Analytical Instruments manufacturer finds Powertrak CPQ improves sales quoting processes by simplifying kit design, thereby ensuring accurate product combinations and decreasing the need for approvals from corporate during the quote creation process.

Minneapolis, MN- April 14, 2015 Axonom, a global provider of cloud-based portal and configure-price-quote software, today announces Shimadzu Scientific Instruments, a division of Shimadzu Corporation, replaces its legacy quoting application used in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, with Powertrak CPQ to simplify and accelerate processes for creating, managing, and configuring complex kits used in sales quotes.

Powertrak provides Shimadzu Scientific Instruments with a robust sales quoting platform to better serve its customers by empowering product management with full control of kit design, ensuring accurate pricing and product combinations; leading to a reduction in quoting errors and significantly less dependency on IT support.

Shimadzu Scientific Instruments manufactures analytical instruments indispensable for research, development, and quality control. With a wide array of products and many complex kit combinations, the company recognized there was a significant learning curve for new sales staff to retain all of the interdependencies of parts necessary for accurate quoting due to its cumbersome and inefficient sales quoting application.

"The previous system was rigid and had an 'all or nothing' security structure," said Karen Sasaki, manager of information technology at Shimadzu Scientific Instruments. "One mistake and our whole system could be corrupted. This created an internal bottleneck as IT had to be involved in the implementation of any constraints or rules."

Additionally, its legacy system forced all product kits to either have the same basic structure or create multiple system instances to allow more autonomy. Sasaki explains, "Maintaining twenty-plus instances in this system would be incredibly inefficient and significantly increase IT overhead. Our products have differing structural and organizational kit needs, being forced into one 'template' could no longer work for Shimadzu."

Seeking to improve inefficiencies while avoiding a resource draining path of custom development, Shimadzu Scientific Instruments conducted an extensive evaluation for a flexible, robust, yet user-friendly quoting solution to simplify its complex configurations.

"Our team did a comparative analysis of Configure-Price-Quote vendors that we had either researched, were referred to, or met at Microsoft Convergence," said Sasaki. "We asked vendors to demonstrate kit autonomy, kit-specific security, and validate how rules prevent quoting mistakes such as incompatible components. Only two vendors met our standards for functionality, flexibility, scalability, licensing, and cost to implement and maintain."

Shimadzu Scientific Instruments selected Axonom's Powertrak solution for its immediate sales quoting need as well as long-term strategies with the platform. "Powertrak not only gives us control to create kits and execute sales quotes more efficiently and accurately, but its robustness allows us to apply multiple quotes, that may include multiple product kits, to any given opportunity in Microsoft Dynamics CRM and forecast one or more quotes for pipeline management. This is a powerful benefit as we become less dependent on IT's input and approval for kit configurations, move toward product management and sales independence, and increase the accuracy of our reporting and forecasting." Sasaki added.

"Powertrak CPQ enriches Shimadzu Scientific Instruments' product management and sales quoting experience by simplifying the complexity, ensuring accuracy, increasing confidence, and speeding the quotation time," said Mike Belongie, COO at Axonom. "The next phase is to extend the same quoting and ordering experience out to its distributor channel via Powertrak Partner Portal."

About Shimadzu Scientific Instruments
Founded in 1875, Shimadzu Corporation, a leader in the development of advanced technologies, has a distinguished history of innovation built on the foundation of contributing to society through science and technology. Established in 1975, Shimadzu Scientific Instruments (SSI), the American subsidiary of Shimadzu Corporation, provides a comprehensive range of analytical and testing solutions to laboratories through North, Central, and parts of South America. SSI maintains a network of nine regional offices strategically located across the United States, with experienced technical specialists, service, and sales engineers situated throughout the country. Visit www.ssi.shimadzu.com for more information.

About Axonom
Axonom is an independent software vendor that develops, designs, and markets Powertrak, the innovative B2B revenue management suite for high-tech and manufacturing industries. Powertrak enables companies to successfully sell and service to its customers and partners in an environment that requires multi-level relationship tracking, web self-service, partner/dealer loyalty management tools, streamlined quote-to-order processing, service revenue management, hassle-free payment options, and a worldwide presence.

Enriched with mobile extendibility, the Powertrak solution suite includes: Customer and Partner Portals, Configure-Price-Quote, 2D/3D Visual Product Configurator, Quote Configurator, Guided Selling, and Forecasting. By delivering more transactions more efficiently through channels at a lower cost, Powertrak helps customers achieve greater profit potential.