariSales) Offer request configurator Improved repair suggestions in case of conflicts in configuration UX branding support Unified configurator scripting with VariProd Installed base management improvements (VariTrace) Support equipment hierarchies Support serialized components and their spare part changes Improved SBOM (Service BOM) support and equipment specific spare parts manual User interface and usability improvements Standardized interfaces Event based interface (JSON) to integrate to external systems e.g., ERP via message bus SDI - Supplier data interface to distribute product data to external partners, i.e. suppliers Oracle NetSuite interface Need more info or help? Please contact our Support Services! Get to support

Written by Teemu Kaattari, Head of Products Many companies want to increase their revenue with services, cross-selling and upselling. Some companies get even more profit from services than from the sales of new products. To do this, companies must have information about the delivered product individuals for effective service and after-sales. VariSuite handles the configurable product around the company: in R&D, sales, production and service. In service, the focus is to manage reliable and current product individual information as a customer installed base. VariSuite enables product-related lifecycle services VariSuite manages the technical information of a product during the whole product lifetime. This is known also as a digital thread. In practice, this means that once a product is designed, offered and sold, manufactured and delivered, the product individual is linked with all relevant information about the product and the service activities that have been applied to it. Service and after-sales teams can maintain and update product individual information during its lifetime. Fewer service visits Up-to-date information about product individuals means fewer maintenance and service visits. Without this information, one often needs an extra visit to analyze the physical product to determine the proper components and equipment for the actual repair visit. Potential for cross-selling and upselling When new options, accessories or spare parts become available, information about the delivered product individuals allows service and after sales to offer new features to existing customers. Simplified user interface Service personnel requires different product information than engineers or production. A simplified web user interface for the service shows only the necessary information, such as product serial numbers, spare parts, documentation, customer and location information, field letters, and service history. More detailed design information, if needed, can be retrieved from the same system. More analysis possibilities If a component has failed in a product individual and you have traced the failure to a systematic design or production error, you can perform a “where used” query in the installed base to find other product individuals with the same component. If the component is configurable, you may want to know which product individuals contain this component with identical or similar parameter values. There are also other analyzing needs, e.g. what options are most popular in different market areas or volumes of different products and modules over time. These analyses can be run also via Analytics API. Easy to integrate to other service tools Even with technical product information in the VariSuite installed base, companies need other systems to run service tasks or ticketing. VariSuite JSON Rest API helps companies to create integrations to other systems to share and update technical data for individual products.   Case Chiller: An End-to-End Solution ”The Variantum system is the business critical core of Chiller’s product life cycle management, creating a digital thread of information between product development, sales, production and maintenance.” You can read more about the case here: case Chiller Chiller Oy designs and manufactures advanced-technology solutions for heating, cooling, and energy applications. Chiller systems are widely used in both new buildings and renovation projects that present strict requirements for indoor air quality and technical solutions in terms of sound levels, energy consumption and maintenance.

Written by Teemu Kaattari, Head of Products To manage configurable products in an optimal way in engineering and production, you must connect Product Data Management (PDM) with product model development and a configurator. These needs can be solved with one solution: VariSuite – an offering management system. Let engineer manage product rules effectively during design The fastest way to develop configurable products is to give engineers a system that allows them to create, manage, and test product models in parallel with the new design. A technical product model often creates order-based items and product structures for production. VariSuite is a system for managing product model complexity with items and product structures, which can include design documents and change or revision control. Use the product model also in sales The technical product model is used as basis for the sales model; you can use the rules from the product model and add pricing rules to the sales model. This way both sales and production have a consistent picture of the product in the whole organization. PDM with product model and configurator increases data quality Like most PDM solutions, VariSuite has all the standard capabilities: item and product structure management with a product configurator, document management, change and classification management, search and reporting. With VariSuite, engineers can create and test a product model with parameters and configuration rules already in the design phase. This will shorten the product lead-time and improve quality as it is no longer necessary to make a separate configurator after design work. If I have PDM already, but not configurator? If company already has a PDM system for standard items, VariSuite provides product models and an integrated configurator that can be used with the existing system. (This is called bi-modal usage.) VariSuite also offers standard PDM functionality for engineering areas that are not supported by your current PDM. Support your production with configurator Once the engineers have created product models, the product configurator generates order-based product configurations with order parameters and creates new items with order-based identifiers and structures for production. The related design data and manufacturing documentation can be connected to new items. If necessary, the production configurator can be run automatically as part of order processing. Order-based items and structures can be saved as product individuals in the VariSuite database to gather information for service or maintenance. Data for product individuals is shown in a simplified way from service perspective. Integrate VariSuite seamlessly VariSuite can be integrated to any system with an API, for example, to ERP with standard item and BOMs as well as order-based items and BOMs. VariSuite has integrations to MS Office, allowing users to create documents directly from MS Office tools, and to most CAD systems to integrate CAD models, items, structures, and drawings in different formats. Product model can be integrated to some CAD systems to generate new geometry and order-based drawings and file formats for production. Common parameters and product modularity Product models can refer to a set of configuration parameters, which are recorded in the VariSuite database with identifiers, descriptions, and allowed values. The parameter set should be managed with a process that guides product designers to use existing parameters instead of adding new parameters for each new product. A configurable component is modeled in VariSuite as an independent component with its own configuration parameters. The component can then be used in many products and subassemblies as long as the higher-level component provides values for all parameters of the configurable component. If you have complex product rules or multilevel product structure, VariSuite can help you. Easy to use and to share product data for whole organization and partners VariSuite has a web interface, which is mainly used for reading and for rather straightforward data modification, and a desktop client, which is mainly used for more complex data modification, including product model manipulation. Both user interfaces can use predefined queries and structure views, which can be created by ordinary users for their personal use and by system administrators for all users or selected user groups. The flexible access rights allow you to share product data with partners and subcontractors and show them only the data they need. Extend VariSuite for the present and future needs of your organization The data model can be modified easily. For example, a new item type and attributes for this type can be created by a user with necessary access rights. The new item type appears automatically in user interfaces when the user must select types for a new or existing item. Similarly, the attributes of the new item type appear automatically when a user interface shows attributes of an instance of this type. Additional functionality is implemented with a script mechanism without any changes in the generic application server, which is identical in all VariSuite installations.   Case KONE: Faster time-to-market and order-to-delivery process Variantum shortens KONE’s time-to-market by providing adaptable product modeling tools. Variantum digitizes the order-to-delivery process and integrates it with aftersales. KONE has used Variantum technology for managing configurable products since 2009. You can read more about the case here: case KONE KONE is a global leader in the elevator and escalator industry. KONE provides elevators, escalators and automatic building doors, as well as solutions for maintenance and modernization to add value to buildings throughout their life cycle.

Written by Teemu Kaattari, Head of Products Nowadays customers want their products faster than before. Salespeople would like to serve their customers better, but also use less time per offer and quote handling. Company management demands higher quality in offers, flexible and competitive pricing and salespeople to follow product option guidelines. Sales management would like to observe better what’s happening in the reseller field. All these needs can be solved with one solution: VariSuite – an offering management system. Save time with guided selling Modern sales configurators and quote tools (CPQ) can save time and make the sales and offering process faster especially for configurable products. VariSuite's sales software can quicken the quoting process and customer feature selections. The salespeople do not need to know all details about the products they are selling: VariSuite guides new salespeople with product feature dependencies. Help salesperson’s routine tasks VariSuite can help salesperson’s daily work by decreasing repeated tasks and manual work and by fulfilling the customer's needs with company's product. VariSuite speeds up the offer letter creation and offer iteration with the customer. It enables making the compatible choices in the configuration phase, updates the price according to selections and visualizes the product. Analyze, re-use and automate order to production It is also easy to reuse the previous offers with customer parameters to update the current product version and the latest prices. If the company has maintenance or service business, the delivered product individual detailed information can be found in VariSuite. Offer can be converted to order automatically to create the customer specific product into ERP. Master the sales model, product and pricing yourself In VariSuite product, price, user interface and all configurable product dependencies are modeled as no-code information into database. This means that the companies can manage product and pricing rules themselves. Follow complex product rules VariSuite can master the complexity of sellable products or solutions with even challenging product and pricing rules, together with product releases throughout the product lifecycle. The sales model should be built on the technical product model. The quality of work will improve, the offer volume will increase! When a salesperson makes an offer using VariSuite, he or she follows a predefined bidding process; the vendor sells and configures only the kind of products that can be manufactured. VariSuite makes selling fast, easy, and error-free. A smooth sales process helps to make the right kind of offer swiftly, and this also leads to a satisfied customer.   Case Elematic Elematic chose Variantum’s solution to be able to increase the number of offers sent out by decreasing the processing time and working effort per offer creation and price quoting. Sales configurator and quoting tool helps eliminating errors from the offers and customers will get the offer content they need and requested. You can read more about the case and watch a video here: case Elematic Elematic provides precast concrete producers with technology, production lines, products and services. Elematic is the global technology and market leader in precast concrete technology for residential and non-residential buildings.

Written by Teemu Kaattari, Head of Products Any company that makes mass-customized configurable products wants a streamlined order-to-production process that generates configured manufacturing bills-of-material (MBoMs) and documents to prevent errors on the shop floor. Variantum’s VariSuite turns this desire into reality and reduces lead times and error costs. VariSuite handles the configurable product around the company: in R&D, sales, production, and service. Manufacturing is the result of successful R&D and sales processes, but it must be handled as carefully as the others.   Automated order process Once the sales gets the customer order with customer specific order parameters, it is marked as a “won” sales opportunity in CRM or a sales order in ERP. If the VariSuite sales module (VariSales) is used as a CPQ (Configure-Price-Quote) system, the production configurator can be started from VariSales, otherwise the configurator is triggered from CRM or ERP and is controlled by the VariSuite automatic configuration tools. Order parameters Optimally, order parameters should reflect technical product parameters, which are used also in the production. When the optimal solution is not possible and the sales parameters differ from the technical ones, order parameters require mapping or rule handling which can be solved with VariSuite to automate product configuration for manufacturing. Product model for production Product model is created during design or only for production. Product design can create a product model during the design phase and link design information to a configurable product structure. This saves time by making it unnecessary to create a separate product configurator for production. Production may require further processing of the manufacturing structure: product structure splitting, several configuration rounds or new order-specific items. Order-based product structure and documents An order-based product configuration typically contains new order-based items, structures, and documents. These are needed because each unique combination of order parameters generates a unique order configuration. VariSuite out-of-the-box functionality always generates order-based items and structures; configured documents or CAD assembly and drawing can be generated optionally. Order-based items and structures are integrated to ERP, documents can be shared for sub-contractors. Product configuration and installed base Once a product is configured for production, VariSuite can save all product information as a product individual in an installed base. A product individual records a serial number for the product and all product and order information with current items, revisions, and documents. During the lifetime of a product, the installed base can be used by service, after-sales, and warranty processing. A company can manage the product models itself VariSuite adapts to the needs of any business with its dynamic data model and maintainable product models. The product models can be created and managed by the company itself, but Variantum can certainly help with all development issues.   Case Stera Technologies: Shorter lead-time and minimized errors ”With Variantum, we succeeded to change our order-to-manufacturing process from from days to hours.” You can read more about the case here: case Stera Technologies Stera Technologies is an international mechanics and electronics contract manufacturer. The company employs more than 800 professionals in six factories in Finland and Estonia.​

Major shifts in competition landscape, customer and employee expectations, as well as technology have woken up companies to reimagine the businesses. Read the four steps approach to the theme below:   Learning 1. REIMAGINE OR DIE Every company is forced to reimagine their business in the digital era. A business transformation demands fundamental impact from every part of the company. The change to happen needs the commitment both from the leaders and from the employees. In practice, this might require reimagining core business models, entering new markets and utilizing assets like data in a new way to end up with an updated vision - bold vision – and to survive as a company also tomorrow and to continue generating value to customers. Learning 2. FOCUS ON CORE OFFERING Variantum has proved the successful transformations of the industry leading companies developing roadmaps focused on core offerings, business processes and models as well as boosting ecosystem journeys with new business functions. We believe that successful companies that reimagine their businesses are able to generate enormous value through Offering Management also in 2022. The major trend started a couple of years ago, boosted by Covid-19, and it will continue stronger in 2022. The competition in the market is tougher than ever before. Learning 3. EMPOWER KEY EMPLOYEES At the same time, when recruitment of new personnel and retention of existing key competencies are critical to accelerate a digitalization and business transformation, we noticed that the top industry companies are focusing on empowering their key employees to run their job smoothly. They break old-fashioned fixed organizational structures to empower a culture that values the doer over the manager, and small teams over organizational structures. A small team of exceptional people working in agile ways delivers significantly more impact than an army of average talent resources. Learning 4. VARISUITE Two building blocks define the core of a modern software technology environment: a cloud platform and a simple process to implement it. Without these, agile teams stall and become stopped in complexity. VariSuite is the enabler to achieve the benefits of digitalization and boosted productivity. The leading SaaS Offering Management suite is allowing you to reimagine your offering with unlimited configuration capability, process automation and digitalization. Read the reference stories of the top industry companies from our website or watch the following video: Offering Management. May year 2022 be a successful and enjoyable one for all of you! - Kimmo Karhu, CEO

Present yourself briefly My name is Patrik, and I am a creative developer from Kerava. I have a passion for minimal and functional designs, and I love creating all sorts of new things out of scratch. My hobbies include digital arts, programming, cooking, working out and going for small adventures whenever possible. What kind of jobs have you had before?  Before joining the research and development team at Variantum I used to work as a freelance graphics designer and web developer. How did you end up at Variantum?  While working freelance I wanted to shift more towards web development so I took up the quest of finding a job where I could use my existing design and development skills and learn something new. That’s when I heard from Vesa Kuusio at Variantum that they had an open front-end developer position which was exactly what I was looking for, so I applied for it and here I am.  What have the first days been like? The first days have been a little chaotic due to the rush of getting everything done before the end of the year. On the other hand, I feel like I’ve handled it well. I have learned a lot about the software solutions Variantum provides, and that there are endless use cases for them. Why this job is a good fit for you?  I think this job is perfect fit for me since I can use my existing designs skills while working on something new and learning from the best.

Variantum has signed a partnership agreement with Wesconi, a Slovakian system vendor company operating in CEE region. Wesconi’s aim is to develop and implement the successful industrial production of the future with its partners. “Wesconi is an experienced company on digital and operational site and production management. They create capable and robust management systems by combining the most modern software tools. We welcome their expertise to Variantum's ecosystem”, comments Jari-Pekka Pulliainen, Director of Business Development at Variantum. Wesconi will start selling Variantum's software in selected market area as a Premium Partner. Variantum is actively looking for growth in European markets, and the economics of the CEE region looks promising now. Therefore, this partnership supports Variantum’s vision to expand abroad as the Leading Offering Management company.   Variantum is the leading Offering Management company. We build software systems that enable managing configurable offerings through their lifecycle. We offer our customers unlimited configuration capability, process automation and digitalization enablement with low cost of ownership. Variantum was established in 2005. Our software has over 50 000 users in 80 countries.

