Moving stalled robotic palletising deals through vendor qualification and capital approval
Field engineers won over the plant engineer, then deals stopped at procurement and group finance. Live-deal enablement widens each buying group and builds the capital case with the champion.
- Challenge
Deals stalling at vendor qualification and capital approval, with engineers talking only to the plant.
- Approach
Buying-group reviews, a qualification pack and capital business cases built on live deals.
- Result
Priority deals reach procurement and finance with their evidence ready.
The situation
End-of-line automation sellers are usually engineers, and they sell well to the plant engineer who wants the cell. Then the deal meets procurement's vendor qualification: supplier onboarding, machine safety documentation and cybersecurity questions about a connected cell. After that comes the capital request, where group finance weighs it against every other bid for budget. Field engineers have met neither group, so deals stall and often slip into the next budget cycle.
The question that mattered
How do field engineers get palletising deals through vendor qualification and capital approval without losing the plant champion?
What we did
- 1
Review the stalled deals
Walk through each priority opportunity with its field engineer to find where it stopped and who is missing: procurement, health and safety, operations or the plant controller.
- 2
Turn the sales narrative into role guides
Use the company's existing narrative as the source for short procurement, safety and finance guides: questions to ask and proof to bring.
- 3
Prepare qualification before it is asked for
Build a pre-filled pack: safety risk assessment approach, CE and UKCA documentation, cybersecurity answers, insurance and reference sites, sent as soon as procurement is named.
- 4
Build capital cases on live deals
Work with each plant champion to write the capital request in group finance's format: labour redeployed, manual-handling injury risk, throughput and payback. Test each case at a fortnightly deal clinic before it goes forward.
What we delivered
The evidence and working documents the team kept.
- Stalled-deal review: stopping points and missing roles
- Role guides for procurement, safety and finance, drawn from the sales narrative
- Vendor qualification pack for connected palletising cells
- Capital-approval cases for live priority deals, plus the template
- Deal-clinic format for testing cases before submission
The outcome
Field engineers
arrange procurement and safety meetings while the plant trial is being scoped
Plant champions
submit capital requests tested at the deal clinic
Qualification questionnaires
answered from the pack, not rebuilt per deal
Account plans
name procurement, safety and finance contacts on each priority deal
Forecast calls now record, deal by deal, whether procurement has the qualification pack and whether the plant controller has tested the business case.
What changed in the GTM motion
A capital case now starts during the plant trial, while the champion's measurements are fresh. Sales operations keeps the qualification pack current, and the sales director runs the fortnightly deal clinic with field engineers.
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