What is Visual Configuration?
Visual configuration lets users personalize and change goods by showing them how they will look. It has pictures, 2D or 3D models, and engaging tools that let customers make their dream product and see what it would look like.
Visual setup is most useful for the following situations:
- Products that are made just for one person, like custom furniture or jewelry
- Products that can be highly customized, like medical devices and industrial machinery
- High-end products, like luxury cars or high-end fashion items, must look good for customers to buy them.
- Standard products that can be changed in many ways, like electronics or sports gear
- Essential products that can’t be changed much but need to be seen clearly, like home decor, clothes, or cosmetics
Since people learn best by seeing things, being able to see a product in a realistic model can have a significant effect on their choice to buy. When using visuals, configuring a product is more than choosing choices from drop-down menus or checkboxes. It lets customers interact with the product more deeply and make an emotional or logical connection to the finished product before they buy it.
Synonyms
- Visual configuration in CPQ
- Visual product configuration
Visual Configuration in the Process of Setting Up a Price Quote
Most CPQ software includes a product configurator by default, which is essential. Visual product configurators go even further; they’re the best way to sell complicated items.
Here are some ways that visual product setup tools make the CPQ process better at each step:
- Make settings: Businesses can use visual configuration to give customers a more interactive and exciting experience than just picking choices from a list. Making a dynamic customer self-service portal with most CPQ software is possible because it works with your website and other apps. This would let them make complicated purchases without talking to your sales team, avoiding extra trouble.
- Price: Visual CPQ solutions stop price mistakes when configuration is done by hand. Customers get a correct quote based on their choices, which ensures that the pricing process is honest and open. Because each part has its price, the graphic product configurator can also show customers how their choices affect the paramount price.
- Quote: It makes the plan more impressive when sales reps can include 3D models of the finished product in their quotes. The customer can see exactly what they’ll be getting, and sales reps may be able to upsell or cross-sell by using the visual model to show extra features or goods that go well with the main one.
Showing pictures of the unique product can be very helpful even later in the sales process when the deal is being negotiated and closed. Six to ten people make decisions in a typical business-to-business sale. Each has a lot of knowledge they’ve gathered and their preferences.
Everyone is on the same page with product visualizations, which also help non-technical people understand a product they might not be able to picture otherwise. This leads to faster buy-in, shorter sales processes, and higher conversion rates.
Different kinds of visual configures
2D
A 2D configurator is a simple, fixed configurator that lets users pick options from a list and see how they change a 2D picture. These tools are simple and easy to use, but they’re still helpful for goods that don’t need complex visualizations.
A great example is the graphic configurator you use to build a new car on a car company’s website. You can pick the color, trim, and wheels and see how it all looks in 2D. You can see a changing image and list of choices; the price list changes as you choose different features.
Clothing brands, furniture companies, and other types of businesses that use a configure-to-order or assemble-to-order production style can also benefit from 2D configurators.
3D Modeling Tool
A 3D model could be helpful for companies that sell more complex goods. With 3D product configuration, buyers can see the item from different perspectives and zoom in and out to see specifics more clearly.
IKEA’s kitchen planning tool does a great job of illustrating this. You can not only arrange your kitchen the way you want, but you can also see it in 3D and get a good idea of how everything will fit together.
Most of the time, 3D design is needed for contract manufacturing because buyers must be very clear about the exact sizes and specs of the products they want. One doctor uses 3D models to show their patients what an implant made just for them will look like before they send it to the maker.
3D virtual reality
VR is the best way to see how something looks, completely changing how people shop. Some companies, like Audi and a few others that make cars, have put money into making their own VR configurators to help buyers get a better feel for the product.
While there’s no match for seeing, touching, and driving a car in real life, VR makes deciding which one to buy easier. That’s true for any product; shoppers feel better about their purchase when they see it work online.
Adding to real-life
Augmented reality (AR) is like virtual reality, but instead of making a whole new world, it adds virtual things to the real one. AR lets you see how furniture or different wall colors would look in your home.
With Amazon’s AR View tool, you can see how furniture and other home decor would look in your home before buying it. Customers can even enter their measurements to get exact scale models of the items, which keeps them from returning something that doesn’t fit.
Industries that use visual configuration
A lot of different fields use visual setup in some way. It often happens in B2B manufacturing companies that make complicated, custom-made goods.
