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Introduction: Why This Guide Exists

Machinery manufacturers and distributors rely heavily on ERP systems as the backbone of their business operations. While ERP solutions effectively handle core processes such as production planning, finance, and inventory management, they often fall short in managing specialized, customer-facing workflows, including Sales, Marketing, Field Service, and Help Desk operations for machinery manufacturers & distributors. 

Many companies attempt to bridge this gap by extending their ERP systems with additional modules. However, these modules frequently fail to meet the unique requirements of machinery businesses, leading to inefficient workarounds, fragmented tool usage like spreadsheets, complex integrations, and costly custom developments.

This guide is designed specifically to help machinery manufacturers and distributors understand the limitations of their ERP solutions regarding customer-facing operations. You'll discover how specialized software tailored to your industry—such as Makula—can seamlessly handle custom workflows, empowering your Sales, Marketing, Field Service, and Support teams to operate efficiently and effectively.

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Executive Summary: Digitizing Customer-Facing Operations in Machinery Manufacturing & Distribution

Most machinery companies rely on ERP systems to run their core operations—but when it comes to customer-facing workflows like Sales, Field Service, and Support, these systems often fall short. Companies attempt to extend ERPs with CRM modules, ticketing add-ons, and third-party tools, only to end up with fragmented systems, duplicated data, and frustrated teams.

Makula is different.
We’ve built a platform designed specifically for machinery manufacturers and distributors—companies with complex installed bases, long product lifecycles, and high expectations from customers.

With modular products like:

• Asset Hub (Installed base management)
  
  
• Field Service & Help Desk (Technician dispatch + customer support)
  
  
• 3D Stream (Immersive machine demos and support)
  
  
• Customer Portal (Self-service access to machine data, docs, and tickets)
  
  
• Industrial AI (Smart assistants and voice-driven workflows)

…Makula delivers what generic tools can’t:
✅ Out-of-the-box workflows
✅ Rapid deployment
✅ Built-in domain expertise
✅ Seamless integration with existing ERP/CRM/FSM tools
✅ Zero consultant dependency

Whether you're a small team going digital for the first time or an enterprise modernizing legacy systems, Makula meets you where you are—and helps you scale your customer-facing operations with clarity, speed, and impact.

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Key Challenges with Customer Facing Software

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Selling machinery today goes beyond traditional sales methods. Manufacturers and distributors face increasing competition and must leverage domain-specific software solutions to attract and retain customers effectively. Key challenges include:

• Maximizing Sales Potential: Traditional ERP systems typically lack specialized capabilities essential for machinery sales. These include utilizing 3D models for realistic demonstrations, AI-driven sales assistance to guide customer interactions, and advanced tracking of customer engagement throughout the sales process.
• Increasing Market Visibility: Effective marketing in machinery sales requires engaging customers through digital experiences. This includes interactive customer portals, visually compelling digital assets, 3D visualization tools, and integrated spare part shops that enhance customer interactions and drive sales.
• Efficient Field Service & Help Desk Operations: Reliable, responsive field service and help desk support are critical in maintaining customer satisfaction, ensuring smooth operations, and building customer loyalty. Generic ERP modules often fall short in meeting these specific requirements.
• Revenue Creation and New Revenue Streams: Leading machinery manufacturers like Trumpf Maschinenbau monetize services significantly through their machines, utilizing customer portals and premium digital services. Smaller and mid-sized companies often lack the resources to develop such platforms independently, missing out on valuable revenue opportunities.

This guide will demonstrate how industry-specific software like Makula can overcome these challenges by empowering your business to sell more machines, enhance marketing effectiveness, raise brand awareness, efficiently manage field service and help desk operations, and unlock new revenue streams, ultimately driving greater revenue and customer satisfaction.

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How Makula Helps Machinery Manufacturers & Distributors

Makula is purpose-built to support the unique needs of machinery manufacturers and distributors across sales, marketing, and after-sales service. Our domain-specific modules/products work seamlessly together standalone or in combination to create an integrated experience:

• Asset Hub: At the core of Makula, the Asset Hub enables you to digitize your entire installed base, creating a single source of truth for all machines in the field. It supports product lifecycle tracking, documentation, and asset-specific engagement. It also allows you to create machine-specific marketing catalogs that can be shared with customers.
• Field Service & Help Desk: Makula includes a powerful field service module that simplifies dispatching technicians, managing service requests, and tracking spare parts usage. Help desk functionality ensures fast, traceable, and organized support for your customers.
• 3D Stream: This module brings your machines to life with immersive 3D experiences. Sales and marketing teams can use it to present digital assets, allowing customers to explore machines interactively—boosting engagement, understanding, and trust during the sales process. Field Service can use it to increase efficiency when on the job. 
• Customer Portal: Makula provides a branded, secure portal where customers can access machine documentation, service history, support tickets, 3D Models and more. This portal can be monetized through subscriptions or tiered service offerings.
• Industrial AI: Our AI capabilities help your teams and customers instantly search, summarize, and extract insights from large sets of documentation, manuals, and service logs—reducing time to resolution and increasing service quality.

