Global Manufacturer Streamlines Complex Sales Processes with End to End Sales and Pricing Solution

JTEKT Europe is a subsidiary of JTEKT Corporation. It is a significant division that designs and manufactures advanced steering systems and drive-line components. The division is based in Europe, but its products are sold to major carmakers across the globe. It also shares the same values as its parent company—to provide value to its customers through excellent products that exceed expectations.

Sales and Revenue Challenges

“We have many customer teams, and each had their own way of documenting customer requests and RFQs. With project durations of several years, the financial impact of errors for us is comparably big, as is the risk of knowledge loss, which is very high without a unified system.” - Catherine Cuppi, Project Manager, JTEKT Europe

As a manufacturer, JTEKT Europe had to manage the challenges of being a global company, while navigating a business environment defined by its parent company. This led to several unique sales and revenue challenges, including:

• Managing several large, multi-year contracts with each customer including contracts that span up to 25 years
• Configuring solutions with multiple parameters, advanced costs structures, numerous project phases, and various documentation requirements
• Protecting margins of extended lifecycle solutions from development, to mass production and after-market
• Meeting tight RFQ deadlines set by large automobile manufacturers
• Keeping track of changing cost factors and commercial agreements over several years
• Managing complicated negotiations with and between customers

JTEKT Europe’s Goals

JTEKT Europe needed to digitally consolidate its sales process to improve the customer experience, while keeping profit margins healthy. JTEKT looked for a solution that could provide:

• Standardization of sales procedures for a consistent buying experience regardless of division or brand
• Semi-automated pricing control using real-time ERP-maintained costs
• Improved efficiency across all sales processes throughout the business
• Consistent data shared by every business unit throughout Europe
• Automated margin control using single-source customer and sales data
• Generate quotes for RFPs with high compliance and consistent pricing

Driving digital sales transformation with Zilliant CPQ

Zilliant CPQ provided a robust end-to-end sales solution, which met these needs. With Zilliant, JTEKT Europe could take advantage of a single solution to manage projects and source of truth for product specifications and pricing. Zilliant CPQ reduced costing and pricing errors and accelerated time to quote with a native integration into the ERP and fast proposal generation. With automated margin protection and cost simulation, JTEKT Europe was able to ensure prices and discounts remained in line with business goals. With a more seamless approval process, routed through sales, engineering, and accounting, quotes were accurate and sent to customers the same day they were generated.

“We were impressed by Zilliant’s industry expertise and their deep understanding of our specific requirements and demands during development and go-live of the solution.” - Catherine Cuppi, Project Manager, JTEKT Europe

The digital transformation of JTEKT Europe’s sales process has a lasting impact on the business. Will Zilliant CPQ, JTEKT Europe saw:

• Optimized operations and accelerated time to quote
  JTEKT Europe sales team was able to reduce pricing errors and generate quotes from any channel, device, or location
• Improved profitability and operations
  With Zilliant, JTEKT could provide cost and margin transparency, including dynamic discount and margin management
• Streamlined collaboration and approvals
  JTEKT Europe was able to leverage configurable workflows and routing to speed up approvals, while maintaining centralized prices

Today, Zilliant CPQ is the primary system used to manage JTEKT Europe’s sales. That means all customer and sales data from every region passes through it. Zilliant CPQ also helps JTEKT Europe with its journey to foster a higher level of compliance and efficiency in the RFQ process. This sets the course fora profitable future in which JTEKT Europe continues to deliver excellent products and services that exceed customer expectations.