Schneider Customers Shakedown Software

The global reputation of Paris-based electrical product manufacturing giant Schneider Electric isn’t built on its software. Although systems for control of buildings and manufacturing and process plants are a growing emphasis for the company — exemplified by its recent acquisition of Invensys and its Wonderware line of factory automation software — Schneider remains better-known in the U.S. market for its Square D circuit breakers, load centers and switchgear and other electrical hardware.

Last week, however, Schneider Electric North America, based in Palatine, Ill., was acting very much like a fleet-footed information technology company. Schneider brought in more than a dozen electrical contractors, original equipment manufacturing (OEM) specifiers and distributors to a bright, modern rented workspace in downtown Chicago Sept. 10-11 for a peek at a system the company has developed for expediting the process of creating a bill of materials (BOM) for quotes.

The QuoteFAST system, in pilot testing now and planned for general release in January 2014, allows customers to put together a BOM on their own by selecting from menus of products and dragging and dropping the required equipment on their PCs, tablets or smart phones. The system doesn’t aim at an incremental speeding-up of the existing quote-to-order process; it seeks to shave whole days of delay and headaches out of customers’ schedules.

Schneider had quietly been working on digital tools of this kind for about a year, but once the decision was made to create a quote-generation app, work shifted into hyperdrive. The development team, led by Iram Shah, newly appointed senior vice president, Digital Customer Experience, Schneider Electric North America, developed the QuoteFAST app for this customer preview and feedback session on a fast track — insanely fast, by electrical industry standards. From inception to debut the app took only 10 weeks.

Schneider Electric gave the gathered customers a challenge: poke holes in the QuoteFAST system, help the team brainstorm changes to its interface and background processes, changes that Schneider will integrate into continuing iterations for further testing through the end of this year.

Tim Perek, director, Digital Customer Experience, opened the event with memories of working on an old Pontiac with his friends in his younger days, and invited the assembled customers and distributors to approach the software in the same spirit, contributing their expertise in various areas to help make the system run better. Perek told Electrical Marketing about the research into contractors’ primary pain points that drove the creation of QuoteFAST. “We did a survey and identified the main places where our customers need help, and we’re starting to address those with this app,” Perek said.

The 14 customers and distributors who participated in the shakedown exercise were gathered from the Schneider sales regions where QuoteFAST is being pilot-tested through the end of the year: Chicago/Wisconsin, Minneapolis and the Carolinas.

The system includes an ever-evolving product selection tool and background check functions that make sure products are applied in ways that are consistent with the technology, electrical codes and standard practice. The resulting output includes both a BOM and a set of preliminary drawings, as well as ways to save projects to reuse best practices in future jobs. Earl Pond, senior information system analyst, walked attendees through the functions of the system and the reasoning behind the way they’re set up.

The participants were blunt and honest about their opinions, which is what Schneider’s development team was hoping for, said Perek. One contractor from the Minneapolis area said if it worked, QuoteFAST could remove the frustrating back-and-forth of having to talk his distributor through the specifications of a job and allow him to do it himself after hours.

On the other hand, the prospect of multiple electrical equipment manufacturers developing their own quotation apps, which contractors and purchasers would have to learn and use to create the same BOM in each to get competing quotes, hung out there like a daunting open question.

Dennis Williams, director - Business Process and Applications, led lively discussions of changes that customers wanted to see in the QuoteFAST app and its processes. One issue that came up for extensive discussion on the first day was how to control revisions in the BOM and how to manage the flow of information on substitutions and value-engineering efforts and pricing between the contractor or purchasing agent, the distributor and the Schneider factory. Attendees were given a tutorial in using the app, then those who succeeded in breaking it were rewarded with small prizes.