With Makula, machinery businesses can transform how they sell, support, and engage customers—unlocking efficiency, driving growth, and staying ahead in a competitive market

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Section: Modular by Design — Flexible for Every Company Size

Depending on your company size and digital maturity, you can pick the modules that make the most sense — and skip the rest.

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🟢 Small Businesses: Go From Paper to Platform

Today’s reality: Most small machinery businesses rely on paper-based processes, spreadsheets, and WhatsApp and don’t have any software in place in their customer-facing operations.

With Makula: You get an all-in-one solution to digitalize your operations — fast.

✅ Adopt the full Makula suite as your core system for Go to market and After-SAles
✅ Replace manual processes with a fully connected platform
✅ Go live without consultants or long projects as our software is domain-specific and already customized for your needs. 

Recommended setup:
Asset Hub + Field Service + 3D Stream + Customer Portal + Industrial AI

🟡 Medium-Sized Businesses: Add What You’re Missing

Today’s reality: Some systems are already in place — often a field service tool — but customer self-service portal  and more advanced 3D/AI solutions are not in place. 

With Makula: Keep what’s working, and fill the digital gaps without disrupting your operations.

✅ Keep your existing Field Service tool
✅ Add Makula's Asset Hub to centralize machine data
✅ Launch a Customer Portal to modernize customer experience
✅ Layer on AI and 3D to boost efficiency across teams

Recommended setup:
Asset Hub + Customer Portal (+ optional 3D Stream, Industrial AI)

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🔵 Enterprise Companies: Extend What You Already Have

Today’s reality: Enterprises already use ERP, CRM, and FSM systems. They might also have custom-built portals — but they lack flexibility, usability, and modern interfaces for teams in the field.

With Makula: You don’t need to rip out existing systems. Instead, layer on next-gen functionality like mobile-ready 3D catalogs and AI copilots.

✅ Add 3D Stream to empower sales and field teams with mobile 3D access
✅ Deploy Industrial AI to give every technician and help desk agent a digital assistant
✅ Connect and integrate with your existing systems 

✅ Modular means zero disruption, maximum gain

Recommended setup:
3D Stream + Industrial AI 

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Whether you’re starting from scratch or enhancing existing systems, Makula adapts to your needs — not the other way around.

💡 Start with one product.
📈 Add more as your needs grow.
🧩 Use Makula as your platform or plug it into your existing stack.

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Build the Right Configuration for Your Use Case

Makula isn’t one-size-fits-all. You can configure your setup based on what you want to achieve — whether that’s launching a customer portal, modernizing field service, or adding AI/3D capabilities without touching your core systems.

Here are some example configurations tailored to real business needs:

✅ 1. Launch a Customer Portal

Goal: Offer your customers self-service access to machines, documents, and service requests.

Recommended Products:

• Asset Hub (to digitalize your installed base and manage machine data)
  
  
• Customer Portal (to give customers direct access)
  
  
• (Optional) 3D Stream (to visualize machines in 3D)
  
  
• (Optional) Industrial AI (to enable AI support and search for customers)
  
  

🎯 Outcome: A branded, digital customer experience with full machine visibility and support tools.

✅ 2. Digitalize Your Field Service

Goal: Streamline service operations, manage work orders, and empower technicians.

Recommended Products:

• Asset Hub (to create a unified machine database)
  
  
• Field Service (to manage technicians, scheduling, and service tickets)
  
  
• (Optional) Industrial AI Notetaker (to record and transcribe technician voice notes)
  
  
• (Optional) 3D Stream (to provide technicians with 3D machine models in the field)
  
  

🎯 Outcome: Efficient, data-driven field service operations powered by a central asset database.

✅ 3. AI-Only Configuration

Goal: Add AI capabilities without changing your existing tools or workflows.

