Milwaukee Tool ran B2B quoting and transactions through complex Excel spreadsheets with deeply embedded logic that could not scale. Sales reps filled out the spreadsheets, and operations teams keyed the orders into the ERP by hand. Every month and quarter, the company had to release a refreshed spreadsheet to the whole organization, and any mistake meant a company-wide re-release.
The pricing engine ran 7,000 to 8,000 simultaneous promotions at once, layering consumer promotions on top of B2B PCE codes for accounts like Home Depot, Ace Hardware, and Northern Tool. The existing engine, built on Dynamics, could not keep up with the company's rapid growth and ran into daily performance problems. It was the most complex pricing setup Zaelab had seen to date.
Fundamental bottlenecks in order entry and pricing were actively suppressing growth and preventing customer experience improvements as the business scaled toward $10B. Other SIs had pushed back on the complexity; nobody wanted to take it on.