The change in purchasing behavior and new business models is putting pressure on companies. Due to increasing competition, companies are offering more individual, custom-made products. To keep unit costs at a reasonable level, many companies are developing their offerings through mass customization. But how could you best take advantage of all the stages of a product’s life cycle and the associated additional sales opportunities? Additional services should be acknowledged in the product planning Today’s customers want to have more options than before which makes the producing process more complex. To grow their business, companies also want to combine additional services with manufactured products, such as the maintenance business, so that the customer can be served throughout the product's life cycle and the value of the purchase transaction increases. The above can cause a rush to a company’s sales and design departments, complicate production, or increase the potential for errors in end products. In addition, if the company's internal communication between departments is not seamless, a lot of time is spent on data transfer and collaboration. This slows down the launch of new products or the production of additional services; it can also manifest itself in increased complaints, customer dissatisfaction, and lost sales. How could a software help to manage the lifecycle of a configurable product? The offering management software solution, VariSuite, helps to manage product information from end-to-end of the life cycle. With the help of the software, it is possible to automate the sales process: the features and services desired by the customer are selected for the products sold, i.e. the product can be configured for production without errors, thus the customer gets the product as originally wanted. VariSuite uses unified product information in product design, sales, manufacturing, and maintenance, enabling smooth data transfer and sharing between different departments and for subcontractors. Managing product individual data throughout the lifecycle enables product-related lifecycle services. This way, the company gets additional sales instead of a one-time transaction. The quality of sales work is improving, and the number of offers is increasing When a salesperson makes an offer using VariSuite, he or she follows a predefined bidding process; the vendor sells and configures only those products that can be manufactured. VariSuite makes selling fast, easy, and error-free. A smooth sales process helps to make the right kind of offer with agility, and this also leads to a satisfied customer. According to customer orders, order-specific product units and the necessary documentation are created, for example for product maintenance and operating instructions. The product individual data generated in the production configuration of VariSuite can be easily used in the maintenance and upkeep of the equipment base and in associated services. The product database of the product individual contains information on all components, changes made during the service life, and available spare parts from a maintenance point of view. Thus, VariSuite enables the analysis of equipment and services, as well as metering in terms of deliveries as well as sales and after-sales. It helps with warranty and complaint management and maintains up-to-date information throughout the life of the product. Once deployed, the benefits of VariSuite will begin to show in streamlining processes quite soon. VariSuite enables product information to be easily accessed both in-house and distributed to subcontractors as needed. It reduces errors and streamlines operations for all parties.

Would you like to start with VariSuite Overview? VariSuite is the Leading Offering Management system. With VariSuite you will enhance your company’s way of working and fulfill the specific customer needs easier. Its unique approach is being the glue between the traditional silos of Sales, Engineering, Production and Maintenance. It combines product development, configure-price-quote, order-to-manufacture, and installed base processes and functions. With the help of VariSuite, your company's data and files can be moved automatically between different systems, which reduces manual work and makes the processes more efficient. In the VariSuite Overview -course, we will walk you through the different modules of our VariSuite software and let you know all the benefits and functionalities. You will learn everything you need to know to use Varisuite in approximately 30 minutes. Ready to get started? Click here.

Ostokäyttäytymisen muutos ja uudet liiketoimintamallit asettavat painetta yrityksille. Kasvavan kilpailun myötä yritykset tarjoavat entistä yksilöllisempiä, asiakkaan toiveiden mukaan valmistettuja tuotteita. Jotta yksikkökustannukset pysyisivät järkevällä tasolla, monet yritykset kehittävät tarjoomaansa massaräätälöinnin avulla. Mutta kuinka voisi parhaiten hyödyntää kaikki tuotteen elinkaaren vaiheet ja niihin liittyvät lisämyyntimahdollisuudet? Lisäpalvelut kannattaa huomioida tuotesuunnittelussa Nykyasiakas haluaa tuotteeseensa enemmän valintavaihtoehtoja kuin aiemmin, mikä lisää valmistamisen kompleksisuutta. Liiketoiminnan kasvattamiseksi yritykset taas haluavat yhdistää valmistettuihin tuotteisiin myös lisäpalveluita esimerkiksi huoltoliiketoimintaa, jotta asiakasta voidaan palvella tuotteen koko elinkaaren ajan ja kaupan arvo kasvaa. Edellä mainitut asiat voivat aiheuttaa kiirettä yrityksen myynti- ja suunnitteluosastoille, monimutkaistaa tuotantoa tai kasvattaa virheiden mahdollisuutta lopputuotteissa. Lisäksi jos yrityksen sisäinen kommunikaatio osastojen välillä ei ole saumatonta, käytetään tiedonsiirtoon ja yhteistyöhön paljon aikaa. Tämä hidastuttaa uusien tuotteiden markkinoille tuomista tai lisäpalvelujen tuotantoa, se voi myös näkyä lisääntyneinä reklamaatioina, asiakastyytymättömyytenä sekä menetettyinä kauppoina. Ohjelmistosta apua konfiguroitavan tuotteen elinkaaren hallintaan Tarjoomanhallinnan ohjelmistoratkaisu VariSuite auttaa hallinnoimaan tuotteiden tietoja koko elinkaaren päästä päähän. Ohjelmiston avulla myyntiprosessia on mahdollista automatisoida: myydyille tuotteille valitaan asiakkaan toivomat ominaisuudet ja palvelut eli tuote voidaan konfiguroida tuotantoon virheettömästi; näin asiakas saa tuotteen sellaisena kuin alun perin halusi. VariSuite hyödyntää yhtenäistä tuotetietoa tuotteen suunnittelussa, myynnissä, valmistuksessa ja ylläpidossa, jolloin sujuva tiedon siirto ja jako mahdollistuu eri osastojen välillä ja myös alihankkijoille. Hallinnoitaessa tuoteyksilöiden tietoja elinkaaren läpi mahdollistetaan tuotteeseen liittyvät elinkaaripalvelut. Näin yritys saa kertaluonteisen kaupan sijasta lisämyyntiä. Myyntityön laadukkuus paranee ja tarjousten määrä kasvaa Kun myyjä tekee tarjouksen VariSuiten avulla, hän noudattaa ennalta määritettyä tarjousprosessia; myyjä myy ja konfiguroi vain sellaisia tuotteita, jotka voidaan valmistaa. VariSuite tekee myymisestä nopeaa, helppoa ja virheetöntä. Sujuva myyntiprosessi auttaa tekemään oikeanlaisen tarjouksen ketterästi ja tämä johtaa myös tyytyväiseen asiakkaaseen. Asiakastilausten mukaan syntyy tilauskohtaisia tuoteyksilöitä ja tarvittavaa dokumentaatiota esimerkiksi tuotteiden huoltoa ja käyttöohjeita varten. VariSuiten tuotantokonfiguroinnissa syntyneitä tuoteyksilön tietoja voidaan helposti hyödyntää laitekannan huollossa ja ylläpidossa sekä liitännäispalveluissa. Tuoteyksilön tuotetietokanta sisältää tiedot kaikista komponenteista, käyttöiän aikana tehdyistä muutoksista ja saatavilla olevista varaosista huollon näkökulmasta. VariSuite siis mahdollistaa laitekannan ja palvelujen analysoinnin sekä mittaroinnin niin toimitusten kuin myynnin ja jälkimarkkinoinninkin kannalta. Se auttaa takuu- ja reklamaatiohallinnassa sekä ylläpitää ajantasaista tietoa läpi tuotteen käyttöiän. Käyttöönoton jälkeen VariSuiten tuomat hyödyt alkavat näkyä prosessien tehostamisessa varsin pian. VariSuite mahdollistaa sen, että tuotetieto on helposti saatavilla sekä omalla tehtaalla että jaettavissa alihankkijoille tarpeen mukaan. Se vähentää virheitä ja tehostaa toimintaa kaikkien osapuolien osalta.

Today you can get several enterprise-level systems from a cloud environment, even in a few minutes after registration and subscription. Our VariSuite – the Leading Offering Management system is also available from the public cloud, which means that you don’t need to worry about the Software’s IT infrastructure. Instead, you’ll get the software as a service and simply enjoy the benefits it brings to your business!  How awesome, right?  However, even if the system, or let’s say the environment, is easy to get & set up to be available for the users, there is still quite a lot of work to do after that. You need to be able to put your data in place. In other words, you need to configure the system to meet your needs and your company’s processes.  That’s why we are introducing our eLearning platform, which is designed for self-learning, whenever it suits you the best! Let’s forget the classroom meetings and endless PowerPoints – learning can also be playful and fun, right? 😎👍  With our eLearning material you will be able to learn the very fundamental basics of what Offering Management means in practice – what are the key benefits of using VariSuite and even how to get our software in use – in practice.  At the very moment we have published 4 courses to the https://learn.variantum.com platform:  VariSuite Overview  With VariSuite you will enhance your company’s way of working and fulfill the specific customer needs easier. In this course, we will walk you through the different modules of our VariSuite software and highlight their benefits and functionalities. This course is for those who want to enhance their company’s way of working and fulfill their customers' specific needs in an easier way. The course will take approx. 30 minutes.  VariSales Basic  With VariSales Basic you create and manage offers easily. In this course, you will learn how to intuitively navigate through the system. The course will take approx. 30 minutes.  VariSales Basic for Administrators  In this course, you will learn how to manage and configure VariSales Basic. The course will take approx. 30 minutes.  VariPDM Basic Onboarding  VariPDM is the core system designed to handle basic PDM (Product Data Management) functionality from engineering to production.  We have designed this course to help you and your team begin to use VariPDM the right way so that you can get up and running in VariPDM fast and easily. The course will take approx. 1 hour.  Since the eLearning platform is now under open beta testing, we want to hear your opinion and feedback! What are the topics that you would like to learn and that would help your business to get the necessary boost with the configurable offering?  Do not hesitate to reach out to me, Paavo Porkka, Head of Customer Support & responsible for eLearning Platform development.  Happy learning! 

Present yourself briefly Hi! My name is Elli Karjalainen. I live in Espoo with my husband and two kids. I enjoy spending time with family and friends, playing board games, walking in the woods and doing some gardening, such as growing flowers and vegetables in pots. It’s fun to see plants grow and quite rewarding to harvest your own potatoes, zucchini, herbs, and other fresh produce! I’m looking forward to getting back to my other hobbies, Zumba and fitness boxing, which have been on a break due to the pandemic. I’m always interested in learning about different cultures, countries, and languages and eager to improve my language skills whenever possible. What kind of jobs have you had before? My background is in the consumer electronics industry, where I’ve worked in multinational product development projects for over 15 years. During my career I’ve focused especially on product management, customization and user experience. In my previous role I managed global product variant configurations and worked on product lifecycle management in close collaboration with international sales teams, partners and manufacturers. How did you end up at Variantum and why this job is a good fit for you? I was contacted by Kimmo Karhu, the CEO of Variantum, and we got talking about the company and its interesting products. It seemed like my experience in offering management and variant configurations would be good fit to the team and I was offered a job. I really appreciate this opportunity to broaden my expertise and I’m thankful and excited about joining the Variantum team! I’m impressed by the Variantum people, products and achievements of the company and look forward to getting involved with customer projects. Thanks to my previous experience in variant management with configurable products, I’m convinced about the benefits of the VariSuite offering management solution and how we can help customers to digitalize and automate their processes, increase customization capabilities, and improve sales and productivity. What motivates you? I value opportunities to develop myself as a person and as a professional and enjoy working together as a team towards a common goal. It is especially motivating when there is a possibility to make a difference and help customers to succeed.   To meet more of our people, find previous stories here: Meet our people: Katja Meet our people: Ville Meet our people: Patrik Meet our people: Jorma Meet our people: Jaakko Meet our people: Sauli Meet our people: Tommi Meet our people: Anu Meet our people: Vesa Meet our people: Andreas Meet our people: Hannu Meet our people: Pasi Meet our people: Teemu Meet our people: Jari-Pekka Meet our people: Tanja Meet our people: Paavo Meet our people: Venla

Sustainability might not be the main business driver yet, but it is still a factor when ranking consumer behavior. It is expected that its influence on consumer behavior will grow in the upcoming years. No company will survive without the knowledge of its influence on nature in the future because laws and regulations will be tightened and saving the planet is a shared responsibility of all of us. Product lifecycle management is an important way of handling sustainability. Managing the sustainable choices starts from the product engineering phase, what kind of choices affect the carbon footprint and what choices could be more responsible? As all the data of the product is managed in the same product data management (PDM) system, it is also easy to use the information for example in sustainability reporting. Sustainability development is a worldwide issue. We are all responsible for a better tomorrow. Many actions have already been taken but there is still a lot to do. Collaboration between different companies and research organizations gives an opportunity for more resource-effectiveness. Recent studies have been concerned with a Green Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) strategy where the entire supply chain is managed to support sustainability and it needs to be considered when talking about sustainable product development. It is important to notice that for the Green PLM strategy all companies that are involved in the production process and its development must be sustainability-driven. Green manufacturing has four critical impact factors: social aspects, energy, environment, and economics. Considering a green PLM strategy manufacturing is the most important place to start the development since most of the greenhouse gases emissions and waste come from this phase. However, the whole strategy is new, and the researchers aim that it will be the key issue for the next generation of manufacturing enterprises. How does this concern Variantum? With Variantum’s Offering Management point of view, any company can take their offering under control from designing & engineering to distribution and maintenance. You will be able to manage the whole product lifecycle. Offering Management also suggests that at some point all companies could transform their offering into subscription service. Offering Management is also a way of making your business run more effectively and reducing errors which enhances the use of resources. VariSuite-software by Variantum is an Offering Management system that combines product development, configure-price-quote, order-to-manufacture and installed base processes and functionalities. With VariSuite you enhance processes and can achieve results quickly regardless of your product or industry. Sources: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877705815045208 https://www.ptc.com/en/blogs/retail/how-plm-can-help-retailers-sustainability-initiatives

When producing goods and services, there are many phases: engineering, sales, manufacturing and after-sales or maintenance. Companies need different systems for different process phases to be able to create, edit, find and collect data to produce the end-result. It may well happen that the people responsible for these different process phases are looking for information from different data sources. This may cause slowness or errors in production, double work in every phase, delays in sales, bad customer experience in customer service – the list is endless. Scattered data causes delays Especially in manufacturing companies the need for various systems is enormous. As the goods to be produced consist of many parts and components, and the number of product variations can be large, it is very important that the systems are well integrated, and data can be found easily and used systematically - and that it’s up to date and you can rely on it. The systems a company may have for these processes can be ERP, various design tools e.g. CAD, CRM, CPQ, PDM, DM (document management system) to name a few. Very often the information is gathered separately from these systems by each part of the organization which makes everybody’s work slow and inefficient, as e.g. the sales department could be using product information differently from production. A common data source enables efficiency However, there are systems with which all data can be integrated from every phase to a common data source. These systems help to organize the relevant data into a unified form so that it can be used in the same format via a common source by different parts of the organization. Therefore, all organizations and teams can utilize the shared and common data source for their exact needs: e.g. sales will see correct information in sellable way and maintenance will know exactly what was shipped to the customer even if the product model has changed multiple times ever since! Utilizing a common data source will impact all process phases making them faster and more efficient. This way all departments and members of the organization can utilize the same data and knowledge. All processes from design-to-order (DTO), engineer to order (ETO), configure-to-order (CTO) are more easily managed and the whole go-to-market process will get quicker. As all knowledge, models and designs are based on the same source and utilized in a commonly agreed way, the quality of the end products and services will be better and delivery times will speed up. In the end the customer satisfaction will increase which usually has a positive impact on turnover, market share and business development.   VariSuite-software by Variantum is an Offering Management system that combines product development, configure-price-quote, order-to-manufacture and installed base processes and functionalities. With VariSuite you enhance processes and can achieve results quickly regardless of your product or industry.

