For this customer story, we travel to Dronten where VDL Translift is based. Producing innovative waste collection vehicles, this company now has more than half a century of experience. Since October 2014, Translift has been part of VDL Groep, which currently employs 16,000 people, 60 of whom work at VDL Translift. This small and medium-sized company produces 100 systems a year, which are brought in as orders through the Merkato sales configurator. We speak to Head of Resource & Development Jeroen Scherpenzeel about the use of the Merkato Configurator within VDL Translift.

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‍Manipulation

Until April 2016, an Excel configurator was used within VDL Translift. 'Excel worked fine, but it also revealed some problems that needed to be addressed,' Jeroen Scherpenzeel explains. 'Indeed, with this method of working, it was possible for the salesperson to have a quotation prepared with systems that were simply not feasible. This often occurred because the vendor did not have the engineering knowledge, which is necessary when selling our systems. In addition, manipulation was also possible, resulting in errors that could sometimes only just be avoided. For example, wrong checkmarks were entered in an order, which meant that combinations within a system no longer matched and the price also deviated from the correct price.'

The risk of errors was high within VDL Translift and with this also came strong dependencies. Every order had to be carefully checked whether the system sold was at all producible. Only a small number of people within the company had the right knowledge for this, wasting valuable time. These issues contributed to VDL Translift's strong need to purchase a sales configurator in which unambiguity would become the core.

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Implementation

In February 2016, VDL Translift partnered with Merkato. At the time, Henry Slager started the implementation process of the Merkato software. Due to good preparation, VDL Translift was able to implement the complete software within three months. 'We gave this implementation a lot of attention,' explains Jeroen. 'After two short training sessions, we picked up the programming ourselves and implemented the software internally. Whenever we ran into certain points where we needed help, we contacted the Merkato experts and the fast-paced contact allowed us to push through the implementation flawlessly.'

After three months, the start with the Merkato sales configurator was a fact within VDL Translift. This took some getting used to for the various departments that had to work with it, but soon the entire company got used to this working method.

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The impact

Orders come in via the sellers in which the system sold was written out with the appropriate options. The extra options are entered in the 'outside standard' field. These exceptions are automatically presented to the engineering department for assessment, where it is checked whether these options are actually possible. The rest of the combinations are already checked for feasibility prior to implementation or during fine-tuning of the implementations. This clear procedure has reduced dependency and made it easier for sales people to sell the right systems.

After the order is approved, the work preparation department is sent product lists automatically prepared by Merkato. This makes it clear at a glance which parts need to be rapped per system so that the production department can get to work with them.

In the production department, the ERP system and Merkato come together. The ERP system provides a clear manual as far as the production of the system is concerned. Merkato provides additional information on this through images with instructions on where certain parts should be placed. This was not the case shortly after implementation. Back then, there were often discussions between colleagues and within several departments about, for example, the correct placement of a lamp on the system. These discussions took up a lot of valuable time and to save hours in this, Merkato was chosen to have Merkato add images clearly indicating which parts go where.

'Through Merkato, VDL Translift has been able to make progress in several areas,' Jeroen says. 'The quantification of what we have achieved because of Merkato is difficult to measure, but I can say with certainty that our working methods have become more unambiguous, valuable hours are allocated more efficiently and mistakes simply no longer occur.'

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Future with Merkato

Every implementation brings new goals. The same goes for VDL Translift. Working with a uniform software that incorporates clear formulas, Jeroen Scherpenzeel sees even more opportunities in Merkato. Next year, he plans to create specification sheets for chassis dealers of VDL Translift with Merkato and implement further optimisations, such as one image with all system-related information for the production department as opposed to several. Another step that will be taken is to implement translations in order to use Merkato internationally. In short, an interesting future from this customer.

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‍Point of focus

'A tip when buying the Merkato software is to prepare the implementation process as well as possible. Due to the merger with VDL Groep, we wrote out our combinations in such a way that they were presentable. As a result, we fully implemented the software well within three months and thus saved a lot of time very quickly. Of course, we kept updating the configurator and the fine-tuning never stops (thankfully), but the better the different variants, cost prices and consequences for the company are worked out, the more this contributes positively to the duration of the implementation process.'

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