Recommended Products:

• Industrial AI (to deploy smart assistants that understand your machines)
  
  
• (Optional) AI Notetaker (to capture and organize voice notes from sales, service, or support teams)
  
  

🎯 Outcome: AI-powered productivity across teams — zero system migration required.

✅ 4. 3D-Only Configuration

Goal: Add visual, interactive 3D models to enhance sales, support, or service.

Recommended Products:

• 3D Stream (standalone 3D viewer for machines and spare parts)
  
  

🎯 Outcome: Share interactive 3D views of machines instantly — no app installs, perfect for mobile.

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✅ 5. Full-Stack Deployment

Goal: Go fully digital with a connected platform for sales, service, support, and customer experience.

Recommended Products:

• Asset Hub
  
  
• Field Service
  
  
• Customer Portal
  
  
• 3D Stream
  
  
• Industrial AI + AI Notetaker
  
  

🎯 Outcome: A fully integrated, modern operations platform — ready to scale with your business.

Mix, Match, and Scale

Whether you want to start small with one product or deploy a full suite from day one, Makula makes it easy to scale based on your real use cases — not forced bundles.

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Section:Why Domain-Specific Software Outperforms Generic Tools

Most enterprise software platforms like Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce, or SAP are general-purpose business tools. They're designed to be a blank canvas — which sounds flexible, but often leads to long, costly implementation projects involving consultants, custom configurations, and endless integration efforts. These tools are not built with machinery manufacturers and distributors in mind.

The Problem with Generic Software

• Not built for your workflows: Generic platforms need to be bent and stretched to fit after-sales service, installed base management, spare parts tracking, and domain specific workflows — this is the honest truth.
  
  
• Consultants required: You’ll need external consultants who charge by the hour to help define, build, and maintain your workflows.
  
  
• Hidden costs: Licensing fees are just the beginning. The true cost lies in the months of setup, onboarding, and ongoing configuration.
  
  
• Poor usability: Since these tools aren’t tailored for your industry, they often feel clunky and unintuitive for technicians, service teams, and even sales reps.
  
  

Makula: Built for Machinery Companies

Makula is not just a software platform — it's a purpose-built system designed specifically for machinery manufacturers and distributors.

• Domain-specific by design: Every workflow in Makula — from asset management to field service and AI-powered customer support — is designed for industrial machinery companies.
  
  
• Out-of-the-box setup: No need for months of configuration. You get working processes from day one.
  
  
• Better usability: Built with your end-users in mind. Fast to learn, fast to adopt.
  
  
• Lower total cost of ownership: Because Makula is ready to go, you save significantly on setup, training, and support.

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One Platform. Multiple Teams. One Source of Truth.

Makula is more than a collection of tools — it’s a single, unified platform where your Sales, Marketing, Field Service, and Support teams work together seamlessly. Every interaction with a customer happens with full context: what machines they own, what issues they’ve had, and what support they’ve received — all in one place.

✅ The Advantage of Cross-Team Collaboration

With Makula, your teams are no longer working in silos. Instead, they share a central asset database that connects every machine, customer interaction, and service activity — so everyone is always on the same page.

When your Sales Team talks to a customer, they instantly know:

• What machines the customer owns
  
  
• When the last service was performed
  
  
• What spare parts were recently ordered
  
  
• And what technical documentation is available
  
  

👇 How Each Team Uses Makula

You could visualize this section as a table, an interactive module, or a horizontal scroll layout on the website:

🔹 Sales Team

• Asset Hub: See your installed base by customer, machine type, or region.
  
  
• 3D Stream: Show machines in 3D, live on mobile — ideal for in-person meetings or trade shows.
  
  
• Industrial AI Assistant: Ask technical questions and get instant answers — like having a personal expert with you.
  
  
• AI Notetaker: Record voice notes in the Makula app after every customer conversation — no more forgotten details.
  
  

🔹 Marketing Team

• Customer Portal: Launch a branded portal to let customers explore machines via QR scan, view 3D models, and access documentation. → learn more
  
  
• Asset Hub: Build a digital product catalog with images, 3D files, manuals, and more — and publish it safely online for customer self-service. → learn more
  
  

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🔹 Field Service Team

• Field Service: Plan and manage work orders, dispatch technicians, and monitor performance.
  
  
• 3D Stream: Give technicians access to interactive 3D models of machines right on their tablet or phone.
  
  
• AI Notetaker: Capture voice-based maintenance notes on-site, automatically transcribed and saved.
  
