Generating over 38,000 complex bespoke engineering quotations for global sites

Client

With more than 40 years of experience in designing and manufacturing mechanical seals, AESSEAL is one of the world's leading mechanical seal manufacturers. The company manufactures products to enhance the performance and reliability of rotating equipment. AESSEAL is a global employer, with a workforce of over 1750 people operating in 104 countries.

The company is known for its entrepreneurial spirit and commitment to innovation, values exhibited in the impressive 13 Queen's Awards it holds. They are also aware of the concerns of the manufacturing industry and are committed to mitigating climate change. In 2020, AESSEAL achieved net zero emissions for its UK operations and targets global net zero emissions by 2029.

Background

Audacia has been working with AESSEAL in a partnership for 8 years, which initially began with the redevelopment of their legacy systems; this project is the latest development in the suite of products that we have delivered collaboratively.

AESSEAL were operating a sales quotation system that, while powerful, primarily suited the needs of experienced Sales Engineers who were adept at performing technical calculations and had an extensive knowledge of their product range. 

The key objective in developing eVE was to lower the knowledge required to generate the production of over an estimated 38,000 complex, bespoke engineering quotations across multiple global sites each year. 

Using an intelligent decision-making platform would save time in the quotation process by drawing product and customer information from several different data sources. This automation would then reduce reliance on technical knowledge, enabling more sales engineers to create quotations, improving speed overall and leading to more sales — all whilst freeing up technical staff to focus on operational activity.

Solution

Our most recent delivered project is an online sales quotation platform - "eVE" - a platform allowing AESSEAL to rapidly quote for products that would otherwise require in-depth technical knowledge and ties together three pre-existing systems, also integrated with SAP, drawing service and a mobile app. 

Engineers no longer need to know specific products or how to do engineering calculations to support them. eVE, instead, only needs the real-world application; the system will guide the user to the proper product and automatically run engineering calculations in the background based on various parameters such as "Rotations Per Minute".

Results

Audacia successfully delivered eVE within timescales and under budget, rolling out the platform in March 2021 across 26 sites around the world, from the US to Saudi Arabia.

The main objectives of the project were achieved; the barrier to entry for the product range was lowered and operational efficiencies increased, with now only four engineers needed to create a quote, as opposed to 12.

On top of this, the platform is equipped to handle AESSEAL’s client base around the world, with built in internationalisation, allowing for automatic quote regeneration across global sites in multiple different languages. 

Success of the project has led to AESSEAL committing to phase two of the project, which plans to enable AESSEAL customers to use the application to carry out the quoting process themselves.