CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
16 March 2007
Product News
Configit and eSpline Increase Value of SAP Product Models
Configit and eSpline announce a partnership to deliver solutions using Configit's patented Virtual Tabulation® technology, and eSpline's product configuration software tools for SAP.
Tuning and Deployment kit
VT Distiller Suite for SAP is a tuning and deployment kit for companies that use the SAP Variant Configurator (SAP-VC). The VT Distiller Suite unlocks the value in the SAP-VC product model and makes SAP configurator knowledge and definitions available outside SAP. The Suite extracts, translates, transforms, and distills SAP-VC product models with their business logic and rules into Virtual Tabulation®-files and make the models available throughout the extended enterprise.
World's largest modeling community?
Many of the Global 2000 companies rely entirely on SAP configurator applications to define what products they manufacture, quote, sell, and deliver.
Faster, Smarter and Self Containing
Organizations that use the SAP Variant Configurator (SAP-VC) are now able to leverage and expand their investment in their SAP-VC knowledge base by using Configit Software's VT Distiller Suite to get the following three fundamental advantages:
• Significant performance improvements
• Interactive and more user friendly versions of SAP configurators
• Stand-alone configurators that are easy to deploy and use outside the SAP environment
Pitfalls
VT Distiller Suite eliminates the traditional pitfalls of maintaining multiple product modeling environments with duplication of data and rules. SAP-VC remains the only and authoritative product modeling environment. The distilled VT-files correspond exactly to their SAP-VC configurator siblings but they are safe and easy to distribute and they constitute a well defined interface to SAP-VC.
Behind every great product is a great model
If you buy products with variants (or options) such as with a car, a cell phone, an insurance policy, a pump, etc., it is very likely that rules in a product model in SAP ultimately define what options are available for sale.
Now these SAP-defined products can be loaded into Configit Software's VT Distiller and companies using SAP-VC can be confident that their SAP product definitions behave the same except that they are displayed outside of SAP.
Skills and Technology
This new capability is enabled as a joint effort between Configit Software and eSpline, LLC. eSpline's consultants offer an in-depth knowledge and experience of many SAP-VC and SAP Internet Pricing & Configurator (IPC) customer projects and a history of successful SAP projects. The people at eSpline bring expertise of SAP configuration applications and projects that is comparable with the best in the industry.
"Our partnership with eSpline gives us a complete offering to SAP customers. eSpline comes from the SAP world with unique skills and understanding of the SAP product modeling environment. Configit comes from the world of formal logic and formal verification. eSpline's application provides the information download to Configit's VT Distiller and eSpline experts will set up business processes in SAP that leverage this new opportunity for externalized configurators," says Lars Høgsted, Vice President, Configit Software.
"When product models define what you are able to sell and every order has to pass through a corresponding configurator, the value of your product models are proportional to the speed, user friendliness and availability of your configurators. The more you configure - the better for business. I think of the VT Distiller Suite like a chip-tuning of the mass customization process that boosts the value of existing product models by increasing both use and usability of configurators," says Anders S. Rasmussen, Senior Developer at Configit Software.
"We are excited about this partnership and opportunity with Configit Software and believe that the synergy of the Configit applications and eSpline's SAP knowledge will help leverage any SAP customer's investment in their product knowledge base and make it a cost effective alternative for placing complex product quotes on the web, PC's, laptops, or other mobile devices," explains Don Cochran, VP Sales and Business Development, Co-Founder, eSpline LLC.
Learn more
Learn more about VT Distiller Suite at http://www.configit-software.com/ and http://www.espline.com/
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