Variant – what an unpleasant word nowadays! With a worry, we read news about new variants of covid-19 and its possible causes, influences, or vaccine responses. Variants have always been in nature, that’s normal. Imagine all kinds of different species and varieties. Thinking of humans, we all are some sort of individual variants (maybe excluding identical twins). Our genes have travelled a long way from variant to another, and today we differ from each other. That’s the reason why we look different, why we have different features, tastes, feelings, thoughts − everything. We are used to using products, commodities, to wear or consume in our everyday life. Our needs are based on many different things, e.g. our basic individual needs, penchants, or environmental statement. What if we wouldn’t have the possibility to choose different variants? Uh. Therefore, companies offer consumers product and service variants, and the reasons are very simple: with product variants, they can cover larger customer segments and are still able to handle deliveries effectively. Clothes, cars, bicycles, foods, drinks, houses − almost everything you can think of has variants. When you go to the store next time, you can’t count the numbers of variants of milks, yogurts, coffees, shampoos, jeans. As a consumer you can typically buy produced variants, and sometimes you can even configure your own variant on the go for dinner or select features for your car or bike or hairdresser service. Companies have similar needs for unique products or services with their goods, machines, equipment, systems, or solutions. This is different from consumer business, as these products are usually not manufactured to shelves, but are typically only based on order. But before the order, these products or services need to be offered to potential customers with their unique needs. And fast. The first who offers probably wins the deal. Then the winner should be able to produce and deliver the products or services effectively without surprises − and hopefully even offer services for the whole product lifetime or renew the deal someday. As we understand the nature of variants and individual needs, Variantum has developed a solution for you to be the most effective with your variant-offering. Regardless of your product or solution, our VariSuite-software can respond to any variant requirements. You only need to understand your potential customer or market needs, and we will help you to manage your offering in design, sales, manufacturing, and in service the most effective way enabling the organization to speak the same product language. Variants are the only way to evolve. Otherwise, we would be still in algae wondering where to get the next nutrition variant. By Teemu Kaattari, a unique variant with unique skills working at Variantum as a Head of Products.

We are extremely happy to release our new Partner program. To enable our future business growth, we have established a Partner program that will help us to expand our business outside of Finland, and at the same time give great business opportunities to our future Partners. We are actively looking for new Partners in various markets, e.g., Poland, Baltic countries, and central Europe. We offer our Partners possibilities to achieve awesome results with the help of our unique software systems. Our Partner program offers tools, resources, and expertise to help your future growth. There are three different options to become a Partner: you could be our Sales Representative, Authorized Partner or Premium Partner. Each of these options has defined requirements and benefits. We also offer our Partners a knowledge-sharing platform which will enable you to grow your business affairs successfully. Recently, we have already partnered with resellers in various countries to provide leading Offering Management software systems to initiate new business possibilities. We offer process automation and digitalization enablement with low cost of ownership for any size customer company. Typically, our customers have versatile configurable products and services, and they need software that can streamline their data usage in-between different systems and processes. With our software our customers have been able to enhance their business processes significantly. Now our Partners can offer the same options for their clients! Are you helping companies with their digitalization journey and looking for new business - maybe we are the perfect match? You can check the different possibilities to be a Partner on our website: Variantum.com/partners

Traditionally businesses with the ability to offer customized products and services have had a competitive advantage over mass producers. The individual needs can be taken into account in customization; therefore, the buyer is experiencing more possibilities to make choices than when buying something made in mass production. Many people are also ready to pay high prices for individually made products or services. However, to make every product or service individually is expensive. This is often difficult to master and requires a lot of resources. Products and services made in mass production can be produced cost-effectively, but the problem with this is that production and offering possibilities are limited. Nowadays it is possible to adjust the products and services according to the needs of different client groups yet produce them in standardized way. This is called mass customization which makes producing different variations cost-efficient. Mass customization utilizes technologies, mass production processes and elements in such a way that end products are possible to edit into different options according to customer definitions. The prices stay on a reasonable level, as mass customization uses mutual starting points and components, which will be formed into end-products that are either individual or belong to a product family. The production is done modularly: compatible elements and features are being organized, combined and edited i.e., configured in order to produce different variations. The output can be either a physical product or a service. If the possible variations are considered already in the design phase, and these features are added into the product model options, the end-product will be possible to configure according to the predefined compatible options in the sales and production phase. VariSuite-software supports the options suitable for mass customization, as the software utilizes customers’ own data model in all different process phases. This enables customization also in mass production. As a result, the business can ramp up profitably into mass-customization with no requirement for large-scale system renewal projects. Practical examples about mass customization are clothes, cars, element houses – or even a hamburger. Some brands may have for example several length options for a certain trouser model. However, in this case the consumer may make the choosing only in the buying phase. In some web shops customer can order a t-shirt with options about model, color, size and possible text. When buying a new car, there are several models to choose from, and the customer can decide the car model, color, fabrics and additional equipment. In business to business the office furniture may be a good example of the configurable product. The basic materials and features could be the same everywhere, but the measurements change according to the space available, and the materials and colors of the fabrics could change according to customers’ wishes. Mass customization increases customer satisfaction, as this way the customer gets the output with the exact features the customer has wanted. There is no need for unpleasant fixing or returning processes when the product or service has been adjusted according to the customer wishes. Mass customization is effective, and its purpose is to decrease unnecessary and overlapping costs. It aims to improvement, quality and creating numerous variation possibilities. Mass customization is applicable to most businesses, and it can offer even a competitive edge for a manufacturing company. When its possibilities are utilized in the right way and it will be deployed in company processes correctly, it will bring considerable benefits to customers keeping the costs at a reasonable level at the same time.   Since 2005 Variantum has helped many companies to become more customer-centric with their offerings. Our experts can solve the problems and challenges related to the data management of configurable products and services.

Is your sales team working in full speed? Would you like to answer your customer needs in an agile way? Digitalization has changed the way the customers think, and they are used to getting everything faster. Therefore, working at sales is extremely busy these days. Salespeople should write down and execute customers’ wishes quickly. In addition, making offers should be extremely fast. With traditional tools this might not be possible – especially if the product is complex and configurable. The automation of sales process will help making more offers with the existing sales team and resources. The salesperson can make more offers with the same amount of time when all the right tools are in use. The right software reduces the risk of errors and, therefore, the customer will receive just the right kind of offer and more transactions are completed. With a software made for Offering Management it is easy to make the sales process faster and more effective. When the compatible parts have been defined in the software, the salesperson can choose the right elements for the offer together with the customer. The software will tell if there are any parts that do not fit together. When all required elements have been chosen, the software will calculate the price and produce the offer document. Unfortunately, many companies still work with spreadsheets when configuring offers to customers which leads to errors in later phases. Offering Management supports different variations of product complexity with the product pricing models. For some companies flat options and feature-based pricing is enough while other companies might need more advanced rule-based pricing or cost-based pricing, which is based on a structural product model. Sometimes the sales tackle with how offers are turned into orders, and how orders are moved to production. Typical challenges, why companies struggle are that sales models and production models do not support each other, and sales can sell products that manufacturing cannot produce. This leads to production errors, losses and to a lot of confusion in product delivery. In the worst-case scenario, customer will get product that does not fulfil the order. It is essential that the product data can be used in similar form in all process phases. When the company owns and knows the current up to date product data it is easy to make additional sales tailored to a specific product individual in the form of parts replacements, add-ons, feature upgrades, functionality upgrades or software updates. The customer pricing does not have to be based on a one-time invest any longer, but it can be offered based on the need of product usage. The Offering Management software also enables the data sharing with retailers and other stakeholders. However, the company that owns the up-to-date product data is the one mastering the business knowing exactly what kind of functionalities the product or service in use has. Business based on data management changes the product pricing both in the sales and in the aftersales. One time invest changes to a continuous cash flow and spare parts, or additional services are not purchased independently but they are for example included in the monthly payment. Offering Management that is based on data management will give companies more possibilities to create different kinds of business, pricing and sales models. It enables developing the sales function, selling more with lower costs and creating more offers in the same amount of time.

Case: Muodin vähittäiskauppa Viimeisen 20 vuoden aikana vaatteiden ostamisesta verkkokaupoista on tullut helppoa ja normaalia. Verkkokauppojen selailua voi kutsua jo ajanvietteeksi ja kaikenikäiset ihmiset tekevät vaateostoksensa verkossa. Muutamalla klikkauksella on mahdollisuus rakentaa haluttu vaatekaappi oikean kokoisilla ja värisillä vaatteilla kotiin kuljetettuna. Monet ihmiset arvostavat kuitenkin yhä enemmän ja enemmän yksilöllisyyttä ja siksi vain värin tai koon valitseminen ei ole aina tarpeeksi. Uusi trendi on haluta kustomoida vaatteita niin että lopputuloksena on täysin uniikki vaatekappale. Esimerkiksi farkkuja voi helposti kustomoida niin, että kaiken lähtien kankaan laadusta ja väristä aina lahkeen malliin ja taskujen sijaintiin asti voi valita itse. Kustomointi kannattaa tehdä massakustomointina ja valmistaa massavalmistuksena, jotta kulut pysyvät hallinnassa. Massakustomointi antaa muotibrändeille lisäksi mahdollisuuden vähentää jäte- ja logistiikkakustannuksia ja yksinkertaistaa toimituskanavia. Optimitilanne on, että oikeanlaisella työkalulla asiakas voi itse konfiguroida tarpeidensa mukaisen tuotteen verkkokaupassa ostoksia tehdessään. Tällainen konfigurointityökalu voidaan integroida minkä tahansa jakelijan tilausprosessiin ilman, että loppuasiakas edes huomaa vaihtavansa jakelijan palvelusta valmistajan palveluun ja takaisin. Asiakkaalle näkyvä sivusto adaptoituu asiakasprosessiin saumattomasti ja kaikki komponentit voidaan kustomoida jakelukanavan tarpeisiin. Tarjoomanhallinnan työkalut mahdollistavat uusien liiketoimintamallien kokeilemisen huomattavasti matalammilla kustannuksilla kuin normaalisti. Kuvittele millaista olisi, jos vaatteet ostettaisiin tilauksena ja korjaukset, hoito ja kierrätyspalvelut kuuluisivat integroituna kauppaan! Kuulostaa tulevaisuudelta – tunnelin päässä on vihdoin valoa pikamuodin aiheuttamiin ongelmiin.  

Meriteollisuudella on muihin teollisuudenaloihin verrattuna erityispiirteitä, jotka on otettava huomioon prosessien suunnittelussa. Meriteollisuus on hyvä esimerkki projektiluonteisesta rakennusteollisuudesta ja jokaisen yksittäisen projektin tulee täyttää tietyt vaatimukset, kuten esimerkiksi asiakkaan edellyttämät ominaisuudet (esimerkiksi lasti, määrä ja paino) ja toiminnan tehokkuuteen liittyvät vaatimukset (kuten matkanopeus, kulutus ja päästöt). Samaan aikaan suunnitelmanmukaiset sekä yllättävät huoltotoimenpiteet on pystyttävä tekemään helposti ja nopeasti. Klusterilla tarkoitetaan joukkoa toimijoita, jotka toimivat yhteistyössä niin, että verkosto tuottaa hyötyä yksittäisten toimijoiden lisäksi koko organisaatiolle. Meriteollisuuden klusteri koostuu yrityksistä, jotka ovat osana projektien suunnittelua, rakentamista ja erilaisten laitteiden ja komponenttien toimittamista. Klusteri on tyypillisesti suuri ja koostuu tuhansista yrityksistä. Klusteri tukee hyvin erilaisia hankkeita aina pienistä projekteista valtavien rahti- ja risteilyaluksien valmistamiseen asti. Meriteollisuuden projektit vaativat korkeatasoista yhteistyötä, sillä jokaista yksittäistä komponenttia tai osaa näissä suurissa projekteissa on pystyttävä seuraamaan, jotta huolto tai osan korvaaminen uudella on mahdollista. Jokainen projekti on konfiguroitu kokonaisuus ja tarve tuotetietojen hallinnalle on suuri. Klusteriin kuuluvien yritysten täytyy pystyä hallinnoimaan tuoteportfoliotaan ja asiakasvaatimuksia niin myynnissä, suunnittelussa, tuotannossa kuin erilaisissa palveluissakin. On myös tarpeellista, että tuotteita voidaan ”massakustomoida” eli tuottaa tehokkaasti asiakastarpeiden mukaisesti. Toimituksen jälkeen on tärkeää, että tuotteen huoltaminen pystytään järjestämään helposti. Palvelullistaminen (servitization) on ollut nouseva trendi yritysmaailmassa ja meriteollisuus ei ole poikkeus sen seuraamisessa. Palvelullistamisella tarkoitetaan asiakaskeskeistä lähestymistä, jolloin asiakkaalle myydään tuotteen lisäksi palveluita siihen liittyen ja tavoitteena on, että jossain vaiheessa koko tuote voidaan myydä palveluna. Palvelullistamiseen siirtyminen ei ole aina helppoa, sillä kuten mainittu, silloin täytyy olla tarkat tiedot asiakkaan tuotteesta ja sen ajantasaisesta suorituskyvystä. Meriteollisuudella on lisäksi haasteena maailmanlaajuinen toiminta, miten ylläpitää tuotteita ympäri maailmaa? Yksi ratkaisu on kolmannen osapuolen valtuuttaminen huoltopalveluihin. Kolmas osapuoli saa ilmoituksen online-järjestelmästä, kun varaosia tai huoltoa tarvitaan ja huolto voidaan tehdä kätevästi laivan ollessa satamassa käymässä, jolloin aikaa tai resursseja ei turhaan hukata. Tällainen palvelu vaatii tuotetietojen jakamisen avoimessa rajapinnassa, jotta yhteistyö on käytännössä mahdollista. Liiketoimintamallin vaihtaminen palvelullistamiseen konfiguroituvien tuotteiden kanssa vaatii tarjoomanhallintaa. Tarjoomanhallinta ratkaisee meriteollisuudenkin haasteet, jolloin monimutkaisia tuotteita voidaan tarjota nopeasti ja tarkasti, tuotanto on helppoa ja nopeaa ja tuotetietoja voidaan hallita ja jakaa kolmansien osapuolien kanssa. Tarjoomanhallinnan mahdollistama lähestyminen tulee johtamaan kilpailijoista erottumiseen, parempiin ja syvempiin suhteisiin asiakkaiden kanssa, parantuneeseen asiakastyytyväisyyteen ja -uskollisuuteen. Alkoiko tarjoomanhallinta kiinnostaa? Ota yhteyttä - me Variantumilla kerromme mielellämme lisää.        

Viime viikolla kerroimme tarjoomanhallinnan perusteista ja miten tarjoomanhallinta rakennetaan asteittain. Jos et ole vielä lukenut blogia, pääset lukemaan sen tästä. Tässä postauksessa kerromme, mitä hyötyä tarjoomanhallintaan keskittymisestä on ja mitä etuja syntyy elinkaariarvon tarjoamisesta asiakkaalle. Keskittyminen elinkaariarvon tarjoamiseen korostaa asiakkaiden säilyttämisen tärkeyttä. Perinteisesti yritykset ovat keskittyneet uusasiakashankintaan, joka on usein kallista. Siksi keskittyminen jo olemassa oleviin asiakassuhteisiin ja asiakaskeskeisyys on tärkeämpää kuin koskaan. Vanhojen tuotteiden uusimisen yhteydessä on mahdollista myydä myös uusia tuotteita ja palveluita. Uusiminen ja lisämyynti on edullisempaa kuin uusien asiakkaiden hankinta. Miksi kaikki yritykset eivät panosta vanhojen asiakassuhteiden ylläpitämiseen? Usein haasteena on, että olennaiset tiedot ovat hajallaan ympäri organisaatiota, jolloin organisaation sisäisten osastojen ja ulkoisten kumppanien välinen yhteistyö on vaikeaa. Tätä päivää oleva tarjooma sisältää kuitenkin esimerkiksi automatisoidun huollon, joka optimoi, ettei tuote ole pois käytöstä pidempään kuin on tarpeen. Nykypäivän tuote hinnoitellaan esimerkiksi käytön mukaan, ei kertakustannuksena. Esimerkkinä on auton ostaminen palveluna, jolloin loppukäyttäjän maksama hinta vaihtelee ajokilometrien mukaan ja esimerkiksi pidempää viikonloppureissua varten voi lunastaa itselleen lisäenergiaa, jonka tuote pystyy konfiguroimaan etänä. Tämä on mahdollista vain, jos yrityksellä on jokaisesta yksittäisestä tuotteesta tarpeeksi tietoa ja etäyhteys, jolla voidaan optimoida sen käyttöä. Mitä konkreettisia hyötyjä tarjoomanhallinnasta on? Myynnin volyymi kasvaa. Asiakaskeskeisyydellä ja prosessin älykkyyttä parantamalla pystytään vastaamaan erilaisiin asiakastarpeisiin tehokkaammin. Pidemmät asiakassuhteet. Yrityksillä, joilla on mahdollisuus toimittaa personoituja tarjoomia koko asiakassuhteen läpi, asiakassuhteet säilyvät paremmin ja kannattavuus on korkeampi. Tuotteet ovat nopeammin markkinoilla. Tarjoomanhallinnan avulla voit parantaa kapasiteettiasi vastata nopeasti muuttuvaan kysyntään, jolloin tuotesyklistä tulee nopeampi ja tällöin yrityksen tuotteet ovat aina relevantteja markkinoiden kysyntään nähden. Kiinnostuitko tarjoomanhallintaan perustuvasta strategiasta? Variantum tarjoaa kokonaisratkaisuja tarjoomanhallintaan ja osana palvelujamme tuemme asiakkaitamme tarjoomanhallintaan siirtymisessä alkaen suunnitteluvaiheesta. Autamme sinua mielellämme – löydämme yhdessä parhaan tavan toteuttaa tarjoomanhallintaa juuri teidän yrityksessänne.

