www.tdci.comContact us: 800.630.6687 info@tdci.com

SELUX Corporation (SELUX) manufactures interior and exterior lighting fixtures for projects throughout North America. A subsidiary of Germany’s Semperlux AG, SELUX Corporation is responsible for all US operations. Products are sold through a network of agents in the United States, Canada and Mexico. Architectural designers are able to select from a catalog of standards as well as work with the SELUX team of engineers and lighting application professionals to establish their own unique design solution. SELUX is the place to find original designs manufactured from quality materials, and produced at a competitive price. Learn more about SELUX USA at www.selux.com/usa.

SELUX CorporationSELUX goals:

• Simplify product specification and pricing for agents

• Reduce number of orders requiring call-back to agents for corrections

• Eliminate the need to maintain in-house quoting software

• Eliminate the time, effort and cost of a paper price book

• Speed manufacturing visibility of order details to drive material planning

BuyDesign capabilities:

• SyteLine Channel Sales (powered by BuyDesign Channel Sales)

• SyteLine Configurator (powered by BuyDesign Configurator)

Results to date:• Product models developed in less than a month for full line

of exterior products

• Online product specification, pricing, and ordering system fully integrated into SELUX web site for agents

• Enthusiastic response from agent organizations and internal customer service personnel already using the new system

• Order accuracy nearly 100% – few if any orders entered through Channel Sales require agent call-backs

• On track to eliminate need for in-house quoting system, paper price book, and older SyteLine Features & Options tool

Customer Profile

“Channel Sales is an important aspect of our efforts to support continued growth. It enables us to process orders much more quickly by ensuring valid configurations and prices right up front. It is one of our top initiatives because it makes our agents more self-sufficient and streamlines the entire process.”

Brenda ShafferSELUX Vice President

www.tdci.comContact us: 800.630.6687 info@tdci.com

ChallengeIn 2010, SELUX executives could see that the existing tools they were providing to agents for specifying and ordering the company’s make-to-order products – paper price books and an in-house developed online pricing tool – would soon become constraining factors as sales volumes grew.

The company wanted to make the process simpler and faster for sales people while ensuring orders were correctly priced, and always represented valid products that could, in fact, be manufactured. At the same time, SELUX wanted to move to standard off the shelf software to enable online quoting in order to eliminate the time and cost of maintaining the current software tool they had developed internally. They also wanted to eventually eliminate altogether the need to print and distribute paper/PDF price books and price book updates.

SELUX had already made good strides in terms of streamlining operations through the use of Infor10 ERP Business (SyteLine), and had taken the first steps towards handling their make to order products through the use of the SyteLine Features & Options capability. But the company wanted to take the next step, and those tools alone did not have all of the capabilities required.

As Brenda Shaffer, SELUX Vice President stated: “Our products have a lot of different options the customer can choose in order to design exactly the lighting solution they want. Even for experienced agents, it can be a little complex to specify a product with a valid combination of features. Our customer service people had to call the agent and make adjustments to the specification for a fair number of orders. Of course, that just delays getting the order into our manufacturing system to drive production.”

Why TDCI’s BuyDesign?

After evaluating alternatives, SELUX chose to implement SyteLine Channel Sales, an online quoting and ordering system, along with SyteLine Configurator – both from Infor Solution Partner, TDCI.

Veit Mueller, SELUX President stated: “With the sales growth we are experiencing in North America and internationally, we want to offer our agents a more powerful capability for specifying, quoting, and selling our make-to-order products. Channel Sales and the Configurator give us the tools we need to help our sales people accelerate the sales process while ensuring accurate product specifications and pricing.”

Shaffer added: “Channel Sales is the natural choice as the platform for our next generation quoting and ordering system because it’s already integrated with SyteLine. Even more importantly, it’s built on the same product configurator we use for order entry within SyteLine. That means we can leverage a single base of product information for all our sales, order processing, and manufacturing activities.”

ResultsTo lay the foundation for the new sales solution, SELUX started by developing product models to drive product configuration and pricing. With the complexity of some of the SELUX products, that was expected to take several months. However, using the Configurator’s graphical design studio, SELUX was able to develop and test the models for the company’s entire line of exterior products – over 25 different product families – in less than one month. “We’ve been able to completely automate all of the various rules, constraints, and pricing calculations involved in our products using relatively straight-forward product models,” says Shaffer. “We’ve even been able to automate all of the “asterisks and footnotes” in our paper price book that sales people would sometimes miss.”

In Spring of 2011, SELUX opened up the new online product configuration and pricing system based on Channel Sales for use by the company’s top 4 agent organizations as the first phase of roll-out. The system guides sales people through selection of various options, providing images and other aids as it goes. Only valid combinations are allowed, so specified products are always manufacturable and properly priced. “The system has gotten an enthusiastic response from our initial agents,” says Shaffer. “They’ve told us it’s much easier to use than our older on-line system and they like the fact that it looks and feels like an integral part of our web site. Most importantly to us, all orders coming into SyteLine are accurate – we have very few cases where we need to contact the agent before passing the order into our manufacturing system.

“With Channel Sales, we have a robust product configuration, quoting, and ordering solution while freeing SELUX from the need to internally maintain custom software,” adds Shaffer. “We also like the fact that Infor and TDCI work closely together to support the integrated BuyDesign and SyteLine solution.”

Shaffer summarizes the overall importance of the new solution to the company: “Channel Sales is an important aspect of our efforts to support continued growth. It enables us to process orders much more quickly by ensuring valid configurations and prices right up front. It is one of our top initiatives because it makes our agents more self-sufficient and streamlines the entire process.”

Customer Profile