We were careful in our selection of a comprehensive quoting solution for our headquarters. “QuoteWin has the features important to us in positively impacting cycle times, data management and corporate communication.”

“QuoteWin is a critical part of our corporate quoting process now and we look forward to furthering our strategic relationship with PolyDyne.”

Manager SCM BID Management, Celestica

"Quoting is an integral part of our overall seamless relationship with our customers. PolyDyne's products have certainly provided the opportunity to take significant steps in that direction."

Vice President, EMS Electronics

“Typically, even on a fairly complex RFQ, we’re asked to respond in 5 days. In a lot of cases a very complex bill of materials (BOM) needs to be created, and to have a vehicle, like PolyDyne’s QuoteWin product, to analyze [the information] and respond more professionally is really great. Before QuoteWin we created quotes manually, line by line, in an Excel format, which took time and with less accurate results."

“On many occasions I’ve had to force software down users’ throats but QuoteWin’s implementation was a very gratifying experience. And users like it. PolyDyne eased the usual stress by making its product user-friendly and worth using.”

Vice President of IT WorldWide, Flextronics

“The biggest reason we chose PolyDyne is that they were one of the first to do this in the industry. They have a better handle on eliminating bugs and knowing what customers really want as far as not only quoting, but analysis and reporting features – especially in the area of large contract manufacturers like us.”

“QuoteWin has speeded things up and cut costs, but an additional benefit is better reporting and analysis which have also led to improved supplier performance. Reporting is a valuable tool, especially for review of specific areas of concern, i.e. lead times, commodities, supplier performance. Efficiencies come from the fact that the same reports are in a universal format from one to the next.”

“Quoting is really the life blood of an EMS. You have to do quotes to get the business and PolyDyne tools are a huge part of our company especially when trying to win new business. Missing an opportunity because a quote was not in on time could lose millions. We can upload bills of materials (BOMs) from the OEMs into our QuoteWin system and then automatically plug in any contract or negotiated pricing we have with suppliers into the system. We do pricing via the database instead of sending suppliers endless RFQs. 90% of our quoting process is now integrated across the Web.”

“The PolyDyne software programs have great cost analysis reports. I can analyze where my high costs are vs. BOM and know if I’m high on any certain part, I’m going to lose the whole bid. The reports show you where you really need to be competitive. I can also do revision vs. time analysis and know what the changes were in different revisions of a BOM. I’ve never seen that on any other software. Usually that’s something a person has to do.”

“We’ve kind of grown up with PolyDyne,” says Tisha Reed, Flextronics. “Anytime we needed to have anything changed or added, it was always in their next release. That’s a really valuable relationship. They listen to the customers.”

She went on to give an example; “We needed to add a field because our customers were concerned with cancellation lead time because the market was getting so unpredictable. They wanted to know what their liability would be if they had to cancel the order, and they wanted this up front in the quote process. We needed a place in the software to ask suppliers for that information and to record it. We didn’t want to do the quote and then have to get the information and go back and fill it in later. We wanted to do it all at once during the quote stage. PolyDyne added a field that was up and working in about 2 weeks. As for saving time, quotes were taking Flextronics approximately 3-4 weeks. With QuoteWin it takes about 1.5-2 weeks.”

Worldwide Quotations Manager, Flextronics

“I was the driver to implement QuoteWin. We had a dying need for a product. I looked at a lot of products and found one that was the most responsive to our needs—all the bells and whistles. So it was an easy sell to our CFO and the president.”

“Several of our suppliers utilize SupplyWin. This provides commonality between what they’re selling and what we’re buying. As you build the database we can get much more information directly through electronically as opposed to manual entry. It’s a more consistent vehicle for response and dialog—mutual understanding."

Commodity Manager, SYPRIS

The ability to gather, retain, and analyze more cost data points is the greatest benefit of PolyDyne Software.

Executive VP, Hewlett-Packard

“After we implemented QuoteWin, we quickly realized how much better PolyDyne’s quoting solution was than our previous system,” said Regan Miller, Acquisition Manager, Purchasing at the Tactical Defense Systems division. “It quickly imported data, and exported BOMs in under one minute. The speed improvements alone have significantly enhanced our productivity, and that’s before savings due to material cost reductions are considered.”

Acquisition Manager, Purchasing at the Tactical Defense Systems Division, Lockheed Martin

“We’ve gained back lost opportunity in the marketplace. Coming up with an accurate quote using the old way of quoting, with an Excel spreadsheet, took too much time. QuoteWin is user friendly and takes the least amount of human resources. We get the biggest bang for the buck because of the electronic capability for getting data back and forth from suppliers.”

“OEM Worldwide reorganized its management team and now we have a team approach with less overhead combined with tools to help plug in to get the most out of our human resources; QuoteWin is such a tool."

“The process change has been like night and day to us,” said Bjerke. “Using QuoteWin has replaced our cumbersome process of hand faxing RFQs and manually inputting data to a completely streamlined process of immediate (electronic) data transfer. Using quote data for our semi-annual contract negotiations gave us valuable information that we previously had not been able to access immediately.”

Purchasing Manager, OEM Worldwide

“PolyDyne has a well established installed customer base, a proven track record in the industry, and provides us significant benefits over other quoting solutions.”

