Nils Olsson, Chief Strategy Product and Customer Officer, Tacton
Buyers in today’s market expect absolute confidence in the result of their orders, along with a quick and independent process. Because of this mindset, the future of complex manufacturing sales must be both buyer-led and built for highly configurable products.
Research consistently supports this need for this shift. Gartner found that that 61% of B2B buyers prefer to complete most of the journey without engaging a sales representative. Accenture findings reinforce why: early in the process, buyers prioritise convenience, speed and competitor comparison. Once the order is placed, priorities quickly shift to reliability, accuracy and a predictable delivery.
For manufacturers of highly configurable products, sales is no longer just about fast responses. The challenge is growing, research shows that 67% of manufacturers now describe their products as very or extremely complex—up 20 percentage points in a single year. Complexity is no longer an engineering issue alone; it shapes every customer interaction, from the first quote to final delivery. A new mandate has been created. One that ensures what is explored, configured and quoted early can be reliably delivered later. In a Buyer-Centric Smart Factory, sales is the front door to a connected lifecycle where the needs of a buyer flow seamlessly into engineering and order fulfillment, without disconnect.
The impact of digital transformation, automation and AI
For highly configurable products, digital transformation is only successful when automation and AI are rooted in governed configuration logic. It’s important to remember that AI does not replace any engineering expertise. Instead, it’s a tool that scales and makes it available earlier on in the buying process.
Within a Buyer-Centric Smart Factory, automation supports buyer convenience during the search and comparison stage, while AI steps in to help translate buyer requirements into valid, manufacturable configurations. This ensures that the speed desired early-on in the process does not compromise the reliability wanted at a later stage. Without a single source of truth like this across sales, engineering and order fulfillment, automation simply leads to increased errors and margin leakage.
How are digital native millennial and Gen Z buyers changing the game?
According to Forrester, millennials and Gen Z now make up around 71 % of B2B buyers. This audience expects consumer grade digital experiences, even when purchasing mission critical products that are highly configurable. They want to independently explore product options, get fast answers, and trust that pricing, lead times and delivery commitments will be kept.
For manufacturers of high-variance, configurable products, this creates a major challenge. Trust is quickly broken when speed is delivered without technical accuracy. However, the Buyer-Centric Smart Factory allows manufacturers to deliver intuitive buyer engagement and engineering approved configurability aligned with manufacturing reality.
Preparing for the future
To prepare for this new wave of manufacturing, manufacturers of highly configurable products must stop siloing the management of configurability. Errors are inevitable when configuration logic is fragmented across CPQ, PLM, ERP, spreadsheets, and local tools. Only 7% of manufacturers define configuration rules once and reuse them across the product lifecycle, leaving the vast majority to recreate or reconcile configuration logic across multiple systems.
The priority now is establishing a single source of truth for product configurability that governs what can be sold, built, delivered and serviced across the whole lifecycle of a product. This system allows buyer engagement to scale easily without risking engineering bottlenecks or operational risk.
How can manufacturers embrace this future boldly and successfully?
There are several steps that manufacturers can take to adapt to the complex manufacturing needs of today. They are as follows:
- Treat configurability as a strategic asset, not a departmental tool
- For sales to move faster without risk, codify engineering knowledge
- Reflect real manufacturing constraints in every quote
- Scale governed expertise with AI, not bypass validation
- Align sales success with delivery reliability and margin protection
These actions will help manufacturers to scale highly configurable portfolios profitably. Higher win rates, faster sales cycles, protected margins and reliable delivery are all a result of aligning buyer engagement with engineering and fulfillment. The Buyer-Centric Smart Factory turns configurability into a competitive advantage.
Nils Olsson, Chief Strategy Product and Customer Officer, Tacton
As chief strategy officer at Tacton, Nils Olsson is passionate about bridging the gap between sales, engineering and order fulfillment - maximizing the potential of products to achieve sustainable profitable growth based on real customer value. Before joining Tacton, he held various leadership roles at Tetra Pak, a leader in packaging and containers manufacturing, including Manager of Portfolio Management and Manager of Product Configuration. Previously, he was Head of Product Support for Sidel, a provider of equipment, services and complete solutions for packaging liquids, foods, home and personal care products.
