| For Nigel Carpenter, Product Planning and System Support Manager at Avanti, one of the core reasons for choosing ArtiCAD-Pro was the product’s integration with easyquote. “We had previously bought a package which was supposed to handle the complete kitchen sales process from start to finish. Unfortunately it never did. We were determined not to make the same mistake again, and in the ArtiCAD-Pro/easyquote solution, we do indeed have a fully integrated solution – from initial design, to detailed plans and elevations, parts lists and pricing, right through to cutting lists for our state of the art manufacturing systems.” |
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Learning from experience
Avanti began their search for a replacement for the existing CabinetVision product in 2007. Although CabinetVision had proven to be very good at handling the manufacturing side of Avanti’s business, its major drawback was the front-end, both in terms of the output for customers and its usability. Nigel Carpenter: “Despite a lot of effort, the sales people just found it too difficult to use. It is dreadful to be sitting in someone’s house trying to draw their new kitchen if it takes ages to produce and the result is really not worth the wait.”
Avanti looked at several different CAD packages for kitchen design, and put three of them through a rigorous in-house trial. ArtiCAD-Pro won on the quality of its output, ease of use and its complete integration with the pricing and business management package, easyquote. The decision was taken to order ten ArtiCAD-Pro licenses in early 2008.
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A bespoke solution
ArtiCAD has created custom graphics for Avanti, enabling the company’s designers to include specific products from the portfolio in their designs, rather than simply using generic items. The company’s logo has also been incorporated which, according to Nigel Carpenter, gives the whole package they present to their customers a much more professional appearance.
Once a potential customer has visited a showroom, an Avanti designer visits them at home, discusses their requirements and produces an initial design using ArtiCAD-Pro. The integration with easyquote enables the designer to also produce a price for the proposed design. Any changes to the design are either made in the customer’s house or back at the Avanti showroom. The final designs can either be presented face to face or emailed to the customer.
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ArtiCAD-Pro & easyquote
Using XML, the ArtiCAD-Pro and easyquote interface allow the export of all the relevant information from an ArtiCAD design into easyquote. This includes automatically matching ArtiCAD codes to easyquote internal codes to ensure exact matching to the chosen specification. In addition, ArtiCAD-Pro exports all the door information, such as size and type, for any cabinet. This even includes doors that may have been customised in ArtiCAD-Pro.
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