Our remit was to design and implement a customised solution for quotation and order creation using a web user interface based on SAP Netweaver technology. The system is tightly integrated into the SAP ERP logistics processes and is viable for expansions in the long term.
Engel Austria GmbH is the global technological market leader in mechanical engineering for injection moulding machines. The company is still 100% family owned today. Engel employs around 6,600 people worldwide.
“By increasing the use of prototypes, we’ve greatly improved the mutual understanding between developers and sales staff. …The biggest challenge in the ultimate implementation of the project was to get 500 users in our global sales structure using the new software as quickly as possible without losing efficiency by running legacy and new software concurrently.”
Dietmar Markl, „e-ViS“ project management
Engel Austria
Engel Austria used a legacy system for quotation and order processing. This system is technologically outdated and could no longer be adapted to current requirements and conditions.
An as-is analysis of the processes and the legacy system was carried out as the basis and a rough concept was drawn up based on this, which in turn described the requirements of the subsequent tendering procedure.
During the implementation phase, the detailed concept design of master data maintenance and quotation and order creation with a complex configurator and flexible calculation was the cornerstone of our project.
For master data maintenance, an application was implemented for the product and option master, custom classification and text maintenance components, which significantly outperformed SAP functions in areas such as product hierarchy, text formatting and resolution.
The foundation for the later configurator was laid by a flexible linking tool, which relates products and options by means of their classification so that configuration rules and price information can be mapped at the same time.
The core, the quotation and order application with integration of an in-house configuration and calculation engine is being constantly further developed and adapted to the current internal and external requirements. Versioning, combining items into attachments, parallel processing of quotations, authorisations at price type level and, of course, the use of the modules for texts and classification are just a few of the innovative features.
Connections exist in the form of interfaces to the CRM system used, but also a strong integration of document creation using SAP Interactive Forms by Adobe as well as to the in-house CRM, and of course also to all the ERP logistics applications.
ABAP Objects and Webdynpro4ABAP were used with an object-focused 3-tier model for technical implementation. A separate infrastructure with update, cache and lock logic, an interface framework for the flexible integration of applications with context-dependent function and field control was developed using these tools. Where SAP WebDynpro proved to be too inflexible, this was elegantly solved by integrating HTML5.
The Engel and PIKON team created a future-proof, flexible, innovative system integrated with SAP out of a legacy system that was no longer economical from a maintainability point of view.
All this leads to faster, more targeted and precise communication with the customer, as internal processes run via eVIS with less communication and much less potential for error. Thanks to the “know-how” contained in the flexible iVIS rules, Engel’s sales department is now in a position to configure the machines together with the customer in such a way that they meet both the customer’s requirements and the technical specifications.
The result, which the customer ends up holding in their hands in the form of a printed or electronic quotation, now also does justice to the Engel brand.
This means that customers, sales staff and sales representatives all benefit equally from the new add-on.
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