Challenge

Fortress is a true engineer-to-order business that offers materials for any project a homeowner can dream up. In their deckings materials division, they configure and quote structures with rounded edges, holes in the middle to accommodate trees, and other unconventional shapes. The result is a highly-customizable product that is difficult to configure and price based on varied angles, lengths, and calculations. Additionally, as consumer preferences shift toward a bias for long lasting, high-endurance materials, rather than high-maintenance wood framing, Fortress is anticipating an increase in demand for steel deck framing materials. To prepare for this shift, Fortress wants solutions that help them evolve their eCommerce experience to accommodate these new preferences so they can simultaneously provide a more relevant experience for buyers (contractors, partners, distributors) and improve the effectiveness of their internal sales team. 

Fortress has two primary sales channels for quoting and estimation: an internal team of sellers, called estimators, and an external estimation tool housed on their website. 

Internally, Fortress’s estimators were using Excel and v-look ups for all quoting practices, relying heavily on legacy knowledge of their products to quote effectively and accurately. This knowledge was often limited to a small sub-set of sellers, resulting in long lead times between quote requests and submissions. Due to a long queue of orders, manual data inputs, complex approvals, and a lack of standardized configuration guidance, the average quote time using Excel stretched to several weeks. Given that many customers prefer to obtain multiple quotes and estimates before settling on a design and making a purchase, the sales cycle was continually lengthened, pushing revenue potential out further and further. 

The external estimation tool offered by Fortress was powered by software that was difficult to maintain and update. The user experience was slow, could not always accommodate the complexity of their product configurations, and did not provide visualization on demand. Shortly after implementation, configuration inaccuracies with external estimation trickled down to the internal sales team when customers could not order the design they had created using the tool. As online visualization and estimates is becoming the market standard for the steel decking space, Fortress knew they needed to be able to deliver a best-in-class self-service experience to contractors and homeowners. 

Fortress scoped out multiple configuration and quoting solutions and quickly discovered that their visualization requirements, complex equations, and intense approval process limited their options. 

Solution

With Logik.ai, Fortress discovered that complexity was no longer at odds with customer experience. 

Logik.ai’s CAD visualization capabilities allow eCommerce users and internal sellers to see the exact configuration of the framing and building supplies in real time. Additionally, the bi-directional nature of Logik.ai and CAD software allows the team to make changes in Logik.ai and see them reflected in the CAD drawings, and to make changes in the CAD software and see the changes reflected in the Logik.ai configuration. This saves immense time and effort as designs are edited and updated throughout the selling and manufacturing process.

Logik.ai’s proprietary solving engine handles any volume and complexity of rules and calculations to ensure that configuration, measurements, and pricing are accurate regardless of the unique requirements of a design. Neither internal sellers nor eCommerce users will face the frustration of long buffer times between clicks or waiting for updates to apply after making changes. 

The API-first architecture of Logik.ai allows the internal selling team to configure without delays and self-service users to explore the art of the possible without lag time or restrictions on customization. Logik.ai has also improved productivity for Fortress CPQ administrators who maintain a single source of truth for all configuration rules and calculations that can seamlessly extend to all users. 

Logik.ai’s AI-guided selling ensures always-accurate, perfect-fit solutions based on customer requirements and the attributes inputted for each unique order. Customers will be automatically led to solutions that are better suited to their needs and quickly be able to determine whether or not their idea is feasible. With years of steel framing expertise embedded into the guided selling experience, all internal sellers at Fortress work at the speed and volume of their most successful seller, accelerating the sales cycle and improving customer satisfaction.

Logik.ai’s automated approval process allows submission and approval to transpire in just clicks, eliminating lengthy back-and-forth approval processes between quote creation and delivery. Once approved, Logik.ai automatically shares approved orders with all relevant downstream teams and the customer using multiple BOMs in just minutes, each customized with appropriate visibility.