Variant
Descrição
Variant CPQ is an intuitive, cloud-based, Configure-Price-Quote and drawing automation system for manufacturers using Autodesk® Inventor®. Variant CPQ securely extends the expertise of the design department to a company’s sales team, dealer channel, and end customers.
Variant CPQ is built on Autodesk Inventor iLogic and Autodesk Platform Services. This makes the implementation straight-forward, economical, and easily scalable. Variant CPQ provides the power of Autodesk Platform Services without the complexities and technical expertise normally required.
Users without any Autodesk Inventor knowledge can securely and accurately configure products, produce drawings, and generate quotes. Administrators control permissions for the products available, documents generated, and whether a quote is available immediately or through Request for Quotation.
Getting Sales and Engineering working together to produce accurate and timely proposals and drawings for configurable products is a challenge. Variant CPQ reduces the time and errors to create configuration models and documents, allowing design teams to focus on value-add product evolution and sales teams to focus on increasing revenue.
Variant CPQ is an excellent alternative to the now retired Autodesk Configurator 360 (C360).
Descrição da versão de avaliação
The Trial site enables users to configure, price and quote previously enabled models from the perspective of an end-user. It does not provide access to administrative functions such as;
- Loading your own models
- Accessing the analytics
- Changing between Quotation and Request for Quotation mode
- Changing of user permissions
Variant is a user-friendly, easy to use online configurator. When Autodesk discontinued C360, our organization was left with no clear replacement and a blurry path forward. Our online product configurator is a core piece of our customer experience, so it was crucial for us to find a replacement. Variant delivered and exceeded expectations allowing for flexibility and adding great features that were missing from C360. We're thrilled with the offering and great support from the SolidCAD team.
Previously using C360 and with that platform being retired we found Variant, who have met our needs in migrating to a new platform whilst offering tools to further develop our configurators further.
The platform runs using Autodesk Forge APIs, using iLogic code within .idw/.iam files to run the automation, this does require some knowledge in these and User Parameters to create designs that run on the platform.
Highlights:
The code requirements/restrictions & best practises are easy to abide to and give a great deal of space to develop around as required for your specific needs.
The Variant platform allows custom roles to be set up and applied to registered users on the platform. The controls for this are clear and easy to use.
The platform is constantly being improved upon, adding new features such as customisable colour/branding settings. The developers also respond to feedback which is always appreciated.
If you are familiar with or use iLogic for some automation, this is a fantastic addition. We are using it to allow our sales team to configure products and provide quick information to customers without any help from design. We are still in the process of setup, but in testing have already seen an impact. Sales now has the ability to quickly pull models and customer approval drawings on their own within minutes. The design team is already seeing a decrease in time spent assisting sales on quotes that may or may not turn into a sale. They can now spend more of their time upkeeping and progressing our product lines.
Setup is fairly simple, even for someone without much logic experience and the UI is easy to use for our team. Support has been helpful, and pricing is flexible to match our needs. Cost is also much lower than any other similar platform we looked into making this one easy to get approved and begin using.
With Autodesk discontinuing C360, we were searching for a suitable, cost-effective solution. We had been using C360 for forward-facing, public 3D models of our products. SolidCAD's Variant solution was a perfect fit. With each release, SolidCAD adds features that C360 had, along with features C360 should have had all along. SolidCAD is very responsive wtih customers and works closely with them to develop and integrate enhancement requests. We've been very happy with the continued evolution of Variant.
We had been using Autodesk's C360, embedded into our website, for customers to generate custom models. When Autodesk announced the discontinuation of C360 we scrambled to find a replacement.
We needed something that would work with our Inventor models, and allow nearly limitless configurations.
Variant from SolidCAD was that solution. We were able to begin working with Variant during its early development and were quickly satisfied with Variant as a replacement to C360.
But it's more than a replacement, it's better. The backend tools provide marketing and sales insights - along with other tools that were lacking in C360. Plus, it's a once a year purchase - no need to worry about cloud computing credits, etc.