Firth Industries – Saving Time & Preventing Margin Erosion
About the Customer: A National Leader in Concrete Products
Firth Industries were founded in 1925 when the 'original' Firth family began with their entrepreneurial spirit to create what has become the largest and only National New Zealand manufacturer of concrete products with over 650 people spread across 70 plant sites throughout the country.
Their innovative brands such as Firth Certified Concrete®, Firth Masonry, Firth RibRaft® floors, Dricon® bagged concretes, mortars and sands are the leading and trusted suppliers in the building industry for civil roading & infrastructure projects, industrial and commercial projects, though to residential builds.
They form an important part of the greater Fletcher Building Limited Group whose impact spans the full construction value chain from resource extraction, product manufacture and distribution, through to property development and infrastructure construction.
PriceFx are pleased to have been working with Firth NZ from 2017 and have faced many market challenges together during that time.
Crucial Need for a Pricing Solution: Manual Pricing Inefficiencies Required Automation & Centralized Pricing Governance
Firth operates three businesses, each having its own distinct regional structures employing 2 divergent background systems for pricing and multiple quoting systems that all converge into two separate ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning software) /Manufacturing Systems. In the past, the pricing system was very manual, cumbersome and inefficient, while lacking consistency, visibility, and governance.
The goals were to move forward with one centralised system for pricing and quoting that could be simple and fast with greater data integrity and transparency to provide efficiency benefits with decreased potential for margin erosion.
Our Solution
Frith have now replaced the many previous systems with a single solution for pricing and quoting that integrates into the company’s two existing ERPs. Automated pricing was configured in the Price Setting to carry out revisions for over 115 000 lines of active contract price records. Processing is fast and simple though Data Change Request Tables by simply changing the values for pre-defined hierarchical parameters such as:
- Segmented area
- Percentage increase
- Dollar increase
- Plant Level
- Contract specific exception
- Net percentage
- And more...
...Then simply hitting the refresh button to calculate the new price list!
The final price change is verified by five levels of tracked approval to ensure both transparency and governance are maintained, and speedy results are achieved.
The revised price lists can be applied to all existing contracts for review by their associated Account Representatives (Reps) who can view all their own open contracts individually listed inside their own dashboard in table format.
From within these tables, Reps have the power to either accept or tweak granular changes with-in tolerances - or outside of tolerances with approval workflow.
Final agreed contract prices are then easily implemented into new replacement contracts by either ‘Expire Old > Create New’, or ‘Hold’.
Reps can now quickly work through a full contract revision for their accounts with full visibility and governance.
What’s more, as one of our first Quoting Accelerator customers in Pricefx, Firth NZ quoting is now reported as “Can be Instant, sometimes created even after the mixer truck has already left the plant” (according to Bettina Marchl, Key Pricing Manager and independent pricing consultant with Firth since 2016).
Their sophisticated quote Revision Logic resides both in Quoting and Integration Manager with over 350 business logic rules created and defined in table form. Firth manages these tables to ensure prices are automatically inclusive of all individual quote costs and waterfall parameters to sharpen their competitive edge whilst importantly maintaining control of margin leakage. Automated approval levels are configured to item level so that quotes can be processed quickly. For completed quotes, a .pdf is generated from branded templates that will automatically be placed into the Salesforce Opportunity and sent to customers.
One of the major innovations that Pricefx introduced was integrating Quoting into Salesforce, creating an interface that is so smooth for Sales Reps that they don't notice they are using a different application, resulting in higher user adoption of the tool. The UI can be accessed through Salesforce opportunities and the integration enables Real Time Updates through the Pricefx Integration Manager.
Results and Benefits: Time Effective, Efficient, Insightful, Flexible, Transparent & Profitable Pricing
Having one specialized and automated pricing tool has vastly reduced time and resource requirements by processing mass updates with tracked visibility and approvals flowing right down to quote and contract levels.
Flexibility at all stages ensures strategic pricing realization that encompasses the costs of production plus margin targets to prevent unnecessary margin erosion whilst also remaining competitive.
Sales Reps are empowered with the flexibility to negotiate within set boundaries and are equipped with a fast deal velocity to maximize the full potential of all opportunities with new and existing customers.
Important historical data is also on-hand as Bettina says she is ‘thankful for readily available access to 190 000 versions of past and superseded quotes and contracts since 2018 that are in a readable format. Previously, we required an IT request and would then need to unpack the data’. (Bettina Marchl, Key Pricing Manager and independent pricing consultant)
"Pricefx is a huge benefit for us. Twice yearly 7450 active contracts, quotes, and drafts are all revised. We could never do this on a contract-by-contract bases”
‘Deals are now converted to a contract in just one click without any possibility for manual manipulation. This is the true magic of PriceFx’”
Bettina Marchl
Key Pricing Manager and independent pricing consultant, Firth