This site is dedicated to the concept of bolt on configuration technology for order entry systems. Call it Guided Selling. If there are options or choices to be made when buying a product, then a configurator is the way to go. Educating customers and sales people is what this is all about. Think about all the interdependent choices you make everyday. So many things hinge on a complex and nuanced series of options and choices that we often aren’t even aware we’re doing it.

Is life a series of compartmentalized yes/no decisions? Sometimes it seems that way. This blog examines the art and science of choice mangement and recognizing the amazing number of things we use and do that are actually “Configuration Engines.” An example? How about any of the popular tax preparation software programs, like TurboTax. Taken a step further, a manually prepared tax return is a configuration engine, too. Using the same set of forms, you can create a one page 1040 EZ or a 100 page Corporate tax return.

A more abstract example is the recent movie “The Butterfly Effect”, where someone goes back in time making only small changes to his past, which result in monumental (albeit disasterous) changes in his life. More on both of these later. Anyway, the theory of configurators is our playground. Have at it!

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 6th, 2006 at 4:47 pm and is filed under Configurator. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.