Tarjoomanhallinnan avulla voidaan suunnitella uudelleen mitä ja miten myydään. Se mahdollistaa, että tuotteen tueksi voidaan tarjota palveluita ja lopulta jopa koko tuote voidaan tarjota palveluna. Tarjoomanhallinnan avulla voit johtaa tarjoomaasi koko sen elinkaaren ajan. Pitkät asiakassuhteet ovat nykyään yrityksille tärkeitä ja siksi monet rakentavat tuotteensa tueksi palveluita tai jopa tekevät tuotteestaan kuukausihinnoitellun palvelun. Valitettavasti useimmat yritykset kamppailevat kuitenkin edelleen tuotetietojen perusperiaatteiden kanssa, kuten esimerkiksi: Miten varmistaa, että tarjooma on hyödyllinen yritykselle – niin myyvälle kuin ostavallekin? Miten siirtyä prosessissa sujuvasti myynnistä tuotantoon? Tai tuotannosta huoltoon ja jälkimyyntiin? Kuinka jakaa tuotetiedot helposti alihankkijoiden kanssa? Voisimmeko tarjota uusia palveluita jo olemassa oleville tuotteille? Variantum on kehittänyt tarjoomanhallinnan evoluutioportaikon, jota seuraamalla tuotetta voidaan kehittää palveluksi kasvattamalla valmiutta käsitellä tuotetietoja organisaatiossa ja sen prosesseissa. Seuraavaksi esittelemme askeleet kohti nykypäivän tarjoomanhallintaa – perinteisestä tuotteesta palveluna tarjottavaksi tuotteeksi. Evoluutiotaso 1: Ensimmäisellä tasolla yrityksellä on konfiguroituva tuote (fyysinen tuote, ohjelmisto tai palvelu), jonka ominaisuuksia voidaan muokata suunnittelussa, myynnissä ja tuotannossa. Tämä tarkoittaa, että yrityksen tuotemalli on suunniteltu ja toteutettu myyntiä ja tuotantoa varten. Valitettavasti monet yritykset käyttävät edelleen laskentataulukoita määrittäessään asiakkaille tarjouksia, mikä johtaa helposti virheisiin myöhemmissä vaiheissa. Tyypillisiä haasteita, miksi yritykset kamppailevat ensimmäisessä vaiheessa, on, että myyntimalli ja tuotantomalli eivät tue toisiaan, ja myynti voi myydä tuotteita, joita valmistus ei pysty valmistamaan. Tämä johtaa tuotantovirheisiin, menetyksiin ja aiheuttaa paljon hämmennystä tuotetoimituksessa. Pahimmassa tapauksessa asiakas saa tuotteen, joka ei vastaa tilausta. Evoluutiotaso 2: Toisella tasolla yritys laajentaa tuotettaan muihin liiketoimintamalleihin, eli esimerkiksi pystyy tarjoamaan valmistetulle tuotteelle huoltopalvelut. Tällä tasolla tarve datan hallinnalle kasvaa ja laajentuu kattamaan myös palveluihin liittyvän informaation. Yksittäiseen tuotteeseen liittyvää dataa täytyy pystyä päivittämään sen kehittyessä ja esimerkiksi varaosiin, erilaisiin luokituksiin, palvelurakenteisiin (sBOM) ja ajankohtaisiin palvelutietoihin liittyvät tiedot ovat esimerkkejä informaatiosta, joka on hyödyllistä huolto-organisaatiolle. Kaikenlaiset muutokset olisi kuitenkin hyvä päivittää ajantasaisesti, koska ilman aktiivista tuotetietokantaa tuotetta on mahdotonta laajentaa palveluksi. Evoluutiotaso 3: Tasolla kolme on jo mahdollista hyödyntää tarjoomanhallintaa alusta loppuun asti, samalla pitäen ekosysteemi avoimena sidosryhmiä silmällä pitäen. Sidosryhmillä tarkoitetaan tässä esimerkiksi asiakkaita, jälleenmyyjiä ja muita yhteistyökumppaneita. Liitettävyys yhteiseen ekosysteemiin mahdollistetaan ohjelmointirajapinnan (API) avulla – myyntikonfiguraattori jälleenmyyjille, tuotantokonfiguraattori ja tuotannon dokumentit alihankkijoille tai huoltodata palveluita tarjoaville yhteistyökumppaneille. Tarjoomanhallinnan yksi etu on, että myös tekijänoikeudellisia tietoja voidaan jakaa vaikka usein tällaiset vaativat integraatioiden käyttöä. Tiedon omistajuus kaikissa vaiheissa on elintärkeää; tuote itsessään voi olla suunniteltu, myyty, tuotettu, toimitettu ja huollettu kolmannen osapuolen toimesta, mutta yritys, joka omistaa ja tietää asiakkaalla kulloinkin olevaan tuoteversioon liittyvät tiedot, hallitsee liiketoimintaa. Yrityksellä on silloin mahdollisuus myydä ristiin ekosysteemissä ja se tekee ekosysteemin hallinnasta joustavampaa ja alentaa liiketoiminnan riskiä. Evoluutiotaso 4: Taso neljä on korkein taso. Tasolla neljä tarjoomanhallinta laajenee palveluksi (Offering Management as a Service, OaaS). Tänä päivänä on esimerkiksi mahdollista ostaa auto kuukausimaksulla rahoituslaitokselta, mutta vielä ei ole mahdollista ostaa autoa palveluna valmistajalta. Tulevaisuudessa suuri osa tuotteista tullaan tarjoamaan palveluna niin kuluttaja-asiakkaille kuin yritysasiakkaillekin.

Welcome back to Meet our people series. Today it is time to meet our Ville Ollikainen who runs our KONE team.   Present yourself briefly “I work as the KONE team lead at Variantum. In addition to that, I have worked on almost all parts of Variantum software, from back end to some UI work.Outside of work, I like to play video games, ride my bike, and go downhill skiing. I also develop games and physics simulations as a hobby.” What is your job history like? “This is my first "real" job. Before this, I worked as a TA for the computer graphics course at Aalto University, and did a few internships at the research team there, as well as one summer at Nvidia Helsinki. I felt like I can get more done in a more concrete field, where my lack of a maths major doesn't matter as much.” How did you end up at Variantum? “I saw a job application online and applied here. I had never heard of the company and back then I didn't really understand what we do, but the people seemed nice enough to take the job. I've worked here for two years now and enjoyed the work. We get along well, so it's a pleasure to work here.” What is the best thing about working at Variantum? “Working as a team with great people to solve hard problems. It's great to see the finished product work after months of work. I hope that in the future we can also maintain this nice team spirit while the company grows.” Do you have any greetings for the readers? “The summer holidays are almost here, soon it's time to relax!” To meet more of our people, find previous stories here: Meet our people: Patrik Meet our people: Jorma Meet our people: Jaakko Meet our people: Sauli Meet our people: Tommi Meet our people: Anu Meet our people: Vesa Meet our people: Andreas Meet our people: Hannu Meet our people: Pasi Meet our people: Teemu Meet our people: Jari-Pekka Meet our people: Kauri Meet our people: summer 2020 trainees: Patrik, Jaakko and Josua Meet our people: Tanja Meet our people: Paavo Meet our people: Venla

The exciting news have been spreading around lately. The economy is doing better because the vaccine has started working and societies are slowly opening again. There has been a lot of talk about the exit strategy - it seems like there is finally light at the end of the Covid-19 tunnel. This is what we all have been waiting for since spring 2020. Jukka Saksi (Eskola, 2021) introduced an interesting idea about changing the exit strategy to an entry strategy. Whereas exit means getting out of the pandemic and going back to the way things were, entry means moving forward to something new. Saksi suggests four questions for building an entry strategy: What do you want to keep? Some of the new habits during the pandemic might be worth keeping as new ways of working. What do you want to get rid of? There will not be time to do everything and to make working simple some habits need to be removed. What do you want to add? Is there anything that is still missing? What do you want to do less? Is there a way to get rid of tedious, manual work? Other points of view are “what has been positive?” and “what have we realized during these odd times?”. Especially, some industries have struggled during covid-19 and the focus has been on surviving. However, there is an explanatory factor that all growth companies have in common. Even during challenging times, the focus is on the future - growth companies do not wait for things to get better but develop new or change their way of doing business. They do not have time to waste wandering around. Therefore, now is the time to invest in new, more efficient ways of doing business and look to the future. Competition is tough and all companies need all the help they can get. Offering Management is a set of tools and methods that improve business performance through automated collaboration of Sales, Production, R&D and Maintenance in any organization. VariSuite is a unique Offering Management system that combines product development, configure-price-quote, order-to-manufacture and installed base processes and functionalities. So, if you want to get rid of repetitive manual work and want everything to work seamlessly, now is the time to make investments. With VariSuite you will enhance your company’s way of working and fulfill the specific customer needs easier. Offering Management should be something you want to add to enhance your company’s performance. And the right time to add it is now. Sources:Eskola, H. (2021) “Tee entry-strategia, älä exitiä”, Kauppalehti 12.5.2021, p. 14-15

We have four new summer workers in our team this summer. One of them, Venla Loimovuori, started in the beginning of May. Here are Venla's thoughts on her new job: Hello! I am Venla Loimovuori, a 22-year-old business student from Turku School of Economics. At Variantum I work as a marketing assistant and do all kinds of tasks varying from blog posts to organizing events. In my free time I recently started to train crossfit. Horseback-riding has also been my passion for many years. I also have a 5-month-old miniature schnauzer puppy called Lumi. My story at Variantum started a little differently than with my previous summer jobs. This year I wanted to try a different way of job searching so I posted a CV-video to LinkedIn and Facebook. The video reached a lot of people and many of them also contacted me about a summer job. Kimmo Karhu, the CEO of Variantum oy, was one of them and we scheduled a meeting. I chose to work at Variantum this summer because it seemed like a great place to learn. I can use my imagination and it is easy to share your own ideas at Variantum. I also get to take responsibility, which is challenging. IT-sector is a new takeover for me, and I look forward to new challenges! The first days at Variantum have been a little strange due to the COVID19 situation. It is odd to start at a new job without being at the office and seeing the other coworkers. Luckily, we have already scheduled coffee breaks on Teams so that I can get to know others too and hopefully the situation will not last too long. At least there has been talk about going back to the office in a month. However, everyone who I have been able to meet up with have been very nice, helpful and welcoming! Stay safe and have a great summer! Venla Loimovuori Learn more about Variantum careers: Go to our Careers page

The recent studies of the analyst firms have shown that many companies are reimagining their business models to ensure a secure future, business continuation and repairing plans for the markets recovering after COVID-19. We updated our strategy at Variantum approximately two years ago and introduced the concept of “Reimagine your offering” to help companies to speed up digitalization and survive foreseen business transformations. Knowing nothing about upcoming pandemic, we were spot on. Now our competitors have also woken up and started to acquire smaller software companies to achieve business capabilities to support customers. The megatrends like cloudification and offering evolution to more complex, like physical product combined with software and services, will enforce all of us to reimagine how to make profitable business. This means that every process revolution influence, how we design, sell, manufacture and maintain the offerings we provide. The world is moving fast towards Offering-as-a-Service business models. Software vendors, like many other industries, have transformed their business models to subscription license model. It is a tip of the iceberg. The service business model means focusing on the value of the customer lifecycle and the customers’ trust must be earned every day. We have advised several prospects and customers in their journey towards as-a-Service business model. For instance, several manufacturing companies have opened their strategy and plans to provide their offering as a service in near future. What does this mean in practice? You might be able to buy goods as a service, directly from the original manufacturer without involvement of leasing or financial company. This revolution is ongoing. Variantum has introduced Offering Management Evolution Steps to help and speed up the customer journey in reimagining business digitalization and transformation. The steps are based on business capabilities needed to move towards Offering-as-a-Service model regardless of solutions or systems in use. Our studies show that increasing digitalization of offerings are driven by: the uncertainty of today’s business environment the end-users need for more product and service personalization the growing social and ecological demand for sustainability the ever-present requirements related to shortening innovation cycles and meeting international and market-specific regulations. The interesting part is that the top drivers for todays’ companies are similar in a wide range of different industries. In summary, regardless of the industry segment, the challenges in terms of mastering the increasing complexity in offering development with the tight integration to flexible value chain and end-to-end traceability of deliverables are forcing a growing number of companies to adopt a functioning, flexible and reimagined approach to business model revolution. We, at Variantum, are super excited about the interest of the companies to learn what “Reimagine your offering” means. At the same time, it is a journey to us to learn through changing customer demand. Super fun! -Kimmo Karhu, CEO

The construction industry is one of the fastest-growing industries, and the race for digital has started to tighten within the industry. Offering Management could create opportunities for construction companies. Buildings are massive projects that are not considered ‘ready’ when the construction project is finished - but rather set into a maintenance phase. Ideally, buildings can be seen as ecosystems that a network of subcontractors maintain and develop with full automation according to the property owner’s development strategy. This unlocks massive commercial opportunities for Offering Management enabled companies that manufacture products or services for the construction industry. Check out our case example about window manufacturers: Digital Disruption in the Construction Industry

Our former summer worker Patrik Muhojoki joined our team once more, this time the focus is on the thesis! Present yourself briefly please. "My name is Patrik, and I am enthusiastic about problem solving, mathematics, coding, as well as my hobbies like circus and dancing. Currently, my main goal in life is to graduate as a master of science towards which I am working on by writing my thesis here at Variantum." What kind of jobs have you had before? "In addition to the two previous summers here at Variantum, I have worked in various jobs, like storage worker and research assistant." How did you end up at Variantum? “I first heard about the firm from our guild’s job-hunting event where various companies introduced themselves. In this event I applied for a position. Since this is my third time at Variantum, you could say that I have been enjoying my time here.” Why this job is a good fit for you? “Variantum allows me to use my studies for something practical and challenging. I have the opportunity to learn plenty of new skills and improve my thinking. My colleagues have a deep understanding about software developing, coding, and generally about everything that I am working on. This prevents unrealistic expectations for my work, which makes working here much more pleasant.” What is your funniest memory about working here last summer? "Working on front-end development for the first time resulted in some hilarious test pages and visual bugs." What motivates you? "Getting to see my development come to life, especially if the results are useful for my colleagues and customers. Having some freedom and work not being super serious all the time has a major contribution as well." To meet more of our people, take a look to earlier stories here: Meet our people: Jorma Meet our people: Jaakko Meet our people: Sauli Meet our people: Tommi Meet our people: Anu Meet our people: Vesa Meet our people: Andreas Meet our people: Hannu Meet our people: Pasi Meet our people: Teemu Meet our people: Jari-Pekka Meet our people: Kauri Meet our people: summer 2020 trainees: Patrik, Jaakko and Josua Meet our people: Tanja Meet our people: Paavo Meet our people: Venla

We have started a partnership with Spondeo which is Finnish-Polish family company established in 2014. Spondeo offers remote recruitment and market entry services for Eastern and Middle European markets, and they will help us to boost our footprint in Europe. “To us Spondeo has shown its capabilities in a very short time with excellent results, and we are very pleased with the co-operation. If you have any market entry plans to Eastern or middle European markets, we suggest that you´ll contact Spondeo!” says our Director, Business Development Jari-Pekka Pulliainen. As a Leading Offering Management company Variantum also needs trusted partners to get things flying. We recently released a new version of the Offering Management Suite – VariSuite which will play crucial role in our approach to enhance our customers’ capabilities to produce configurable products even faster and sell more with lower costs also in international markets.

