With manufacturing feeling the fundamental shifts in buyer engagement, sales models, and even sustainability, they are also facing new challenges when it comes to employee retention and the challenges it causes. As of June 2024, the employee turnover rate in the manufacturing industry was 37%.
With employees leaving at such a high rate, manufacturers face the common challenge of brain drain. As many employees retire, or find new jobs, much of their product, sales and engineering knowledge is lost. This causes companies to struggle to properly create products without errors and meet the needs of new and demanding customers.
This phenomenon can significantly impact an organization’s efficiency, innovation, and competitive edge. However, with the right tools and strategies, companies can preserve valuable expertise and mitigate the effects of brain drain. One solution, Tacton Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) is helping leading manufacturers combat brain drain and achieve new levels of profitability and efficiency. Let’s look at the current situation and how CPQ can help.
What is brain drain?
Brain drain is the gradual loss of intellectual capital, skills and industry and product knowledge when employees leave an organization. This challenge can be particularly difficult in manufacturing where intricate processes, complex product configurations and industry specific knowledge are critical for selling. These are some common challenges faced after key employees leave:
Loss of efficiency: Remaining employees may struggle to match the productivity level of their former colleagues, leading to delays and increased costs. New employees will find challenges about learning specific product information that would help them onboard and sell faster.
Decreased innovation: Without experienced team members and their product knowledge it can become more difficult to drive innovation.
Knowledge gaps: Critical knowledge about customer preferences, product configurations, and unique solutions can be lost, affecting customer satisfaction and sales.
How does CPQ mitigate brain drain?
Your sales team spends two-thirds of its time away from customers. By implementing CPQ, you can automate most tasks, including quoting, filling out spreadsheets, and attending to administrative tasks.
When you free up your agents, they become more effective because they have more time to spend building impactful relationships with current customers, seeking new clients, and pursuing professional development. Here are a few more ways Tacton can help:
Knowledge capture and standardization
With the help of CPQ, manufacturers can document and standardize their product configurations, pricing rules and quoting processes. By creating a centralized source of truth with CPQ it’s easier for companies to withstand the effects of the loss of critical information when employees leave.
This also makes the onboarding process for new hires that much easier. They will be able to quote with 100% confidence as CPQ ensures that no invalid product configurations make it into production.
Guided selling and configuration
Navigating complex product configurations has been a challenge for sale reps, that isn’t a problem anymore with the help of Guided Selling. Guided Selling provides step-by-step guidance ensuring that the newest sales rep can accurately configure products according to customer requirements. This helps insulate manufacturers from over reliance on a few key experts across the organization.
Seamless end-to-end connections
Using CPQ as a centralized hub connected to other business critical systems such as ERP, CRM, PLM and more, it’s easier than ever to have up-to-date information for your team. Creating this automated process minimizes the need for manual and admin tasks and reduces the error-prone quoting process by delivering correct and detailed product information. It also frees up experienced employees to focus on more strategic tasks, rather than routine administrative work.
Centralized knowledge repository
With the help of CPQ manufacturers can create a central hub for product and sales knowledge. This approach ensures that all employees have access to the latest information. It also facilitates knowledge sharing and collaboration, fostering a culture of learning and improvement.
Analytics and insights
Tacton CPQ provides valuable analytics and insights into sales and product performance. By analyzing this data, organizations can identify trends, optimize their product offerings, and make informed strategic decisions. This data-driven approach helps maintain the organization’s competitive edge; even as experienced employees leave.
HMF Cranes combats brain drain with CPQ
One of our customers, HMF Cranes, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of truck-mounted cranes strives to be the most innovative business in manufacturing. In 2022 they implemented Tacton CPQ to help their quoting and ordering process. Another added benefit they saw was how quickly they could onboard new hires.
Onboarding new employees also became faster with Tacton. Without CPQ it was a time-consuming process to teach new employees the intricacies of the product, as this would be an error-prone learning process. Now with Tacton it’s easier to train new employees with the new system, and it gives them responsibility to configure a crane with the knowledge that it’ll be correct.
With the changing economy, pricing is also an important factor for HMF in selling their cranes. With Tacton, keeping up to date with the latest prices is easy and always accurate.
As Alicia Vivier Brockhoff notes:
“It’s easier to be a customer and an HMF distributor. It’s easier for us to implement new products and train new salespeople. There are a lot of great benefits”
HMF is just one example of companies Tacton is helping create a centralized tool for all things sales, engineering and customer experience.
Are you ready to take the next step?
Brain drain is a significant challenge for many manufacturing organizations, but it can be effectively mitigated with the right tools and strategies. Tacton CPQ offers a comprehensive solution for preserving and leveraging critical knowledge, ensuring that expertise is retained and accessible across the organization.
By capturing, standardizing, and automating complex product knowledge, Tacton CPQ empowers companies to maintain efficiency, drive innovation, and continue to deliver exceptional value to their customers.
Are you ready to future-proof your organization against brain drain? Explore how Tacton CPQ can help you preserve expertise and maintain your competitive edge in the ever-evolving manufacturing landscape.