- Air and water defense
- Medical tools
- Building and design • Electronics and home goods • Industrial machinery and tools • Clothing and accessories • Beauty and cosmetics
Many of these fields, like cosmetics and beauty, use 2D configurators at the business-to-consumer level to show customers what their goods will look like and let them try different colors, patterns, and features. Others, like medical devices, need detailed 3D models and the ability to see them in VR or AR.
The Way Visual CPQ Works
Visual CPQ blends several cutting-edge technologies. The end user, in this case your organization, sets a lot of programmable configuration logic for the backend based on the manufacturing capabilities and design constraints. That way, both buyers and sales reps will only make configurable items that can be made. Then, computer-aided design (CAD) tools turn this arrangement into a three-dimensional model.
An interactive user interface on the front end lets reps and buyers make choices and see right away how those choices affect the look and price of the product. The system is linked to a pricing engine that determines how much each setup choice will cost. It tells the user right away what the price changes mean.
Different types of technology are needed for events in augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). The device’s camera captures a picture of the natural world, and AR uses computer vision and object recognition to overlay a virtual product model on top of it. Virtual reality (VR), on the other hand, lets users interact with a product in a fully immersive world that they usually access through a VR headset.
The company’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) tools work with the visual CPQ systems. This integration allows data to move smoothly, ensuring that pricing, quotes, and product configurations are correctly shown in all business processes, from customer service and sales to production and delivery.
Visual CPQ Software: Pros and Cons
The visual setup is much better than the old ways of doing things. It’s much harder to sell things when there are no visible cues. People who buy things online won’t fully understand what they’re getting if they see it in person.
It makes the customer’s experience better.
Visual CPQ lets you participate in the buying process. Customers can see how products will be configured in real time, making custom goods seem real even if they can’t see or touch them. This gives customers more confidence by giving them a clear picture of their purchase. They can look at products from different angles, try different choices, and put them in virtual environments that look like the real world.
It also cuts down on returns and mistakes. Customers can see if there are any problems or mismatches before they complete their purchase. This removes the need for guessing and gives a clear, accurate product picture. And getting quick price feedback gives customers the power to make smart, budget-based choices.
Makes sure the selling experience is the same across all channels
Visual CPQ also makes sure that the selling process is uniform. Software-enabled configuration makes sure that pricing and visualizing products are always the same. In real-time, visual CPQ shows the same configuration choices and prices to the customer, whether talking to a salesperson, browsing an e-commerce site, or using a mobile app.
From a business and customer point of view, consistency cuts down on uncertainty and differences. Adding visual CPQ systems to ERP and CRM systems also ensures that any updates or changes to product configurations, prices, or quotes are quickly reflected across all channels. This makes sure that the customer journey is smooth and unified.
It cuts down on mistakes in product configuration.
Visual CPQ simplifies the configuration process by using pre-set rules based on what your company can and can’t do with manufacturing and product design. Automation considerably lowers product configuration mistakes and ensures that only possible combinations are allowed. This stops customers and salespeople from accidentally designing a product that can’t be made by removing the chance of invalid configurations.
Visualization tools use CAD technologies to turn product arrangements into 3D models. This picture helps users find mistakes in the design before the end product is made. When combined with real-time price feedback, it lets you have a full review and change period, which cuts down on mistakes.
When CPQ is connected to ERP and CRM, changes are made directly to all business processes. It ensures that changes made during the design stage are quickly reflected in manufacturing plans and customer quotes. This keeps people from misunderstanding each other or finding differences that could lead to mistakes.
Checks the configuration
With visual CPQ, there’s no way for a product to be shown incorrectly. Because it only knows the settings you’ve given it, the software will only show you possible and possible options. This takes away any doubt or guesswork about what goods can be made.
This saves new sales workers a lot of training time they would have spent learning about the product’s strengths and weaknesses. Plus, there’s no chance that sales reps will try to sell a product your company can’t make only to tell the customer two weeks later.
Customers like to do business with companies that know their goods inside and out, so you can give them your trust.
It fits in with ordering and engineering.
It takes less time to fix problems and more time to make sales when everyone is working off of the same information. Moving from the sales process to production is easy because CPQ works with other business tools. Since everything is done online, there is no room for error during the handoff.