Welcome back to Meet our people series. This time we introduce Jorma Heimonen, Co-founder and Senior PLM-specialist. Present yourself briefly please. "I am Jorma Heimonen. My present main task at Variantum is to be in charge of products and product roadmap. Additionally, I participate in pre-sales and selected customer projects in the architect role and help in various product development related tasks. I am in my middle ages with wife and primary school aged children. My hobbies are classical singing (in choir and solo) and activities related to the family and to the old house were are living in." What is your job history like? "I studied industrial automation and industrial IT at Aalto University (HUT at the time). I have spent my entire professional career with PDM / PLM, product configuration and data management of configurable products, first in the industry and then at Variantum." How did you end up at Variantum? "I am co-founder of Variantum. In my previous workplace we were doing deep co-operation with the HUT product data management research group, and the idea of founding Variantum emerged in discussions with them. I decided to jump ships from a user organisation to developing new, innovative solutions for managing configurable products." What is best about working at Variantum? "Professionally, the most rewarding thing is to be able to innovate and develop new solutions that help our current and future customers to improve their business. As an engineer, I also enjoy learning a little bit about the technologies and processes our customers use in their products, ranging from door locks to factories producing pre-cast concrete elements, and from relatively small configurable products to huge systems that consist of hardware, software and services." What is the atmosphere like? "Variantum has a pretty relaxed, start-up like atmosphere with nice and intelligent people to work with." How do you see the future? "The digital transformation and forth industrial revolution has been going on during my entire career that started already in 1990's. It includes the digitalization of the entire supply chain, move from mass produced fixed products and project products towards configurable products as well as move from products to services. Different companies are in different stages of the transformation. In general, huge corporations with their huge resources have been able to make the move faster, whereas small and mid-sized companies often are still struggling with inefficient, manual ways of working. My vision is that with Variantum's productized offering management system VariSuite, small and medium sized enterprises can reap the benefits of digitalization and benefit from the boost to productivity it gives to them." To meet more of our people, take a look to earlier stories here: Meet our people: Jaakko Meet our people: Sauli Meet our people: Tommi Meet our people: Anu Meet our people: Vesa Meet our people: Andreas Meet our people: Hannu Meet our people: Pasi Meet our people: Teemu Meet our people: Jari-Pekka Meet our people: Kauri Meet our people: summer 2020 trainees: Patrik, Jaakko and Josua Meet our people: Tanja Meet our people: Paavo Meet our people: Venla

Find out what a system covering all your company’s departments and lasting for an entire business life cycle could do for your product and service management! Meeting customer needs as effectively as possible is essential in today’s increasingly developing business environment. Usually manufacturing companies focus on their competitiveness and developing their service business, and service companies improve customized portfolios. Currently, companies possess systems for product information and sales management. However, the information in these systems is often scattered and difficult to utilize coherently. Variantum solves this problem with an Offering Management System that provides all the necessary information on a business life cycle from engineering to sales and from production to maintenance. In Offering Management the product life cycle management has been expanded to include the complete product information, and it consists of everything the company designs, manufactures and sells to its customers. Variantum offers customers a combination of product, software and service – this is the only solution on the market that covers everything from the initial idea to sustained service. Bringing added value in product management has become essential nowadays. With Offering Management, companies can provide their customers with high-class, individually customized, life-cycle managed products and services faster than before. Benefits of using Offering Management: Combines the product, the software and the service as one Making accurate offers is faster Time-to-market cycle is shorter Enables materializing individual customer needs Ability to provide mass customized products Engineering - Sales - Production - Maintenance: all under control at every stage Learn more about our solutions: VariSales - a Configure-Price-Quote - CPQ - product family VariPDM Basic - easy-to-use & fast-to-implement flexible Product Data Management system with product configurator ..VariSuite...to be launched soon! Interested to know more? Our sales people will help you out, so please ask for a virtual meeting or call us! Virtual meeting         Call us

The Finnish Abloy Oy designs and delivers a highly configurable range of locking solutions for homes and offices, as well as high-security locations like banks and water utilities. Abloy uses VariPDM and VariProd for supporting their sales and production configuration requirements as well as to manage their configurable product data. Variantum’s configurators have extended the capabilities of Abloy’s existing ERP system. Efficient product configuration management has helped Abloy to reduce stock keeping units. Abloy has been working with Variantum since 2013. Read more from Abloy Success Story page. ABLOY offers security and locking innovations dedicated to creating more trust in the world. Combining digital and mechanical expertise, Abloy Oy develops industry-leading security solutions that protect people, property and business. Abloy is part of the ASSA ABLOY Group, the global leader in access solutions. Abloy.com Would you like to hear more? We want to help you to be the next success story, ask for a virtual meeting or call us! Virtual meeting         Call us

Our former summer worker Jaakko Visti joined our team again, this time the focus is on the diploma work! Present yourself briefly please. "My name is Jaakko Visti and I study mathematics at Aalto University. I’m already at the end of my studies as this is my fifth year. I already worked at Variantum last summer. This year I will develop tools that analyze configurable product models and help product developers to detect problems in the models before they go into production." What kind of jobs have you had before? "On top of working at Variantum, I have mainly had different kinds of summer jobs during high school and during my studies at Aalto." How did you end up at Variantum? "My friend Patrik who also studies at Aalto had been working at Variantum previously. He recommended the company for me, so last year I also applied for summer job at Variantum - and got it. This gave me the idea to do my diploma work at Variantum." Why this job is a good fit for you? "Variantum’s line of business supports the orientation of my studies, therefore it suits perfectly." What is your funniest memory about working here last summer? "Last year there were two of us working as summer trainees here. During July everybody but us were on vacation, and we got to test most of nearby lunch restaurants. I think I learned a lot during the summer; I was doing front-end development which was a completely new area for me!" What motivates you? "I enjoy learning new things, it is important for me to improve my skills. It is nice, if my work has an influence on business and I will develop as professional. In my opinion it is also important that the work is fun!" To meet more of our people, take a look to earlier stories here: Meet our people: Sauli Meet our people: Tommi Meet our people: Anu Meet our people: Vesa Meet our people: Andreas Meet our people: Hannu Meet our people: Pasi Meet our people: Teemu Meet our people: Jari-Pekka Meet our people: Kauri Meet our people: summer 2020 trainees: Patrik, Jaakko and Josua Meet our people: Tanja Meet our people: Paavo Meet our people: Venla

Welcome back to meet our people -series! This time you get to know our Cloudification Expert Sauli Luoto. Present yourself briefly “I am Sauli Luoto. I started at Variantum a couple months ago as Senior Cloudification Expert. Previously I’ve been working with software development in different sectors for several years.” What is your job at Variantum and what is your job history like? “My work at Variantum is mainly focusing on our cloud services. In the future, our service offering will be more cloud-based than that of today.” What is the best thing about working at Variantum? “I find the organization fairly flexible; therefore, I’m able to concentrate on my core activities, and executing different kinds of tasks is swift.” What motivates you? “I like to get things done without extra detours, and in the agile kind of organization like Variantum this is possible. Learning new things and implementing them in my work is also a motivating factor for me.” Where do you see Variantum in five years? “I think Variantum will grow fast during the next few years, and we will gain in awareness among our client sectors. I look forward to being a part of this journey.” To meet more of our people, take a look to earlier stories here: Meet our people: Tommi Meet our people: Anu Meet our people: Vesa Kuusio Meet our people: Andreas Meet our people: Hannu Meet our people: Pasi Meet our people: Teemu Meet our people: Jari-Pekka Meet our people: Kauri Meet our people: summer 2020 trainees: Patrik, Jaakko and Josua Meet our people: Tanja Meet our people: Paavo Meet our people: Venla

Variantum has signed a Partnership with Being Guided, to expand our business and customer success stories, internationally. At Variantum we believe that Mutual Value Discovery, as an integral part of the Being Guided Design thinking method, enables us to better engage with customers step-by-step. In practice, this means exploring current state product modelling within the Make-To-Order (MTO) manufacturer, identifying the best way to maximize collaboration across departments, increase product configurations, accelerate price quotations, and reduce operating costs. Learn more at: https://www.themanufacturingplatform.com/ About Variantum Variantum VariSuite is a technology platform that enables Make-To-Order (MTO) manufacturers to increase sales and customer experience. This means delivering accurate product configurations and price quotations, faster.

Companies have systems and solutions that have been used many years to manage own organization processes effectively. Why were those systems selected in the first place? Who selected them? Do they support company’s total efficiency still today? We think that the answer lies inside those organizations and objectives has been noble in that time. However, in the era of digitalization, digitalization officers finally will face complex system combinations and incompatibility product models to be used over the silos and systems. Variantum has succeeded in combining main processes over product information management in those processes in an optimal way and in integrating product information to other mainframes such as CRM, ERP and Design tools. VariSuite Framework is common platform for all VariSuite modules. It keeps data model, access management and product model for all VariSuite modules and processes in sync between each other avoiding silos. VariSales CPQ (Configure-Price-Quote) tool helps guided selling and effective offering of configurable and standard products and services with CRM integration. VariPDM includes product data management features for faster engineering and time-to-markets supporting configurable products, release processes, design tool and ERP integrations VariProd manages order-to-manufacture automation and product configurations for manufacturing purposes VariTrace is an installed base that manages product individuals after delivery and service and maintenance data management “Variantum’s comprehensive approach ensures that a company’s configurable product definitions are understood, compatible, and available to sales, engineering, production, and throughout the maintenance lifecycle" —Peter Bilello, President & Chief Executive Officer, CIMdata, Inc. Interested to know more? Our sales people will help you out, so please ask for a virtual meeting or call us! Virtual meeting         Call us

Did you know that VariSuite supports xBOM with the following modules for whole any Company's product lifecycle: VariSales, sales configurator and quote tool for CPQ (Configure-Price-Quote) VariPDM, product data management system VariProd, production configurator VariTrace, product individual management known as installed base system In this article, different product structures, known as xBOM, is described to different solution and process areas. Variantum’s system supports all different BOM structures in one database.   VariSuite xBOM for configurable products VariSales: Offer BOM: Offer consists rows for offered fixed or configurable products, product groups, discounts, additional installation and delivery services or any other miscellaneous items. Structure can be many levels, but typically 1-level. Sales BOM: When configuring a sales product, product can have 1 to N levels based on options and selections to get a price. Flat level is the simplest which means feature-pricing, rule pricing requires few level and cost pricing requires product structure until fixed parts or modules, which is called structure-pricing on in Variantum slang cost-plus pricing. Configured product is then added to Offer BOM as one row or sub-row. 3D BOM: VariSales includes option for visualization and specially 3D requires own structure for light-weight visualization which follows product pricing. 3D adjusts also for dimensional changes, because Variantum’s configurator technology allows ranges to be used as sellable option. VariPDM: Engineering BOM: Known as eBOM, is structure that defines design structure into PDM. This structure can come from design tools (ECAD or MCAD) but can be manually created as well. If company design rules target to make design as they are manufacture this can be call also as manufacturing BOM (mBOM), but in Variantum’s world, this is only BOM’s for fixed components or products.Configuration BOM: known as maxi-BOM, product-family-BOM or Super-BOM, is BOM for configurable product. This BOM includes all designed options in different positions with parameters, rules, assignments, and refinements. This determines product’s configurability and including modules, components, or items with all the configuration rules. Maxi CAD BOM: CAD can include configurations BOM and addition to Configuration BOM, CAD can include rules for geometry or feature manipulation. Configurator BOM does not typically include geometry features, but CAD BOM can include rules e.g. for positioning screw into hole when dimensions change. Maxi CAD BOM can be driven manually or automatically after product configurator. VariProd: Individual Manufacturing BOM: After production configuration, delivered product is generated to individual which has own structure. All changeable items will get own id and structure. Fixed items are included into structure, but these are only links or relationships to existing production revision. Some selections may be run during configuration, e.g. configured module weight might be selection rule for frame. CAD BOM: Based on production configuration, CAD can select only needed assemblies and parts and run own geometry configuration which creates manufacturing documents and files and attach these to Individual mBOM to be used in production. Delivery BOM: After production configuration, additional rules can be added for example to break individual structure to new structure. These might be needed, when product is manufactured in different plants, or logistic might require own structures for product delivery. Installation BOM: Installation structure can be generated based on these rules as well, but it might require own configuration setup. Implementations tasks can be configured as own structure based on individual BOM. VariTrace: Service BOM: Individual manufacturing BOM supports manufacturing, but service BOM re-structures that BOM as a service BOM. This means individual product structure to be built like service sees it. Service has typically own hierarchical categories for product levels or module/component visibility. Service BOM is updated, whenever product is been serviced with changes. Spare-part BOM: Spare-part BOM is BOM where only spare-parts are listed. Typically, there are similar spare-parts around product structure, and it is important to see where it can be connected to. Spare-parts can be component level, but also whole module can be spare-part replaceable. Every spare-part installation, product individual structure must be updated to know products history.Spare-parts might be changed during product in use, this means that updating and changing spare-part information must be easy. About Variantum Variantum is a pioneer of configurable product data management since 2005. We help companies to be more customer centric by enabling wider and effective product offering in sales with CPQ (Configure-Price-Quote), shortening time-to-market in R&D, simplifying order entry to manufacturing and enabling product individual data management for service and after-sales. Our advisory team will guide you to be successful with your product and process development over the organizations. “Variantum’s comprehensive approach ensures that a company’s configurable product definitions are understood, compatible, and available to sales, engineering, production, and throughout the maintenance lifecycle" —Peter Bilello, President & Chief Executive Officer, CIMdata, Inc.

Variantum has accomplished the “Suomen vahvimmat platina”- certification by Suomen Asiakastieto once again. We are happy to tell that we have had the certification for more than 10 years, since 2009. The Strongest in Finland certificate is a special certification for companies whose Rating Alfa credit classification has been AAA or AA+ for at least three consecutive years. Only 12 percent of Finnish companies are rewarded with this certification. The certificate is a proof for the customers, partners and other stakeholders that cooperation with Variantum is on a steady foundation now and in the future. It tells about Variantum’s excellent financial key ratios, positive background information and desirable payment behavior. This certification is one of the many things that help us on our journey of sharing the knowledge about the importance of Offering Management, learn more from: offeringmanagement.comIf you want to know more about how we have helped companies with maximizing their effectiveness, click here for Success Stories.

