CLIENT CONTEXT

Shoufan Power provides customized power and hybrid-energy equipment for customers in 120+ countries and regions. Its business combines diverse global requirements, highly configurable products and low-margin manufacturing pressure. The core challenge is satisfying customized demand while protecting each order's cost baseline.

Configuration complexity: around 20,000 product combinations and 10,000 optional components.

Its operating model is highly concurrent: design, procurement and production can move in parallel after quotation. Order data was distributed across CRM, PLM, MES, ERP, product-selection and project-management systems, making it difficult for teams to evaluate order progress, cost and risk with the same data logic.

BUSINESS CHALLENGES

Quotation was a critical bottleneck. Salespeople often relied on Excel and engineering review to select configurations and calculate prices across 20,000 product combinations and 10,000 optional components. A formal quotation could take 2-5 days, and an incorrect parameter or price could directly reduce order margin or cause a potential order to be lost.

Cost control was equally difficult because design, procurement and production decisions could change after quotation. Design BOM changes, supplier-price increases, exchange-rate fluctuations and aging inventory all created margin and execution risks that were often discovered only after the cost impact had already occurred.

GUANDATA SOLUTION

Guandata helped Shoufan build an analytics layer across CRM, PLM, MES, ERP and self-developed systems, turning order data into three control loops: quotation, order-cost warning and inventory-risk warning.

For quotation, Guandata BI worked with Shoufan's product-selection system so salespeople could generate formal quotations with configuration lists in minutes. For order cost, the analytics layer compared design BOM cost with quoted cost and monitored differences between quoted material prices and actual procurement prices. When deviations exceeded thresholds, alerts could be pushed to finance, production and procurement teams.

For inventory, the system highlighted high-value machines or materials approaching expiry and identified slow-moving materials unused for six consecutive months.

SELECTED ANALYTICS SCENARIOS

BUSINESS IMPACT

With the Guandata-supported analytics layer, quotation time was reduced from 2-5 days to 5-15 minutes, quotation efficiency improved by over 90%, and quotation accuracy improved from 85% to 99.5%. More importantly, cost control moved from after-the-fact investigation toward earlier interception: BOM changes, quoted-vs-actual material price differences and inventory risks became visible before they turned into margin loss.

The inventory-warning mechanism also supported audit readiness, with related inventory checks reported as error-free for four consecutive years. For manufacturers with high product variation, this case shows how BI can connect sales configuration, engineering BOM, procurement price, production progress, cost collection and inventory-risk signals into one management view.

DATA & PROCESS SCOPE

Connects CRM, PLM, MES, ERP and self-developed systems.

Covers design, procurement and production workflows after quotation.

KEY TAKEAWAY

This case shows how BI connects quotation, engineering BOM, procurement price, production progress, cost collection and inventory-risk signals into one management view.