Excel as a product configurator

[Sayre]

I have created and have been maintaining an Excel based configuration tool for almost 2 years now. Am self-taught with Excel as it helps with my IT sales job quite a bit. Response from my customers is overwhelmingly positive. Its been nothing short of astonishing. Response from anyone in management on the opther hand, is either indifferent or fearful/ignorant. They seem to see only risk, not opportunity. Will not let me take my ideas any further in their org.

I think I've found a large void that needs to be filled in my industry but unsure of what to do next. Can't seem to find much in the way of existing career paths for Excel based product config tools.

Are there any? I have no formal programming background of any kind, just a lot of 'learn as I go'. But I think that's the beauty of it. Did not seem too difficult to go from zero knowledge to where I am now.

Would appreciate any ionfo, advice, etc....

Just found this site tonight and its great!

AS

 

[hellebore08]

Hi Sayre,

Just to let you know, there are many companies offering incentives for their initiatives (tools, automations, etc) like your configuration which can be very useful. Here in Philippines, Maersk Global Service Centre (Phils.) Ltd. and Accenture are two of what I have known recently that offers these benefits.

These infos are not critical to the image of the said companies, so I'm sharing it with you.

They appreciate and welcome every opportunity that comes with employees' proposals by giving credit and money to them. Unfortunately, whatever you made within the companies' premises becomes their property.

I'm actually from Maersk (but not anymore), and not from Accenture. I just posted the two that I know can pay you for what you do. (Pay = not just money).

So that's it.

Cheers!

 

[JHall]

There are lots of things that you can do with Excel. Ifyou are looking to use Microsoft Office automation to create proposals or configure products -- our company, analysisplace.com does this. You can check out our free IT Project ROI Tool to see how it works. Yourcustomer profile, solution configuration, benefits/ROI calculations, pricinglookups, etc. are modeled in Excel. Itthen produces customized Word proposals or business cases. The Word report templates are embedded in theExcel file. The system also enablessharing/collaboration, currency switching, language switching, change tracking,and scenario analysis.

Julie

 

[Prevost]

Alright, so now this post is really old, but I thought it might be worth it to add something (I am relatively new VBA but I think the idea is relatively solid). I wanted to create a product configurator for the company I worked for as I saw time being wasted by relying on one order desk worker to tell the other two order desk workers 'Yes that part can go with that' or 'No, you can't put those two parts together'. I am still in the midst of working on it so any suggestions are appreciated.

I created a list of all the different product configurations that existed and put that into Excel. The user then selects the configuration from the top and works their way down. So the first decision they would have to choose which controls the rest of the product is in the first combobox. Then, based on that first combobox value, all the products containing that initial value are stored in an array (it's actually their row numbers for later use). I then use that array to create the drop down menu in the second combobox which displays all the possible choices for the next parameter (it's fairly easy to create a array to display a non duplicated alphabetical/numerically organized list) for which the user will select. And basically, the process continues on until there is only one selection left.

The only snag is that this works only when the user chooses the product parameters in the order that has been created. It does not give the possibility to search for all products that contain parameter 'A', where 'A' could be any of the parameters that are chosen.

I just wanted to post this to stop people from doing a million IF statements! That is incredibly time consuming and not robust at all. If one thing changes, then all the IF statements have to be changed. While my code does contain some IF statements, these are not the lines that create the possibilities. The arrays are.

My Excel data sheets have headers on them and my code looks for those headers to get the column number. That way, if someone wants to reorganize the columns, not all relationships are lost. I try to do this with all my codes as I am the only one in my organization that knows how to use VBA.

Just thought I would add that comment, as when I posted a similar question someone posted and said 'Just create IF statements', which is not always the case.

 

[kozd87]

I tend to focus on things that emphasize measurable cost saving benefits, productivity gains or revenue generation.

I.E. This method will take 40 hours of development time at $xx/hour, but will save xx man-hours per week at an average of $xx/hour, will amortize development in xx man-hours and return $xx to the bottom line over th course of a year. In come cases it's pretty easy, in other cases you need to be a salesman.

Smitty

EDIT: Welcome to the Board!

Hi Smitty.
I know that this i an old post. But what you exactly are mentioning above, is what I might need in a small project i am doing with a company, while i am studying.
Is it possible that you have made this in an Excel sheet, or?
I want to make a "product configurator", that can tell i.e. this product type will take 20 hours to produce in the production at a cost of xx$/hour, but will save xx man.-hours per week or day at an average of xx$/hour, will amortize development in xx man-hours and return xx$ to the bottom line for a exact production of one product type?

Hope it did´nt get to long :D

Best regards

Kerim

 

[Smitty]

Welcome to the Board!

I might look at the link JHall provided above.