Learn more how SteraLux improved their offer-order and order-to-delivery processes by taking in use VariSuite's CPQ and PDM integrated to Salesforce and IFS. "On the basis of our earlier experience with Variantum, we believe that our benefits will be: - Flexible and error free offer-order-process - The benefits of mass-customization - The possibility to extend system with other features and external organizations, such as resellers" Solution delivered: VariSuite (VariCPQ, VariPDM and VariProd) integrated to Salesforce CRM and IFS ERP. Read the whole story at: variantum.com/success-stories/steralux

Our dear customer, KONE, is over 100 years old company. It is one of the most known global players and a leader in elevator market globally. We started co-operation in PLM business with Kone already back in 2009. Kone released recently great news about winning an order in Shenzhen, China in their press release December 22nd 2020. We want to congratulate our customer for this exciting news! How Variantum supports KONE with their business? According to KONE’s CIO, Mr. Antti Koskelin, “Variantum’s technology has been instrumental in KONE product lifecycle management. KONE has achieved significant improvement in the time to market and order to delivery processes of complex configurable products.” Mr. Koskelin has also commented on Variantum’s technology performance and the partnership they have developed, “Variantum technology has proven to be high performance and we are extremely satisfied with Variantum’s level of expertise and loyalty as a trusted partner.”Over the last ten years, KONE has implemented a number of Variantum solutions and capabilities, including VariPDM, VariProd, VariTrace and VariConf. Being one of Variantum’s key and oldest accounts, KONE has benefited from a very close relationship a bi-directional collaboration. We are looking forward to continuing co-operation with Kone 2021. If you want to support your business in a world-class way and learn more about Offering Management, let’s have a call or a virtual meeting! What is offering management? An offering is a product, software or service that is offered for sale and due to digital distribution, every company must rethink theirs. Offering Management is the solution to this - reimagining what and how you can sell, produce, and provide services for your offerings. Offering Management manages the full product life cycle of an offering, including the validated requirements; the defined business model; and configuration capabilities for mass-customization, marketing, sales, production, services, and support. Read more business case examples from offeringmanagement.com Interested to know more? Our sales people will help you out, so please ask for a virtual meeting or call us! Virtual meeting         Call us

Learn how Stera Technologies solved order-to-manufacture automation, brings products to production faster and prevents human error in the process     Read the full refrence story here:  variantum.com/success-stories/stera-technologies 

Company is nothing without an awesome personnel!   Read interesting stories about our professionals and their personalities: Meet our people: Tommi Meet our people: Anu Meet our people: Vesa Kuusio Meet our people: Andreas Meet our people: Hannu Meet our people: Pasi Meet our people: Teemu Meet our people: Jari-Pekka Meet our people: Kauri Meet our people: summer 2020 trainees: Patrik, Jaakko and Josua Meet our people: Tanja Meet our people: Paavo Meet our people: Venla

How do you make sure you have sufficient property for running your business? If you are a property provider, have you already taken in use the full power of PropTech? “COVID-19 has fundamentally changed what is essential and what is nice to have in the commercial property sector. PropTech is now an essential tool.” Source: https://f.datasrvr.com/fr1/820/46311/Colliers_How_COVID-19_is_accelerating_PropTech.pdf PropTech – what is it? “Proptech is one small part of a wider digital transformation in the property industry. It considers both the technological and mentality change of the real estate industry, and its consumers to our attitudes, movements and transactions involving both buildings and cities.” Defined by James Dearsley 2017 After that stated, it has been recently also slightly updated according to https://www.unissu.com/proptech-resources/what-is-proptech "PropTech is a wider part of the digital transformation of the property industry: PropTech is a small part of a larger ecosystem, affecting and affected by a vast amount of industries and their respective innovations - endogeneous and exogeneous, as Andrew Baum puts it in is PropTech 3.0 report." "PropTech represents a mentality change: It is not enough to think of PropTech as a physical move towards digitisation; the mentality change, that required to best understand and apply the disruption, and move away from tried and tested traditional methods is equally important." According to Venture Scanner Real Estate Technology (PropTech) funding has hits to new record, which simply underlines the fact that PropTech will be the one of the big if not mega-trends in near future.   How about Business Ecosystems then? Why they are still important and how PropTech is disrupting it? Advances in technology and increasing globalization have changed ideas about best ways to do business, and the idea of business ecosystem is through to help companies understand how to thrive in this rapidly changing environment and especially now when world has changed due to the global crisis that seems to be continuing for some time it makes correct selections with flexible business ecosystem(s) even more crucial! Let’s mention for example the use of artificial intelligence by room.ai, beacons by Smart Service Connect, smart home viewing booking tools by Front Door, blockchain technology by Ubitquity, virtual reality by Matterport, augmented reality by Datrix, or data visualization by Create.io. Others are using connected objects, 3D printing, mobility technology, big data, etc. Why these startups have a competitive advantage is because of their ability to bring innovation into each step of the process and radically rethink existing systems and their core offerings. And it’s indeed worth pointing out: PropTech startups come in with a new vision and a desire for reinvention; starting from scratch, they want to rewrite the book on tomorrow’s real estate industry. They might address one highly specific aspect of the industry such as BIM management and coordination between the many actors of the construction business, or they might take on the entire business model, such as is the case with rental property management or transactions for existing residential properties.  The tomorrow’s world of business is all about making your offering available and up to date. Offering Management helps any company to make it happen. The offering management is reimagining what and how you can sell, produce, and provide services for your offerings. The offering management is the key processes and solutions for end-to-end Sales, Engineering, Production and Maintenance processes. Read more about Offering Management at offeringmanagement.com

Our world is changing faster than ever due to the incredible innovation and unprecedented technological change. Digitalization, AI, robotics, and Internet of Things are transforming the markets with speed never seen before. Customer-centricity has been identified as the driving force for companies who are willing to succeed in today´s rapidly changing business environment. "One of our customers cut 7 months from time to market process. Another one increased the amount of offers by 50% with our help, says Kimmo Karhu, CEO of Variantum." Read more from the whitepaper..

Welcome back to meet our people -series! This time you get to know our Software Engineer Tommi Syrjänen. Present yourself briefly?“I am Tommi Syrjänen and I have worked at Variantum for 11 years already. Before that I worked as a researcher at Helsinki University of Technology (now Aalto University). In my free time I am an amateur historian who researches things that catch my interest, ranging from 19th century criminals to late Medieval typography.” What would your family say if they had to describe you with a few words?“Silent. Industrious. Does a lot of different things.” What is your job at Variantum?“I work in a technical role. Over the years I have done almost anything that needs to be done, but nowadays I have two main roles: I design and build processes for our customers and help them to model their data using Variantum products. I also participate in development of Variantum’s core products as well as customer extensions and integrations.” What is the best thing about working at Variantum?“There are many different kinds of things to do and there is much freedom in designing how to do it.” What motivates you?“I like to find ways to solve complex problems.” “Where do you see Variantum in 5 years?”“Variantum has grown to become an important vendor of solutions that help companies manage their offerings of configurable products.” Thanks for the interview. Do you have any greetings for the readers? "Thank you! I would like to wish everyone a happy Christmas time!"   To meet more of our people, take a look to earlier stories here: Meet our people: Anu Meet our people: Vesa Kuusio Meet our people: Andreas Meet our people: Hannu Meet our people: Pasi Meet our people: Teemu Meet our people: Jari-Pekka Meet our people: Kauri Meet our people: summer 2020 trainees: Patrik, Jaakko and Josua Meet our people: Tanja Meet our people: Paavo Meet our people: Venla

Behind all of our awesome products is an inspired team of talented people working ambitiously to make VariSuite work seamlessly. One of them is Anu Fagerlund - our funny software designer.   Present yourself briefly“Hi! My name is Anu Fagerlund and I live in Espoo with my husband, 2 children, a cat and a dog. I love to go outside whenever it is possible and I have time. I also spend a lot of time at the different ice rinks all over the country and bmx racing tracks (thanks for the children’s hobbies).” What would your family say if they had to describe you with a few words? “I have lot of ongoing projects at same time. And maybe children would also describe me as chauffeur😊.“ What is your job at Variantum?“I am a software designer. I am doing customers projects and Variantum’s own product development.” What is the best thing about working at Variantum?“I like the people working here. Everybody gives 110 % of themselves every day. I also find the job interesting.“ What motivates you?“I like to resolve problems and the feeling to get something to work is great!” Where do you see Variantum in 5 years?“Variantum will have more new customers and also new employees.” Thanks for the interview. Do you have any greetings for the readers?“It’s only just one month and then the days are getting longer again!😊”   To meet more of our people, take a look to earlier stories here: Meet our people: Vesa Kuusio Meet our people: Andreas Meet our people: Hannu Meet our people: Pasi Meet our people: Teemu Meet our people: Jari-Pekka Meet our people: Kauri Meet our people: summer 2020 trainees: Patrik, Jaakko and Josua Meet our people: Tanja Meet our people: Paavo Meet our people: Venla

How often you end up on a company website that has attractive offering and even price lists for the product, but you can't configure the product with your own selections? You have probably filled a form with your requirements to contact the sales and to get a customized offer. Then you must wait for a salesperson to inform you about the available options. It usually takes a long time to get the offer even this far. We have a solution to fulfill that important gap between the buyer process and sales process. Variantum’s inbound offer request configurator brings companies a powerful process to improve/enhance customers’ experience and new way to bring customers near company sales. This allows inbound customers to configure and evaluate company product features and prices for their needs when they want. Both the customer and the salespeople will benefit; the customer will get a focused offer, and the sales can focus on customers who already have verified their need and have found right price level for the negotiations! Here is an example of how the process could work with your offering: The customer opens the offer configurator that is linked to company product web pages. The customer configures product options and gives contact information. The offer with customer product options and price is sent to the sales team. The sales team adjusts prices, negotiates with the customer, and sends the final offer letter and product specification. ​ The deal with the customer can be closed. ​ Interested to know more? Our sales people will help you out, so please ask for a virtual meeting or call us! Virtual meeting         Call us

Variantum creates success stories. We help our customers to deliver competitive mass-customizable products and services to their customers. Our offering covers the entire management of the product life cycle. We improve our Customer’s efficiency in product design, sales configuration, production configuration and maintenance. Our customers can choose from our modular product family a module that meets the specific needs, which work together or separately with the same database no matter if customer is using on-premise or open cloud services. We’re able to deliver these solutions on full SAAS based model as well! VariSuite applications supports integrations over modern APIs. VariPDM – a versatile and dynamic data management system – the backbone of our Offering VariPDM improves product information management especially for configurable products and it can handle any product or service in your offering. The system have been developed to take into account the information management of configurable needs from end to end. VariPDM contains the most common areas of PDM: document and change management, planning tools and integration management of the data. VariPDM is the most flexible system on the market, with a data model, processes interfaces that can be dynamically modified. VariPDM scales up to companies of any size. The system also has the most flexible access rules management, so that external organizations can be integrated to be a part of entire data management. VariPDM can be used to manage company product models, even if the company would already have a PDM in place, in which case the bi-modal PDM solution makes sure that basic product models are created in standard PDM and all configured product models are managed in VariPDM. VariProd – a scalable and versatile production and document configurator VariProd works with VariPDM so that product models that are designed in VariPDM will be executed in VariProd in a scaled way. Configuration rules are versatile and, if necessary, rules can be expanded even further with scripting capabilities. Production configuration is required to configure the manufacturing structure with all in order to prepare the product. VariProd can be used to generate other structures, e.g. Delivery/logistics/installation structures or manufacturing and structural documents based on the product individual. VariSales – a powerful sales and offering tool (Sales Configurator, CPQ, Configure-Price-Quote) VariSales is a web-based and mobile-enabled sales configurator and offer tool, which enhances the company's bid-to-order process to be more efficient. Sales representatives can easily and quickly configure the to be offered product or solution when the system only offers approved product choices at the same time as when prices and/or delivery times are calculated in real time. Using 3D visualization it makes it also very concrete to show what kind of end result such configuration would make for the product. VariSales creates required offering documents and it can be integrated with necessary CRM or other background systems as well. Sales team can themselves maintain product and price and offer letter configuration which speeds up the necessary changes in end to end setup of the full product configuration. VariSales also operates in on-line and off-line mode. VariTrace – information management for maintenance, repair and services to improve the efficiency of the aftermarket VariTrace maintains post-delivery product information at the individual level of condition. For example it could know when the product spare parts are required, or the product is to be maintained or modernized, you can easily find up-to-date information throughout the product's life cycle. With VariTrace the necessary maintenance and repair services can be configured as well and product individual can influence how service will be configured and delivered. VariTrace can be integrated with maintenance systems or IoT, allowing accurate individual data to be combined with other systems. VariTrace also makes it easier to analyze the whole installed base or delivered items. Interested to know more? Our sales people will help you out, so please ask for a virtual meeting or call us! Virtual meeting         Call us

Learn more how SteraLux improves their "flexible and error free offer-order-process with VariSuite and Salesforce" from our Success Stories: Success story: SteraLux - The Best Made Lighting ”We were familiar with the benefits that Variantum delivers to automate order-to-manufacture process and we extended that to support also sales with VariCPQ - integrated to Salesforce." - Ville Saarinen, Product Manager, SteraLux

Read our success story from long partnership with Stera Technologies Oy that started already back in 2011. This is a great example of long-term co-operation between Variantum and our Customer. Read the story here.

We are living in times that we have never seen before. It seems like everything is uncertain, and it is challenging to know what will happen in the future or how long this will last. It might be even so that this is the “new normal,” and there is no going back. For businesses, this means that it is impossible to continue without adapting to the new situation. Three problems are crucial to be solved to survive during these times. These include working in the online environment, an effective way of finding information inside the company, and finding a way to make investments and plans for the future. The first and most obvious change is that everything happens online. In the old world, it was easy just to go and ask your colleagues for help - now we are doing everything distantly. I cannot help but wonder how this will affect people in the long term. Humans are social creatures, and now we are only staring at the screen all day long. Also, how many good ideas are left in the dark because it is not as easy to communicate those? Also, all the data need to be available and up to date for everyone who needs it in the company - it is not efficient to use a lot of time searching for information. It might be an excellent time to invest in an easy-to-use Product Data Management (PDM) system or guiding Sales Configurator (CPQ) system, which supports remote working inside and outside the company’s ecosystem. Especially now that we are moving towards the wintertime, which here in the Nordics means “the dark time” of the year, how will we survive without social contacts? How will this affect the motivation and mental health of working people? I fear that there will be longsighted influences of these times and the decisions that we are forced to make for keeping the risk groups safe. On the other hand, it would be vital that companies would make investments for the future. We know now that it is evident that Covid-19 will affect the economy, but how much and for how long is still unclear. However, it is challenging for companies to make decisions regarding the future when everything is uncertain. Restrictions and other things change so often that it is challenging to plan a long-term strategy. However, there are also different sides to this, can there even be something good in that companies need to learn to adapt to new situations fast and be more agile? There are so many sides to this matter that it is not easy to write one blog post that covers it all. However, I hope that this gives us a new perspective for the future, and we will be back stronger than ever after Covid-19. By working together – sharing ideas and coming up with new solutions – we can also get through this. The humankind has always found a way to survive through difficult times so we will figure this out this one too. I want to wish everyone a joyful autumn time! Venla Loimovuori

