Calculation & Pricing
Calculation
As a specialist in your field, you often deliver custom solutions. Every customer is unique, every project is unique and, therefore, the solution you offer is also different every time. This means that you perform a new calculation or even several calculations for every order. Calculating is often a specialist task and calls for specific knowledge yet it still can be a labor-intensive process.
Good calculation solutions are rare and, for this reason, a solution is frequently sought in the construction of spreadsheets. Initially, this approach may offer some flexibility that is lacking in most standard software packages. In the long term, however, maintaining these spreadsheets becomes too complex, too time-consuming and too person-dependent. Spreadsheets also have other major disadvantages, such as their non-transparent structure, the impossibility of version management, a lack of support for multiple languages and unworkable integration with document generation.
Sofon offers the flexibility of spreadsheets, but without their disadvantages. With Sofon, your specialists can build complete calculation models that can then be used simply by the calculation or sales team. Ongoing maintenance of calculation models created in Sofon is simple and involves little labor. Version management is supported and the Sofon calculation functionality can be easily combined with configuration and multilingual document generation.
Pricing
As the calculation of sales prices often demands more flexibility than a CRM or ERP system can offer, in many cases external solutions such as spreadsheets are used for this task. However, this frequently creates problems, such as inconsistency between CRM, ERP and the spreadsheets, the muddled use of different spreadsheet versions and the usual problems associated with spreadsheet maintenance.
Sofon makes it possible to maintain sales prices centrally and without restrictions on the desired complexity and flexibility needed to accurately reflect your business. Several currencies, price lists per product group and per product, volume discounts, combination discounts, individual price agreements, surcharges per country, region, etc. can all be recorded and maintained in Sofon. CRM, ERP and spreadsheets can still serve as input here, but Sofon takes care of the distribution and version management, ensuring that these aspects are fully under control.
Companies that deliver custom products generally work with sales prices based on cost prices plus a margin, while companies that supply standard or modular products usually work with price lists. Sofon supports both systems and is also able to combine the two – in the case of a modular product with additional custom work, for example.