Sharing our implementation of automated variant option filtering in TC 12.4 that reduced manual sales configuration effort by 75% and cut quote generation time from 2-3 days to under 4 hours.
Our company manufactures industrial equipment with extensive configuration options - each product has 50-200 configurable options with complex compatibility rules. Sales engineers were spending hours manually validating option combinations for customer quotes, often making errors that led to unbuildable configurations.
We implemented BMIDE variant rules integrated with our sales order system to automatically filter incompatible options as sales engineers build configurations. The system enforces option constraint logic in real-time, preventing invalid combinations and guiding users toward valid configurations. This eliminated the manual validation bottleneck and dramatically reduced configuration errors.
We used a combination approach in BMIDE. Created option families for logical groupings (e.g., “Power Systems”, “Control Systems”, “Safety Features”), then defined constraint rules between families. For example, high-voltage power option excludes certain control system variants. We modeled about 300 constraint rules covering the most common incompatibilities. For sales order integration, we built a REST API layer that exposes the TC configurator to our CRM system. Sales engineers work in the CRM, but the configurator engine runs in TC and returns only valid option combinations based on the BMIDE variant rules.
The REST API integration is interesting. Does your implementation handle real-time pricing as options are selected? We’re looking at variant management for a similar use case, and one challenge is that option pricing can be dynamic (based on current material costs, volume discounts, etc.). If the configurator is in TC but pricing is in ERP, how do you keep them synchronized during the configuration process?
We handle pricing through a hybrid approach. Base option prices are stored in TC as part of the variant definition, but the REST API includes a callback to our ERP system for real-time pricing adjustments (volume discounts, current material costs, regional pricing). The configurator returns the valid option set from TC, then the CRM makes a separate call to ERP to get final pricing. This keeps configuration logic (option compatibility) separate from pricing logic (cost calculation), which makes both systems easier to maintain. The quote generation process combines the valid configuration from TC with the pricing from ERP into a final customer quote.