“We considered many factors when selecting PolyDyne’s QuoteWin solution and we feel confident that we’ve selected the best quoting solution available in the industry today.”

Vice President of Materials, Plexus

“The flexibility in PolyDyne’s communication tools that interface with the supply base was key in our decision.”

“PolyDyne provides us the tools to communicate with our entire supply base.”

Material Systems Manager, Plexus

“The PD staff is extremely courteous. Not only are they friendly, but extremely professional.”

“The technical knowledge of the support staff is good. They do a fantastic job explaining why something will work or why it will not work. They truly understand the program.”

“QuoteWin adds value to our quote process with the ability to easily detect data entry errors at a glance and the capability to auto-populate quotes.”

Director of Quote Administration, Plexus

“QuoteWin automatically selects our lowest price. All of the prices are on the screen and QuoteWin compiles the data for us. We’re in a competitive industry—it’s a price war. It’s helpful to have all the numbers there to tell me where we’re competitive and where we need to find a lower price. This results in lowercost materials for the company.”

Materials Quote Analyst II, Plexus

"We prefer doing business with PolyDyne software due to the reduction in response time, increased accuracy, and the capability of storing a vendor's pricing on stable parts."

Quote Director, Plexus

"We have been using QuoteWin since mid-1998. We now use QuoteWin at two sites located several hundred miles apart. Using QuoteWin's features in a multi-site application allows us to easily apply Siemens' worldwide procurement leverage. We can easily monitor a quote's progress and quickly address any problems. We have gone from a manual quoting system to a system that is now 90% electronic. This has resulted in a 2-3 day quote cycle time improvement this year alone."

Materials Quoting and Configuration, Siemens Energy and Automation

It’s been advantageous to use, especially the current version, which allows web interface functionality. We now send out quotes via web interfacing. It’s highly beneficial; we as a company weren’t using the software to the fullest extent until recently; PolyDyne—saved us considerable time. Software was purchased before we came on board.

QuoteWin helps us avoid input errors. So the price is $10 instead of $100. We do normally 15 to 20 quotes/month. With brand new customers we have more time for sheet metal.

Quote Manager with EMS ($40M in Revenue)

Computer automatically picks the lowest price—all on the screen and QuoteWin compiles the data for us. We’re in a competitive industry—a price war. It’s helpful to have all the numbers there to tell me where we’re competitive and where we’re not. Cost reductions for the company; I’m not sitting here and looking at the numbers—so 5% error factor due to human input (with QuoteWin). QuoteWin has a huge database on which we keep everything we’ve ever quoted by pricing. Tremendous help with bringing our supply base together.

It can mean millions of dollars if you’re being clumsy and inaccurate and mess up a quote. We quote $200M of business for one customer at a time. You don’t want to under or over bid on a job like this. You want to be right on. In today’s atmosphere you don’t get a second chance any more. So the quote stage has gone up tremendously in terms of company importance. Our CEO says quoting is the lifeblood of the industry if we don’t win new business we won’t build anything new. As we’re growing so fast we don’t even quote under $10M anymore.

QuoteWin has changed drastically in past 2 years; in these 2 years customers have gotten more demanding. I can’t even imagine using Excel. Having a good quoting software can mean millions of dollars. If you don’t quote on time and accurately you may not get the chance to work into that customers’ door again for 5-6 years. Customers are consolidating their CM supplier base. 2 years ago 3 weeks was an acceptable turn time; today we’re quoting quadruple the number of part numbers and higher complexity for massive network systems such as for XXXXX, and the window has shrunk to 2 weeks in general; some customers will push for 2 days. There’s no way we can ever do it without a quoting system—which manages all of our part numbers and history via the web and its database. You could never manage it manually.

Quote Manager with EMS (over $1B in Revenue)

We did a couple of models. Depends on how you’re using it. If you use it only for quoting and not for sharing it with other groups: buyers, strategic commodity managers, and those who write the contracts.

We started using QuoteWin six months ago and I’ve personally seen all of it back already last month. I had to propose where we’d save money and when. I estimated 12 months and I believe it’s been better. 2 months for the learning curve and implementation (get everyone on it). Also depends what they had in place before—if nothing then return would be faster. It reduced cycle time to do the quote, increased accuracy (because of entry errors—if I have 3 suppliers on QuoteWin; if one is $10 and other 2 are $1 each—when you lay them next to each other you see there’s a problem or $3.00 or $0.30 entry error; the older way you used to lay out all the paperwork next to each other), other groups have access to the data base (like engineering and strategic commodity managers) that didn’t have this before—they know what we’re buying. Re-quoting process is easier (from adding a couple of assemblies to increasing the job significantly)

Most of the ROI is saving materials costs; second is winning more quotes.
They’re pricey, but anything that’s worth it’s while is pricey.

Avoid viruses compared to attaching and downloading Excel spreadsheets—either from us or them. Big advantage to Web and EDI.

PolyDyne has all various supplier quoting options. For our suppliers, Web works the best. I haven’t heard of too many mistakes anymore when it should have been 30 cents instead of $3.00—hard to quantify it.

QuoteWin made us look at getting items electronically from customers: Smart Mapping feature learns from each customer.

A Quote Manager with a EMS company ($700M in revenue)