BROCKVILLE, Ontario and FRIEDRICHSHAFEN, Germany – MTU Friedrichshafen GmbH, a manufacturer of large diesel engines and complete drive systems, has awarded a contract to Pricedex Software Inc. to integrate a global pricing management system to support its global parts logistics operations.
MTU, is the acronym for Motoren und Turbinen Union, Friedrichsafen GmBH, which was the name given to the merger of the high-speed diesel and gas turbine engine operations of Daimler-Benz and MAN in 1969. The consolidated company is now a division of Tognum AG, which recently announced its listing on the German MDAX stock index, just two months after its IPO.
In making the announcement, Martin Wendel, global director of Spare Parts Operations for MTU, said “Pricedex was the logical choice of solution to implement a global pricing management system for us. Their system has the flexibility to enable our local sales regions to manage customer contracts, while giving us a single, harmonized view of our global pricing activities. This combination will allow us to ensure that our customers can order service parts from any of our worldwide operations at their contracted prices, making the order and fulfillment process significantly easier for us and them.”
Wendel added, “Additionally, Pricedex has a proven track record with other global companies and has already proven themselves to us with their stellar performance in providing total Product Information Management systems (part pricing and cataloging) to our North American division.”
Two years ago, MTU’s North American off-road diesel engine division implemented the Pricedex Product Information Management (PIM) software application for the ongoing management and maintenance of MTU’s North American service parts operations. According to MTU, Pricedex had them up and running in fewer than 30 days. Earlier this year, the North American division added to its customer support systems by adding the Pricedex Catalog Management console and cross-media publishing system to create its online e-catalog, parts manuals and interactive CD-ROM for its two-cycle and Series 60, 2000 and 4000 off-road engines, the e-catalog is part of MTU-online.
“Together with our North American and Asian divisions, we represent the core product lines of our parent company, Tognum, and our product range is the widest and most modern in the sector,” said Wendel. “We wanted to make certain that we maintain our competitiveness, and our innovative edge in the industry, and Pricedex’ collective knowledge of the parts business will help us continue to innovate and maintain our competitiveness in all our global markets.”
One of MTU’s key goals is to enable its global customers to transact an order at customer-specific pricing from any of the regions in the world. This takes a special solution capability that validates customer contract terms, pricing and other considerations, prior to placing and invoicing an order; and feeds and synchronizes the corporate ERP systems with accurate pricing information globally.
“Based upon our managers’ successful experiences with Pricedex in North America, the Pricedex system was at the very top of our list to take on our global challenge,” said Wendel. “In North America, the Pricedex system helps our managers access all the information they need to optimize our market pricing strategies, act upon and communicate them to our markets, and report to our executive management. As a matter of fact, with the help of Pricedex and the sales reporting and analysis tools incorporated within their solution, we were able to increase our profit on parts sales last year by 25 percent because of our ability to rapidly analyze and execute optimal strategies and to act upon rapidly changing input costs. And this was in a market in which sales increased by only about 10 percent.”
Pricedex CEO, Terry O’Reilly, added, “We met with MTU and listened to them outline their vision for a system that would give them global visibility into pricing. With our team’s experience in the parts business, we were able to help them achieve that vision and create a system that would add value through all aspects of the MTU selling chain.
“We accomplished this by providing a solution that would give them visibility into all aspects of pricing, while also giving them the ability to rapidly execute their pricing strategies and communicate those strategies worldwide. It provides MTU with the combination of centralized control with local market flexibility that they require. We did a good job for MTU in North America, and enabled them to manage pricing as well as establish an online Parts Catalog for their mass-produced engines. And, we are truly pleased to have been entrusted by MTU to be their global technology business partner going forward,” O’Reilly said.
For more information, visit: www.pricedex.com.
