Solid Data Management Key to Accurate Quotes

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

Data is omnipresent. At times it goes unnoticed, just waiting there for someone to collect, analyze, and make use of it to create value. Data that seemed irrelevant at the time might come in handy when you need to come up with a solution to a new challenge.

When, for instance, you need a reliable quote that can accurately predict a product’s price, you need to base it on past actual operation machine time, raw materials cost, etc. Otherwise, guessing a new product’s price might result in unexpected spending, especially when it concerns sophisticated systems.

Each quote relies on utilizing data. The question that remains to be answered is how you do it and how fast. A data management strategy is an essential tool for turning a company’s data assets into useful information supporting its strategic roadmap. While determining this strategy, each company must address processes aimed at storing, categorizing, controlling, and standardizing data.

The best data management practice revolves around the ability to make the necessary interfaces between various data sources flow across the company’s relevant departments. When it comes to decision-making regarding financial investments concerned with the production of new systems and products, data management becomes even more crucial. To make these decisions that ultimately affect your business performance, you need to have a strong information base, constantly analyze it, and make sure it is deployed across the board in your IT infrastructure.

Every new product and new project needs to start with a solid plan comprised of various topics, such as manufacturability, reliability, and quality. One of the most important ones is cost. Its level of importance matches its level of complexity, since it relies on the direct or indirect outcome of all the other topics.

If you chose the wrong material, failed to come up with the optimal block diagram, designed your product relying on certain components without considering their MOQ, or any other thing you did (or didn’t do), your final cost could be impacted.

How many times have you been told that, though your plan sounds brilliant, it is much too expensive to produce? How long did it take before you realized this was based on past experience or lack of data in regard to the cost of raw materials or working hours, and that the production could have been cheaper than expected?

How many times have you, on the other hand, plunged into what seemed to be the next bonanza, only to discover, too late into the project, that you have based your entire profitability prospects on an inaccurate quote which has left you no option but to stop production or go through a new design all over again? This causes you major setbacks in lead-time, not to mention the loss of the capital you have invested.

In both cases, you will not make it on time. In a competitive, fast-track market such as ours, that means you lost.

To read this entire article, which appeared in the November 2021 issue of Design007 Magazine, click here.