How Mayer & Cie. is rethinking sales: The path to fast, error-free quotes with SAE
Manual complexity, countless variants, and the desire for greater efficiency—these are challenges that many companies are familiar with. But how does a global market leader whose products can be configured in up to 40 million variants deal with this? Mayer & Cie. took on this mammoth task and, with the CPQ solution from SAE, has achieved an impressive transformation of its sales department. Immerse yourself in a success story that shows how digitalization not only optimizes processes but also creates real competitive advantages.
The challenge: manual complexity in a digital world
Mayer & Cie. stands for precision, flexibility, and quality in the field of circular knitting machines. The possible applications for their machines are as diverse as they are demanding, ranging from sports textiles to industrial products. But this diversity came at a price: each machine is manufactured individually to customer order and can be configured in up to 40 million variants. Imagine: a price book comprising thousands of pages, manual transfer of configurations to Excel, and a lengthy process to arrive at the final quote.
Sebastian Mayer, Chief Digital Officer at Mayer & Cie., sums it up aptly: “The manual process was time-consuming and prone to errors. We knew we had to modernize our sales process in order to remain at the top.” In addition, valuable expertise was lost when staff changed, as it was tied up in people's heads and emails. For a company with an export quota of 99 percent and a global network of trading partners, this was a hindrance.
The solution: Seamless SAP integration as a decisive criterion
As part of its comprehensive digitalization strategy, Mayer & Cie. was looking for configure-price-quote (CPQ) software to modernize its sales operations. The main goal was to bundle all relevant information and follow-up processes in a single system and secure existing expertise without restricting important contact between trading partners and customers.
The most important selection criterion was seamless integration into the existing SAP system. “SAP integrability was the main criterion for us. SAE was able to convince us with a proof of concept that their solution was a perfect fit for us,” explains Sebastian Mayer. Instead of setting up a separate test environment, SAE directly demonstrated the integration capability into Mayer & Cie's live SAP system.
Implementation took place within around twelve months, starting with the top-selling machines. This step-by-step approach ensured a smooth transition. "Particular challenges for the family business were translating the knowledge from the price book into processes, reorganizing existing processes, and transferring both into the new system. Decisions had to be made to create a common basis for all countries and cultures involved in sales. SAE Mayer & Cie. provided advice and support as a transparent partner throughout this process," the article states. Mayer & Cie. was completely satisfied with the collaboration with SAE.
The result: faster, simpler, and more reliable pre-sales
The introduction of SAE's CPQ solution has fundamentally transformed the pre-sales process at Mayer & Cie.
- Daily updated prices and quotations: Where previously only rarely updated PDF price lists were used, today's prices and quotations can be generated on a daily basis.
- Quick training: New sales staff and trading partners can now quickly get to grips with the complex configuration process without needing extensive prior knowledge.
- Full transparency: Sales activities are easier to track, and Mayer & Cie.'s processing center receives the right information at all times. This eliminates media and logic breaks.
Sebastian Mayer sums it up clearly: "In SAE, we have found not only a technical platform but also an inspiring partner for digitizing our complex sales processes. SAE CPQ has made our pre-sales process faster, easier, more reliable, and up to date, without any media or logic breaks in our SAP system. This is what digitalization should look like."
The success story of Mayer & Cie. impressively demonstrates how targeted digitalization can optimize traditionally complex processes and achieve a decisive competitive advantage. Transparent, digitally supported sales—that is the reality at Mayer & Cie.