How Instant Quote & Price Estimating Software Helps 3D Printing Service Businesses Compete

What if generating quotes for your 3D printing customers only took seconds instead of hours? What if your team didn’t have to worry about the correct pricing? 

In such a perfectly automated environment, your potential customers receive their quotes as soon as they request them, which results in uninterrupted experience and higher conversion rates. 

However, the reality for many 3D printing service businesses is quite the opposite. 

In this article, we dive into the challenges 3D printing service bureaus face during the quotation process and explain how 3D print instant quote solutions can become your primary tools for driving sales efficiency and business growth. 

7 common 3D printing quoting challenges

1. Acquiring new customers

For the majority of 3D printing service providers, attracting new customers and securing repeat business is a top priority. 

Earning new clients or at least staying afloat has been particularly challenging with the outbreak of the pandemic. 

Even though 3D printing has been extensively used during the pandemic times, many businesses reported revenue declines or even closed.  

Successfully acquiring a new customer depends heavily on how you reach them. 

While social media, email marketing and paid ads can help you to enhance your online presence, your website remains the key piece of the puzzle.

Is your website optimised to make it easier for people to order from you online? 

Using your website to net more leads can make a big difference in your revenue numbers. 

2. Improving service pricing

Developing a pricing structure for a 3D printing service can be tricky. 

For some companies, their pricing strategy consists of copying those offered by their competitors or is simply focused on under-cutting others.  

These approaches, however, are often risky because they don’t factor in the unique processes of your business. 

Accurate pricing formula for 3D-printed parts and projects must take into account a lot of different aspects of the business (human/machine time, machine depreciation, software, facility cost), the size of the job and the unique part requirements.

The right pricing strategy has also to align with your business goals, whether these are to maximise profitability, ensure your business’ longevity, or grow your customer base.

3. Inefficient processing of lower value orders

Being able to efficiently process orders of different values is another challenge many 3D printing service providers face. 

“We found that we were, for example, spending an equal amount of time processing a £10,000 order as we were on an order worth £50. We needed to find a way to better streamline the process for specific projects.” 

Jonathan Warbrick, Business Development Manager, Graphite Additive Manufacturing

Service bureaus invest a significant amount of time on processing 3D printing orders and educating customers. With larger jobs, it’s easier to absorb those costs. Smaller orders often require a similar amount of attention, but provide much less revenue. In some cases, they cost more than they’re worth.

While lower volume jobs are still important, service providers should consider solutions that could help them handle these orders more efficiently. 

4. Converting missed sales opportunities

Picture this scenario: you’ve had a long discussion with a client who requested a quote from you, so you spend some time putting it together and then send it to them. Even though you thought the conversation went well, it’s been a week and the client still hasn’t responded yet.

While you can always send them a follow-up email, having multiple clients to follow up with can make it easy for those emails to slip through the cracks, especially if you didn’t track the process. 

5. Manual quoting eats up most of your team’s time

While the process of producing a quote is fairly straightforward, a significant amount of data must be collected from a potential customer to provide an accurate price estimate. 

Collecting all of the necessary information can sometimes take a series of phone calls or back-and-forth emails.

Then, once a customer is ready to place an order, you’ll need additional information such as payment and shipping methods. 

In a manual environment, much of this is handled with spreadsheets and other disparate software. It can create a lot of duplicate work and confusion as project managers attempt to move work through the facility and maintain communication with customers.

6. Manual pricing is inaccurate 

While spreadsheets offer many benefits when calculating 3D printing costs, there are equal opportunities to overtype incorrect numbers or formulae, or incorrectly factor in numbers.

Though easily made and solved for, these mistakes are often uncovered after a quote has been submitted to the customer. 

Even small spreadsheet mistakes can cost your company dollars, impacting overall profitability. 

It’s therefore crucial to research solutions that can alleviate the manual entry required for quoting and reduce the risk for human error.

7. Long quote turnaround time

Time to quote is critical in winning new business and establishing strong customer relationships. 

You can spend hours calculating costs and preparing quotes but if your competition responds faster or you don’t meet your customer’s urgency, you lose not only that order but the time you could have spent winning other customers. 

If your business is chronically behind on responding to RFQs, then you may start to see a decline in profitability.

What can I do to overcome the challenges?

If some of the challenges described above are familiar to you, then it’s the right time to consider what automation can do to help your business succeed and grow. 

One way to automate your business is by integrating an ordering platform into your website. 

Such a platform offers your customers a self-service instant quotation portal, where they can upload their design files, choose from printing options set by you, receive automated price estimates in minutes and place orders.