Introduction
Fluiconnecto by Manuli is a leading international service organization, focused on high pressure hoses and fluid connectors. They provide products, application engineering knowledge, and maintenance services to market segments that include Construction, Industry & Agriculture, Marine, Mining, and Oil & Gas. Fluiconnecto works through a global network tailored to local conditions—hydroshops, on-site workshops, and service on-site vans—that lets them reach customers across 5 continents.
So Fluiconnecto by Manuli is well-trained to take full advantage of technology innovations, and they’re taking full advantage of e-Con CPQ. Along with using e-Con as a product configurator/product selector, they’ve discovered how effective e-Con can be for after-sales services and project calculations.
The company devotes much of its business to providing equipment lifecycle management, which means they spend a lot of time calculating service inspections. For a bulldozer this can be an easy task, Fluiconnecto handles very big and complicated equipment—for example, dredging vessels. Before e-Con, the company might spend weeks simply checking all engines and parts that are packed with high pressure hoses and fluid connectors. To complicate matters, customers couldn’t afford the downtime in harbor for a complete inspection, so Fluiconnecto needed to send a service inspector sailing away with the vessel. Inspectors literally couldn’t get back to work until a vessel docked, and most often needed to take a plane from a far-flung location.
That’s a lot of time and expense lost from the start. In addition, because an at-sea inspection process wasn’t automated or connected to the business database, the inspector manually recorded all needed parts and repairs and only later keyed them into the system. Fluiconnecto prides itself on lean efficiency, so the company was frustrated by the amount of time and money spent before actual maintenance and service could begin.
e-Con CPQ for FluiConnecto
Fluiconnecto by Manuli will be implementing e-Con CPQ for all service inspections for vessels and ships. e-Con can handle the daunting task of working with thousands of assemblies of hoses and connectors, and with different specs for each item. Indeed, with e-Con CPQ, they can conquer the after-sales market and see healthy margins.
To illustrate the business case Fluiconnecto by Manuli is making: With e-Con CPQ a service inspector is able to analyze a vessel in less than 5 days, when a vessel is temporarily in a harbor. Right now, it could take 5-8 weeks to go on board a vessel and do all the math during a sail. Using e-Con CPQ will save weeks per service inspection. All information is digital, so it’s much easier to access or share information. With 30 engineers working at any given time, Fluiconnecto will realize enormous savings using e-Con CPQ.