This time in the series of meet the people of Variantum team we want to introduce you our CTO: Andreas Anderson Present yourself briefly"Hello, my name is Andreas Anderson and I'm the Chief Technology Officer at Variantum, where I lead the product development and customer solution creation operations. Variantum was founded as a research spin-off from Helsinki University of Technology, now part of Aalto University. My background is in computer science and before joining Variantum I worked at the university in the research group that laid the foundations on which Variantum is built.When I was younger, I played football and practiced Ju-Jutsu, but nowadays my sports of choice are cycling to the office and jogging. I have always been passionate about music and for the past five years I’ve been learning the five-string banjo."How would your family describe you?"I am half British and half Finnish, with the stereotype British humour - I often talk about things half-jokingly, never too seriously. “Funny guy, chatters a lot.” "What is best about working at Variantum?"We have a great team with really smart people. Whenever a problem arises, we're keen to innovate and solve it. In general, software development is interesting and challenging. An initial idea turns into a sound product through team effort. I really enjoy to see the things my colleagues and I developed in daily use at our customers."What are your professional strengths?"I love developing software and it’s something that I believe I am good at, whether its coding or leading a development team. With a huge amount of programming experience, it easier to grasp larger problems. Of course, I am not the only one in our team with that sort of experience. As excellent software developers, we have a holistic understanding of the problem we are trying to solve."Where do you see Variantum in five years"We have spent a lot of effort on making our current products. This is of course just the start of the journey and now we are focusing on growing and making our products known worldwide."Any last words before that world domination? "We have been working for years to develop solutions that can stand the test of time because we are always at the cutting edge of innovation. That is the reason we have successfully secured some of Finland’s largest technology companies as long-term clients. That is what you need for world domination." To meet more of our people, take a look to earlier stories here: Meet our people: Hannu Meet our people: Pasi Meet our people: Teemu Meet our people: Jari-Pekka Meet our people: Kauri Meet our people: summer 2020 trainees: Patrik, Jaakko and Josua Meet our people: Tanja Meet our people: Paavo Meet our people: Venla

Variantum has been advising and educating companies about Offering Management already in Finland, Sweden, Netherlands and today Variantum joins into important discussion around Smart Manufacturing industry together with Industry Leading Companies from Germany. Our team in Variantum believes that Offering Management is the right approach and the next big step from Industry 4.0 to enhance especially smart manufacturing into the future needs. According to our observation many manufacturing companies are still beginning of the journey and we want to support leading companies to climb up the stairs with Offering Management. Read more from offeringmanagement.com Interested to know more? Drop us a message or book a virtual meeting with us! Virtual meeting         Call us

Our meet the people in Variantum's team series takes next chapter by introducing you one of our Software Developers: Hannu Peltonen   Present yourself briefly "Hello! I am Hannu Peltonen. I live with my wife and we also have an-18-year-old son, Kauri. On my free time I enjoy going for a walk and reading books every now and then." How your family describes you? Kauri: "Dad is hard-working, smart and helpful." What is your work at Variantum? "I work at Variantum as a Software Developer and work on development of new products. I also do customers projects, like integrate customer old programs to VariSuite and do all kind of maintenance. We all work on many things in our team." What did you do before Variantum? "I graduated from Helsinki University of Technology and started working there as a researcher right away." What is the best thing about working at Variantum? "We have a good atmosphere and a great team! I love that I can see the results of my work and I can work with the big picture. Our atmosphere is warm, supportive and open for communication. Now that we have been working a lot remotely, due to the current situation, I have not seen the workmates as much as I hope." What do you see as your professional strength? "I am a good programmer and like building IT systems. I also like writing documents about our products." What motivates you? "Generally, I like my job. I am thankful that I have job that I enjoy doing, it is interesting, and I even get paid for doing it!" Where do you see Variantum in five years? "Our field of business has its challenges. However, I believe that our products have developed further and found lots of new users. I also see that we will have a standardized education packages for the products by then. Our company has grown, and we have more teams that focus on doing their part of the process instead of everyone doing a little bit of everything." Thank you for the interview. Do you have any greetings for the readers? "Thank you! Stay safe and have a happy autumn! Hopefully by Christmas we will be in more normal conditions and can celebrate pre-Christmas together."   To meet more of our people, take a look to earlier stories here: Meet our people: Pasi Meet our people: Teemu Meet our people: Jari-Pekka Meet our people: Kauri Meet our people: summer 2020 trainees: Patrik, Jaakko and Josua Meet our people: Tanja Meet our people: Paavo Meet our people: Venla

Our world is changing faster than ever due to the incredible innovation and unprecedented technological change. Digitalization, AI, robotics, and Internet of Things are transforming the markets with speed never seen before. Customer-centricity has been identified as the driving force for companies who are willing to succeed in today´s rapidly changing business environment. You can see this change in our everyday lives: shopping via voice command, autonomous cars and smart devices connected to buildings that keep you connected and always-on. People are not just connected to each other, but also with the companies who provide us services across every industry. The whole buyer behaviour is evolving. Ecommerce giants have set the standards for service and delivery high and personalized service is the new normal. This will break the barriers between B2C and B2B. For example, company providing elevators and escalators moves over 1B people each day. They can anticipate service needs and provide digital services during the elevator ride to create even more seamless consumer experience. This creates endless opportunities for companies to sell more to clients both on B2C and B2B markets. On the other hand, personalization drives offering complexity, the number of offerings consisting physical software and service components is increasing. Delivering complex offerings and personalization generates manual labour and overhead across departments. It eventually increases the whole offering complexity. Is your company selling multiple variations of services, products, or solutions to your customers? What is Offering Management? Offering Management is re-imagining what and how you can sell, produce and provide services for your offerings. Offering Management manages the full product life cycle of an offering, including the validated requirements; the defined business model; and configuration capabilities for mass-customization, marketing, sales, production, services and support. Why Offering Management is important? To help you out here a bit, do these questions sound familiar? How will your business change in the following years? Which products or innovations or services will provide the highest business values in the future? How to make buying and selling easy? How the ecosystem technologies and connected software will affect your profits? Learn more from our success stories Our Portfolio Our Offering Management portfolio is a complete toolset to enable your business growth. The offering lifecycle spans sales, engineering, production, and maintenance processes. Variantum´s portfolio enables the access and tools & fit for purpose software for a company producing multiple variations of products, software, or services.   More resources Specializing in High Impact Offering Management Solutions CPQ – feasibility study PDM – feasibility study Interested to know more? Our sales people will help you out, so please ask for a virtual meeting or call us! Virtual meeting         Call us

It's time to continue our journey of introducing the people at Variantum. This time we would like to introduce our Sales Executive Pasi Auramo. Present yourself briefly “I am Pasi Auramo. I call my family as a bonus-family since me and my wife have all together 4 children and 2 grandchildren. On my free time I like to be adventurous – I have tried almost everything you can imagine trying. I like to challenge my body and mind. I have been for example surfing, sailing, golfing, running marathons and playing football. Once I even was a hockey goalie since no-one else didn’t have the guts for it. I believe that it is fun to try everything!” What would your family say if they had to describe you with a few words? “They would probably compare me to a Duracell rabbit. :D I have a lot going on all the time, but I keep on to my promises.” What is your job at Variantum and what is your job history like? “I work at Variantum as a Senior Executive Sales. I started at IT-business 35 years ago, year 1983. I am lucky and thankful for the opportunities that I have got – I have had the chance of working in different places with different kinds of tasks. As in my personal life, in work life I have also wanted to do and try different kinds of things. I believe that my strong experience from various ICT business segment is my great professional strength.” What is the best thing about working at Variantum? “When I started working here, I was very positively surprised how excellent our experts are. They really know what they talk about! I also like that our company is very agile, and we work together for our common goals.” What motivates you? “Well, firstly, life is good! I enjoy living and gaining different kinds of experiences. I also think that it is good that we are all different and to learn about what different kind of people appreciate.” Where do you see Variantum in five years? “Variantum will be noticed and well-known offering management company. We have found our place in our niche as a respected service provider. I hope to be in this process making it happen!” Thanks for the interview. Do you have any greetings for the readers? “Let’s talk about offering management together, I am always open for a talk!”   To meet more of our people, take a look to earlier stories here: Meet our people: Teemu Meet our people: Jari-Pekka Meet our people: Kauri Meet our people: summer 2020 trainees: Patrik, Jaakko and Josua Meet our people: Tanja Meet our people: Paavo Meet our people: Venla

Since September has now begun, it also means that summer is over, schools have started, and our summer employees went back to school to continue their studies. Let us hope that it is possible to meet other students too and not just study remotely from home!  We want to say our warm greetings to our summer workers: Kauri, Josua, Patrik and Jaakko. You all did an excellent job for the whole summer and we hope to see you working for Variantum in the future! Venla will continue working for us as a part time Marketing Specialist even though she is moving to Sweden to continue her master’s studies in Lund University. Most probably we will hear her thoughts on working distantly and studying at the same time later this fall!   Once again, thank you and have a great school semester all of you!  ...btw, if you missed our meet the team blog posts, check them again here and get to know to these great persons:  Meet our people: Kauri  Meet our people: summer 2020 trainees: Patrik, Jaakko and Josua  Meet our people: Venla 

Marine industry has very specific characteristics comparing to any other industry. Even it resembles Project based building industry, it still must fulfil customer required features (e.g. cargo, volume, weight), operational efficiency (e.g. cruising speed, consumption, pollution), and continuous planned and unplanned instant maintainability thru operational lifetime, sometimes during operation. Marine industry cluster, companies that are involved design, build and delivering very large variety of different equipment’s ... Read the full story from offeringmanagement.com

We are pleased to announce that we have signed a partnership agreement with Seligent Consulting. Variantum and Seligent Consulting will work in cooperation to provide PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) consultation. The partnership will enable both parties to improve the efficiency of client rollouts and integrations while creating the environment for further systems development. Variantum believes that any company should be able to easily sell the products that their customers want, regardless of the complexity. To do this, they have developed a modular system that complements existing systems and simplifies the product offerings across the whole product lifecycle. Doing so, allows greater visibility across the whole organisation allowing for more accurate pricing, improved product processes and a clear digital product offering.   Seligent Consulting is an international company with offices in Pune, India, Stockholm, Sweden and Washington DC in the USA. They have spent many years assisting customers from different Industries in implementing data management solutions. They offer a wide range of product, productivity and consultancy tools that make it easier to realize the value from Enterprise Data Management solutions. “We bring deep expertise in the enabling technologies of these tools and consulting experience to this partnership with Variantum. Our collaboration will enhance our agility in serving our customers in Europe and beyond” says Seligent’s CEO, Prashant Ganu. “Variantum is one of the few companies in the world which can handle product data management, sales and product configuration, all in one system, so the agreement with Seligent is an excellent opportunity to expand our influence around the world” says Variantum’s CEO, Kimmo Karhu.

Journey of meeting the people of Variantum continues. This time we would like to introduce our Head of Products, Teemu Kaattari. Tell us something about yourself? “Hello! I am Teemu Kaattari, the Head of Products at Variantum. I have been working for Variantum for quite long, 8,5 years now.  My family includes my wife and our two children, 17- and 13-year-olds. I have had a common hobby with my son because I have been coaching ice hockey for his team for 7 years now. I also enjoy doing other sports, some to mention - golf, tennis, orienteering, skiing, and jogging.” What would your family say if they had to describe you with a few words? “They would probably describe me as an out-going, honest, trustworthy, and positive person.” What is your job history like? “I studied aeronautics, computer aided engineering and industrial economics in Helsinki University of Technology. After that I have been working with different kinds of PLM and CAD/CAE systems since 1996. I would say I have a strong experience on that field of business.” Why have you chosen to work for Variantum? “Variantum is a very interesting company since we have special expertise in the field of configurable products and utilizing them in different parts of the company – like product development, sales, production and so on…“ What motivates you?  “My workdays vary a lot – two days are never the same. Variantum and its products are developing day by day, which is important since the world is changing all the time.” What is challenging in your job?  "Sometimes it is hard to put into short words all the benefits that Variantum’s products clearly can give to the customers." Where do you see Variantum in 5 years?  "Variantum has grown and our products are more used all over the world. Companies have benefited from Variantum’s excellent solutions with faster quotation-order-delivery processes." Thanks for the interview. Do you have any greetings for the readers?  "We are the experts of mass customization and successful implementations with VariSuite. We should talk, especially if your company works or you are on the way to work with configurable products. It is proven that we can help you!" To meet more of our people, take a look to earlier stories here: Meet our people: Jari-Pekka Meet our people: Kauri Meet our people: summer 2020 trainees: Patrik, Jaakko and Josua Meet our people: Tanja Meet our people: Paavo Meet our people: Venla

Last Friday it was time to celebrate! Some of our team have been working for Variantum for over 15 years already. We took a private charter boat from Keilaranta Espoo and sailed cross the Helsinki bay area to Suomenlinna Brewery Restaurant where we spent a great long night eating delicious dinner. At Variantum we believe that it is extremely important to have a good team spirit since we want our employees to believe in each other as well as respect each other too. In everything we do we strive to live through our values: fairness, diversity, and innovation. To keep the happy team spirit going it is good to spend time together talking about other things than work too and loosen up a bit. We had so much fun on Friday! Without our great customers this would not be possible so at the same time we want to thank you and wish you a great start to the autumn. Together we can achieve meaningful things!   Learn more about Variantum

We are continuing the journey of getting to know our employees. This time you will meet our three funny summer workers, Patrik, Josua and Jaakko. And hey..in case you want to throw yourself back to earlier introductions, you can find them here: Meet our people: Tanja Meet our people: Paavo Meet our people: Venla Tell us something about yourself? Patrik: “I am a 24-year-old student from Aalto University. I study systems analysis and computer science. I am starting my second year of master’s studies this fall. My hobbies are circus and dancing and other sports, like for example playing tennis with my friends. At Variantum I work on data visualizations for the new web client.” Josua: “I am studying in Aalto University too. I study computer science and mathematics for the third year. I love reading books and enjoy hiking whenever I get the chance and the weather is nice. We work with Jaakko to create interface for VariTrace.” Jaakko: “I also study mathematics at Aalto. I am 23 years old and on my free time I like to train running, play StarCraft 2. I also play chess! I enjoy music and play the guitar.”   How did you end up working at Variantum this summer? Patrik: “I actually heard about Variantum at an event in our school last year. This is my second summer working at Variantum.” Josua: “I heard about the company from my girlfriend.” Jaakko: “Patrik praised the company after last summer so I sent an application.”   What have the first weeks been like?  Patrik: ”I have brushed up the things I learned last year, studied new coding languages and the database system. ” Josua: ”It has been challenging learning a new job. The corona has made it more difficult to learn because there hasn’t been many other coders at the office. However, with a some adapting everything has gone well! 😊” Jaakko: ”First weeks have mainly been getting to know the new system.” What do you look forward to doing this summer? Patrik: ”I already know quite much and I hope to create something good. I also look forward to physicist spex summer day and on Midsummer I will go to my friends summer cottage.” Josua: ”I hope that I will learn a lot of things that will be useful for other projects too and of course create something that will be useful for the company. I hope that this summer will be warm. We have been planning to go to Berlin with my girlfriend now that the borders are open! I will spend the Midsummer at a summer cottage with my friends.” Jaakko: ”I want to learn to do front-end tasks faster and without help! I didn’t know if it would be possible to do anything this summer because of corona so I don’t really have any special plans. At least, I want to work on my 400 meter running time. And on Midsummer I will go to my summer cottage!”   Happy Midsummer from the whole Variantum crew!

