Apex for manufacturing
Quotes for products that are built to order.
A manufacturer's quote is a configuration, a bill of materials, a lead time and often a surcharge tied to the price of steel or copper. Apex prices all of it from the items, routings and price lists already in your ERP, and a signed quote becomes a sales order your plant can schedule.
What applies
The Apex functions manufacturers start with.
Product configurator
Options, dependencies and exclusions, so a rep cannot quote a 40 kW motor on a frame rated for 30.
Index-linked pricing
Material surcharges tied to a published index, with a cap, a floor and the dates the price resets.
RFQ response
A buyer's line list imported from Excel, each line priced from the book, with versions kept as the buyer revises.
Price agreements
Customer-specific price lists and blanket orders that draw down as releases ship.
Price and lead time
Price, margin and lead time on the same screen.
Each configured option pulls its cost and lead time from the ERP. The quote shows margin per line and the longest lead time in the build before the rep sends it.
- Cost from the ERP
- Standard or current cost, whichever your controller uses for quoting.
- Lead time from the routing
- The slowest component sets the ship date the quote promises.
Quote to plant
From a configured quote to a schedulable order.
- 01
Configure
The rep picks options; rules keep the configuration valid and the bill of materials complete.
- 02
Approve
A quote under your margin floor or past standard lead time goes to the approver your rules name.
- 03
Sign
The customer signs, often against their own PO number, which Apex records on the order.
- 04
Order
A sales order is written to the ERP with the configured lines, ready for planning.
Yours
Your pricing logic stays yours.
How you price a configuration, which surcharges you pass through and which customers get which discount are your advantage. Apex is set up to your rules; you are not fitted into a template, and no one else's pricing is in it.
Your rules
Configuration and pricing rules are written for your catalog, not imported from a library.
Your data
Kept in your own tenant, with models running inside your environment.
Your record
The ERP stays the system of record for every order and invoice.
Agents propose, people approve
The agent drafts. A person decides.
A quoting agent reads an inbound RFQ or inquiry, maps the customer's part descriptions to your items, and drafts the configured quote for a rep to check.
Every agent stops at an approval gate until it has earned its way out of one. Nothing releases cash, commits spend or touches a customer without a person saying so.
Your dataModels that read your data run inside your environment, behind your firewall. No client data reaches a frontier lab.
Start here, keep the foundation
Start with one function. Add the rest without starting over.
A good first function for a manufacturer is the configurator or RFQ response, because that is where quotes stall. The customers, items and price lists Apex brings down from the ERP are then ready for billing, rebates or revenue recognition whenever you add them.
FAQ
Questions, answered plainly.
What is CPQ for manufacturing?
CPQ for manufacturing is quoting software that understands configured products: options, dependencies, bills of materials, cost and lead time. It lets a sales team quote a valid build at the right margin without asking engineering for every quote.
Does Apex need its own bill of materials?
No. Apex reads items and bills of materials from your ERP. Configuration rules sit in Apex on top of them, and the order it writes back uses your item numbers.
Can surcharges follow the price of steel or copper?
Yes. A price can be tied to an index you choose, with a base value, a cap, a floor and reset dates. Apex reprices on those dates and shows the customer how the change was calculated.
How do we handle a buyer's RFQ spreadsheet?
Import it. Apex matches each line to your items, prices it from the book or the customer's agreement, and flags lines it could not match for a person. Every revision the buyer sends is kept as a version.
Which ERPs do manufacturers use Apex with?
SAP Business One, SAP S/4HANA, Oracle NetSuite and Microsoft Dynamics 365, configured to your own company codes, plants and item masters.
Will the configurator know our engineering constraints?
It knows the ones you give it. Ferrata's engineers write the rules with your product and engineering teams, so the constraints are yours rather than a generic set.
Related in Apex
- Product configuratorOptions, rules and bills of materials, priced with lead times from the ERP.View
- Index-linked pricingPrices tied to steel, fuel or CPI, with caps and floors, re-priced on set dates.View
- RFQ and tender responseImport the buyer's line list, price it from your book, and submit on time.View
- Price agreementsCustomer price lists, blanket POs and call-offs that draw down a framework.View
- SAPQuotes, orders, invoices and journals on SAP Business One or S/4HANA.View
From Ferrata Labs
- Ferrata in manufacturingProduction, quality and procurement, on SAP, NetSuite or Dynamics.
- Quill, the quoting agentReads every inquiry, prices it against your rules, drafts the quote.
- Swift, the order agentTurns customer purchase orders into clean sales orders.
- Book a discovery callThirty minutes on one workflow, and an honest answer on where to start.
Start with Apex, or talk it through first.
Thirty minutes with Ferrata Labs on one workflow. You leave with a view of where Apex fits, and an honest answer if the sequencing is wrong and you should fix something else first.
Your pricing, approval and billing rules are your advantage, and they stay yours. Apex is configured to the way you sell and bill. You are not handing over a playbook or fitting into a template.