Schneider Electric North America brought in electrical contractors, original equipment manufacturing (OEM) specifiers and distributors to a workspace in downtown Chicago Sept. 10-11 for an advance peek at a system the company has developed for expediting the process of creating a bill of materials (BOM) for quote. The QuoteFAST system, in pilot testing now and planned for general release in January 2014, allows customers to put together a BOM on their own by selecting from menus of products and dragging and dropping the required equipment on their PCs, tablets or smart phones.
Schneider had been working on digital tools generally for about a year, but once the decision was made to create a quote-generation app, work shifted into hyperdrive. The development team, led by Iram Shah, newly appointed senior vice president, Digital Customer Experience, Schneider Electric North America, developed the QuoteFAST software for this customer preview and feedback session on a fast track – insanely fast, by electrical industry standards. From inception to debut took only 10 weeks.