Variantum has been co-operating with Trainers’ House for acquisition of new customers, prospecting and lead generation. The co-operation has been successful. Trainers’ house helps us to focus on what we are good at by freeing up time from contacting the new customers. ”We wanted our staff to have more time from the contacting to the actual sales work, concentrate our resources and that way make the doing more effective. Trainers’ House has become an extended part of our organization. The co-operation has given us valuable conversation openings with interesting companies.”, says Kimmo Karhu, the CEO of Variantum. Variantum has made a 1-year-long deal with Trainers’ House and we look forward to seeing the outcome of this teamwork. Read the full story of this co-operation in Finnish from: https://www.trainershouse.fi/case/variantum-myynnin-ajankayton-priorisointia/

We are continuing the journey of getting to know our employees. Here is our last but not least summer worker: Kauri! Hello! I am Kauri Pälsi and I am 18 years old. I finished high school this year and was lucky enough to be admitted to Aalto University straightaway. I will be starting my studies in applied physics and mathematics in a month from now. I am looking forward to the various intriguing courses and interesting people. I enjoy combining technology with art and have been a hobbyist filmmaker, animator and game programmer for years. I like solving creative and technical challenges. This is my third summer working at Variantum. I started when Variantum was looking for someone to create a demonstration project for their configurable 3D model system and I had the necessary skills in technical 3D modelling. Last summer, I worked with Patrik, who is also here this summer as a summer trainee, on product demonstrations combining self-built models and Variantum’s software. This year my assignment is quite different, producing marketing videos with the marketing assistant Venla. The first summer it was exciting to get to know a totally new workplace, this year it was nice to see familiar faces as well as some new ones. It is always fun to learn new things. I look forward to making as professional material for the marketing team as I can. Enjoy the rest of the summer and stay safe! To meet more of our people, take a look to earlier stories here: Meet our people: summer 2020 trainees: Patrik, Jaakko and Josua Meet our people: Tanja Meet our people: Paavo Meet our people: Venla

During the summer we wanted to share some success stories with our customers. Variantum has been able to help all of these companies with their business and to build solutions that have helped with for example improvements with process times and seamless data flow through product life cycle.   Success Story with Elematic  Success Story with Abloy  Success Story with Kone  Success Story with Chiller  Our marketing assistant Venla has brought her dog to the office a few times this summer. See the pictures from the link below!  Our office dog Lumi  We took advantage of the corona period and everyone working from home and made some renovations at the office.   Office Renovations  We started working with Salesforce this spring and you can find our easy to use Configure-Price-Quote solution from there. Read the instructions how to start using from the LinkedIn post.   CPQ solution for Salesforce?  You are more than welcome to start following our updates also in our LinkedIn channel.  

Variantum wishes everyone a very joyful and warm summer time with full of sunshine! Most of our crew are starting their summer vacations this weekend and latest during next week. The Customer Support will be available throughout the summer especially from the Customer Support portal - see more in Get Support section.   During the summer time, our summer crew will be posting some updates to our Youtube and LinkedIn channels, so if you're not following these already, start following them today! Happy and relaxing summer holidays to everyone!

Are you looking for a trusted advisor who could help you to find out how Configure-Price-Quote (CPQ) solution could benefit your business? Perhaps you're thinking how to get best out from the Product Data Management (PDM) solution and how it could help your team creating the crucial backbone of your configurable products? Take a look for our fresh CPQ and PDM Feasibility Studies which could reveal your company's true potential for example in time savings, process improvements and product quality! CPQ Feasibility Study Read more about the business drivers and key questions that will help you to find out your true numbers - how to take your Sales process to the next level! PDM Feasibility Study Read more about the business drivers and key questions that will help you to find out your true figures - how to improve your Product Data Management! Interested to know more? We will help you out, so please ask for a virtual meeting or call us! Virtual meeting         Call us

During these times, also this interview was done virtually.. Maybe you have already read the thoughts of our summer worker Venla? This time we would like to introduce Paavo Porkka, our Head of Customer Support, who started his journey at Variantum this year in February. Tell us something about yourself? “Hello! I am Paavo Porkka, Head of Customer Support at Variantum. I am 35-year-old and my family consists of my wife and two lovely children. On my free time I love to do different kind of sports, especially team sports and ball sports. If I had to choose one favorite it would be ice hockey. Many might also recognize me from LinkedIn because I am a very active user and interested in researching what kind of posts reach a lot of people and how people are interacting with eachother in the business oriented social media. I am also a friendly person and I like to chat with other people a lot in and out of office and it is easy for me to jump into all sorts of conversations.” What is your job history like? “I got interested in computers when I was a little boy, something like 4-year-old. After high school I got to the EVTEK University of Applied Sciences (later Metropolia) where I studied Information Technology and specialized in embedded systems engineering. After that I have worked with various customer care, service and support teams and done different kind of projects that have aimed to develop the business and customer experience.” Why do you like working at Variantum? “I was looking for new challenges after my longish +5 years’ experience at the latest role I had and Variantum seemed like a great place to learn new things. Variantum has an impressive product family and the whole area of business seemed interesting. I have always been curious to understand the business as a whole - so that it is easier to see the importance of my own job related to big picture, mission and future vision.” What is the best thing about working at Variantum? “I love that our team is so diverse, and we have all kinds of personalities working here. Despite of that it is easy to approach teammates and we always help each other no matter how complex tasks we’re solving.” Where do you see Variantum in five years? “Our goal is to grow internationally in the upcoming years, and I believe we’re at right track to make that happen. I also see us as a relevant ecosystem partner which helps companies to grow their existing ecosystems and connect new necessary ecosystems to their existing environment so that they can grow their business and make it more digital and up to date as a response to changing world. It will be interesting journey to co-operate with other leading world-class partners and providers to serve Global Customers!” Thanks for the interview! “Thank you and let’s hope for a sunny and warm summer with lots of swimming!”

Have you already heard from our latest Success Story with Elematic? They chose VariSales because it solves Elematic’s need of complex configuration’s with product and product line offering (CPQ - Configure Price Quote). For the full story and the video click the link below:  variantum.com/success-stories/elematic  VariSales is powerful tool for sales configuration, quoting and pricing and you can learn more about the solution at variantum.com/solutions/varisales/  Are you interested to talk more about our offering management VariSuite? Drop us a message and let’s have a virtual meeting! Virtual meeting         Call us

Configurable products have been supplied to fulfill wider demand of customers with the same product or product family. Today, many companies adore long relationships with customer and product as a service offering. However, many companies still struggle with basic product information principles.. Read whole article written by Teemu Kaattari at offeringmanagement.com

Kimmo Karhu, CEO of Variantum has been featured in Kauppalehti Optio in an article (in Finnish) that reviews companies of the future as well as how offering management can be an engine for business growth. Besides, the article explains the benefits of using offering management for companies competitiveness. Read the article

Source: https://www.statista.com/chart/20028/daily-active-users-of-slack-and-microsoft-teams/ Stay calm and continue your digital journey for even better tomorrow. It’s a simple fact that Coronavirus (COVID-19) has caused a lot of uncertainty and according to Bloomberg it could cost $2.7 Trillion for Global Economy. Due to these on-going changed times for global economy we decided to share our ideas how you could enhance your business especially considering the ever growing need for go-to-markets and increasing need of the solution offer velocity especially now when soon the whole global market is shared again after recovery period starts right after biggest COVID-19 crisis will be over. We think that the time is Now - to continue making your digital capabilities ready for tomorrow! Are you selling multiple variations of your services, products or solutions to your customers? Was it way easier to talk with your Research and Development department together with possible pre-sales team while you were mostly working at the office closely together? Has it gone more challenging while moving 100% remote work due to these on-going lockdowns? Yes, there are very practical virtual tools out there that you have had to start using, if not already earlier, at least now when most of us are forced to work from our homes remotely. Those tools are brilliant for co-working and producing necessary content on timely matters towards your Customers and Prospects but there might be even more you could do. What if you would not need to do that much of dialog and discussion with any variant of your products and services anymore? What if you would have a great system which guides you, the sales person, to configure the needed solution case by case and to make sure it’s also something that you really can deliver when customer agrees with the offer? With our Software as a Service (SaaS) based solution you can do unlimited versions of your products and make sure your customer gets always the best fit for the need from your offering, and what’s the most important you can do it with a blink of an eye! Our job at Variantum is to master whole end-to-end Offering Management. In case you would like to talk more closely how we can do it together, just drop us a message and your contact details at Contact Sales and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible. Please note, we’re able to do it all over remote connections! Let’s keep business running through these hard times to keep global economy healthy – together we can do it! Cheers Kimmo, Jari-Pekka, Pasi, Jouni and Paavo

We are excited to announce that Paavo Porkka has joined Variantum as the Head of Customer Support. Here are Paavo's thoughts on his latest career move:   “I’m really looking forward for creating a world class customer support experience and improving our ways of working to give best possible support to our customers with their all possible needs with our products.   In my previous roles I’ve been for example leading Customer Service team and being responsible for various processes development for several years. One of my top interests for a long time has been overall Customer Experience and making practical improvements for it.   At Variantum I’ll be heading our Customer Support organization while enhancing our ways of working towards more customer centric future!”   Welcome Paavo!

Variantum are pleased to announce that they have signed a cooperation agreement with SharePLM. The agreement means that the two companies will work in partnership to provide PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) training. The partnership will enable improved efficiency of new rollouts and improve the employee onboarding process for new client projects Variantum believes that any company should be able to easily sell the products that their customers want, regardless of the complexity. To do this, they have developed a modular system that complements existing systems and simplifies the product offerings across the whole product lifecycle. Doing so, allows greater visibility across the whole organisation allowing for more accurate pricing, improved product processes and a clear digital product offering.   Established in Spain, SharePLM helps companies improve the ROI of their PLM solutions. To do this, they help their clients to develop their PLM strategy through courses, classroom training and the setting up of training libraries. The partnership with Variantum will help SharePLM create even more customer specific training which will in turn provide added value for their customers.  “As the products we use contain more and more added functionality, it is vital that their effectiveness is not diminished due to their complexity. The partnership with SharePLM is a great example of how we can improve effectiveness by tailoring the customers training needs better” says Variantum’s CEO, Kimmo Karhu.

We welcome Pasi Auramo, our new Head of Strategic Accounts, to the team. Pasi joined us on February 10th 2020, and here’s how he describes his new endeavours.   ”I am really excited to join the professional team at Variantum. I am eager to meet our customers and contribute my part of our efforts and mission.   Variantum helps its clients on the way to becoming more customer centric. This is enabled with our PDM and life-cycle platform which helps you to make competitive mass-customized products, with a true digital thread.   During my professional IT career I have held several positions within sales, support, business development and professional services as well as general management for international service businesses. At Variantum, I will focus on our enterprise customers, selling solutions directly to your clients' software portfolios and ongoing consultancy services. Previously I have worked at companies such as Digital Equipment Corporation, Dell, Wincor Nixdorf and SAP, to mention a few.”

This is a translation of an Variantum Offering Management article in Tulevaisuuden Suomi 2019.    Companies must take control of their offering lifecycle in order to ensure their competitiveness and profitability in the future.   To ensure their competitiveness in the future, companies must meet their customer needs more thoroughly by advancing from mere product sales to the next level in the evolution of offering management.   “Many companies have trouble getting to the second level of the evolution to begin with; they already struggle with service production. Sales departments, for example, are often unaware of which products have been sold to a customer. This makes cross-selling and upselling difficult, or they might require extensive inquiry on a regular basis,” states Kimmo Karhu; CEO in Variantum, a pioneer in product management and configuration.   Variantum is one of the few in its global field, who handle product data management, as well as sales and production configuration, all in the same system. With these solutions, organizations within a company from development to production and sales to maintenance services, get a shared view of the company’s offering.   “As a result, the company’s offering is more easily, automatically and efficiently within the customer’s reach. Meanwhile, the company can ensure that their pricing is profitable and their order-to-delivery process straightforward.”   With a sales configurator, a company can be certain of their product’s manufacturability. As a by-product, production configuration creates a digital product unit, which provides a basis for profitable maintenance and service business, since all product data is available in real-time.     Variantum configurators do not intend to replace ERP or CRM systems, but rather enhance their ability where required.   “It is worth remembering, that this shift is evolution, not a revolution. It means that the new and old systems can coexist until the market is ready to shift to a new era,” Karhu concludes.   Offering Management Evolution

Variantum was featured in an Offering Management article Kauppalehti Optio in May 2019. Variantum.com offers now the whole article in English. Enjoy!   Take control of your full product and service management with a system covering all your company’s departments and lasting for a full business life cycle.   Individual needs of customers and meeting them as effectively as possible are vital principles for a company in today’s increasingly developing operating environment. While manufacturing companies focus on their competitiveness and developing their service business, service companies differentiate from their competitors with customized portfolios.   According to Kimmo Karhu (CEO, Variantum), “Companies already possess systems for product information and sales management. However, the information in these systems is often scattered and difficult to utilize; the process as a whole remains uncovered.”   Variantum, the software company pioneering product management and configuration, solves the problem with their Offering Management System. It provides all the necessary information on a business life cycle from development to production and from sales to administration.   “We have expanded the product life-cycle management to include the whole product selection - this is the essence of Offering Management. It consists of everything the company designs, manufactures and sells to its customers.”   “Traditionally, the product life-cycle management is based on the context around the physical product. What we offer our customers, is a combination of product, software and service - the only solution on the market that covers everything from the initial idea to sustained service.”   The CPQ solution allows faster offers, automates pricing and eliminates manually made errors in sales. “With its assistance, the designs are easier to sell and their manufacturing is reliable.”   ABILITY TO MEET INDIVIDUAL CUSTOMER NEEDS   Enterprise Resource Planning systems are becoming more common, making them ineffectual in terms of competitive advantage in the market. According to Karhu, adding the extra value has transferred to the field of product management.   With Offering Management, companies can provide their customers with high-class, individually customized, life-cycle managed services faster than before. Some of our customers’ size of the production batch is one.   Variantum is not necessarily intending to replace the existing product management systems in companies, but rather to bring new abilities alongside. “We help companies to develop their current offering, with an option of utilizing our product beside their existing systems,” Karhu concludes. Offering Management adds value for competitiveness   Every stage under control: R&D - Sales - Production - Maintenance Ability to combine the product, the software and the service as one The faster way to the market for new products Paying close attention to individual customer needs Efficiency and ability to provide customized mass products Make offers faster and without errors

When I was looking for a summer job, I wanted to do something very different than I had been doing before. I ended up at Variantum through my connections. I did a few different projects, all related to the sales configurator. I created an excel from the given information and modeled the excel to the configurator. First I had to learn to do the excel correctly, so I created one from the Lego Mustang toy car. It was indeed very interesting to see your work on the configurator. Once I was confident with the excel, I did a bigger project. After that, I also did one smaller project for a customer.      The most interesting part was to see what working in an IT-company can be and how variable working on this line of business is. It was also very rewarding to create something concrete from "nothing" and see my learning and progression during the processes. I learned a lot and of course, had a good time. Variantum has truly a welcoming and relaxed atmosphere to work in. Everyone is easily approachable and you can ask help from anyone if you have any doubts. Everyone is open-minded and made me feel from the start that my opinion made a difference.      I get my motivation from several sources, but mostly from my friends, family, teachers, etc. people around me. It makes me super motivated when I see people reach their dream and success, hoping that I can do the same someday. As an example, I'm going to apply to medical school after high school, so I follow lots of medical students on Instagram. Every time they post something about their studies it makes me want to study twice as hard just so I can fulfill my dreams one day just like them.

Auramarine Ltd provides proven customer value through world-class fuel system expertise. Auramarine is the pioneer in fuel supply systems for the marine and power industries. Auramarine offers reliable, high quality, proven technology available in configurations that best serve their customers and deliver the highest value. Auramarine and Variantum Oy have started a co-operation in order to implement Variantum’s software solution, aiming for Auramarine to submit sales quotations faster and more efficiently with this. Variantum is a software company developing world-class solutions for customer offerings.  

Variantum office is enjoyable to work in for various reasons. One obvious reason is the green walls that purifies the air employees breathe. With pure and fresh air, we at Variantum can focus on our daily work while the green walls take care of the air we breathe. Sustainability can also be noticed in the absence of single use cups. Plastic cups are not in use as, we know, they take years to break down. Employees use mugs and glasses as it doesn’t take long to wash them. As Variantum wants to promote sustainability, we encourage our employees to use public transport, cycling or walking to and from work. Greener commute gets us in better shape, save time and stress, give time to read and save money. Moreover, we make sure we print only relevant documents and the two-sided printing is set as default. There are many ways sustainability is noticed, and we constantly strive to become greener.