Enhancing KMATs to support guided selling

Simon is VP of Solutions in Configit.  He has 15 years of experience in developing, implementing and supporting ERP systems. Simon has a Ph.D. in computer science and he is an experienced lecturer.

Henrik is Professor of Computer Science and CEO of Configit.  He has 20 years of experience in IT development and research and has published a broad range of scientific publications. He is an experienced presenter

Typically, KMATs are developed with a manufacturing perspective in mind. In this talk we show how KMATs can be enhanced to support guided selling without changing their underlying definition in SAP-VC. This is achieved with a new construction called SMAT (for Sales MATerial) that supplements existing KMATs with configuration from a sales perspective. We demonstrate how the SMAT and the KMAT can be executed side-by-side so that a user can configure a product from a sales perspective but in every step of the process be assured that the configuration being built up is also acceptable with respect to the KMAT.

This is obtained by having two configuration engines execute simultaneously and synchronize on every step. From a process pespective the SMATs can be maintained by one group of people related to sales support and technical marketing and the KMATs by another group of people involved in product management and manufacturing. The presentation will show how this is used by SAP customers. The audience is invited to share their experience on using KMATs in sales and participate in a discussion of good ways to ensure that KMATs are used throughout the business processes from design to manufacturing and sales.