  
• Asset Hub: Always have machine history, manuals, and parts lists at hand — even offline.
  
  

🔹 Help Desk Team

• Field Service (Inbox View): Manage all customer inquiries — email, phone, and portal — in one Kanban board.
  
  
• Industrial AI Assistant: Let your AI co-pilot answer detailed customer queries instantly — from "Where is the fuse box?" to “What part needs replacement?”
  
  
• 3D Stream: Visually support customers with parts identification and troubleshooting in 3D.
  
  

🔁 One Unified Platform, Always in Sync

Makula connects every touchpoint — sales, service, support, and customer self-service — in a single data model. No more duplicated entries, siloed spreadsheets, or contextless CRM notes. Just real-time, actionable insights for everyone

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Why Choose Makula?

Makula is not just another software platform — it’s a solution built exclusively for machinery manufacturers and distributors, grounded in real-world insights and industry pain points.

Built with 500+ Machinery Companies — For Machinery Companies

Before building Makula, we spoke with over 500 OEMs, distributors, and machinery service providers. Through in-depth interviews, workshops, and field observations, we uncovered the common frustrations across go-to-market, after-sales service, and customer-facing operations:

• "Generic ERP and CRM systems don't fit how we work."
  
  
• "Our sales, service, and support teams are disconnected — nobody has the full picture."
  
  
• "It takes forever to launch a simple customer portal or make technical documentation available."
  
  
• "We spend months configuring off-the-shelf software, only to end up with something our teams don’t want to use."
  
  

We listened — and built Makula to solve exactly these problems.

Purpose-Built Workflows, Zero Guesswork

Every product in the Makula platform — from Asset Hub to Field Service, 3D Stream, Industrial AI, and Customer Portal — is based on actual workflows used by machinery companies.

You won’t find generic CRM pipelines or ticketing systems here. You’ll find tools that understand:

• Installed base management
  
  
• Service and maintenance cycles
  
  
• Technical documentation challenges
  
  
• Spare parts complexity
  
  
• 3D product data in field workflows
  
  
• Cross-functional coordination between sales, service, and support
  
  

Fast to Deploy. Easy to Integrate.

Unlike ERP platforms or traditional CRM solutions that require long implementation cycles and external consultants, Makula is designed to:

• Work out of the box for your industry
  
  
• Integrate with your existing ERP, CRM, or FSM systems
  
  
• Drastically reduce setup and training time
  
  

We know your pain points — because we built Makula with your peers.

That’s why companies trust Makula to digitize their customer-facing operations without the complexity.

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Integrating Makula into Your IT Landscape

Makula integrates effortlessly into your existing IT landscape by acting as a smart layer between your ERP system and your end customers. It connects your sales, service, field service, and help desk operations through a unified, domain-specific platform.

At the heart of this integration is the Asset Hub, which serves as the system of record for your entire installed base. Machinery and customer data can be imported to Asset Hub via CSV or API from your ERP, allowing for a fast and structured setup. From there, Makula’s other modules activate instantly through a native integration. 

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• Customer Portal: Offer your customers out-of-the-box access to machines, documentation, tickets, spare part shops, product catalogs, and interactive 3D visualizations—all without needing custom IT development.
• Field Service & Help Desk: These modules are tightly integrated with the Asset Hub. All activities are tied to specific assets, and upon completion, service results can be automatically synced back to your ERP for invoicing.
• 3D Stream: Seamlessly linked to the Asset Hub, it lets your teams present and share machine-specific 3D assets in customer interactions and marketing.
• Industrial AI Tools: AI Notetaker and the Machinery Assistant work out of the box with Makula, delivering smart documentation, summarization, and search capabilities directly tied to your installed base—no separate setup required.

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The Benefits of Cloud-Based Software with Zero IT Overhead

Makula is fully cloud-based, allowing you to skip the complexity of on-premise installations and avoid placing additional burden on your internal IT teams. From deployment to daily use, everything runs securely in the cloud—accessible anywhere, anytime.

• No IT Resources Required: There is no need for your IT department to set up servers, manage backups, or install software locally (apart from the integration between ERP and Asset Hub). All modules are available immediately with secure access via web and mobile.
• Automatic Updates: New features, security patches, and improvements are rolled out seamlessly, ensuring your teams always use the latest version—without IT involvement.
• Scalability Without Limits: Whether you're onboarding five users or five hundred, the platform scales with your business needs. Infrastructure concerns are handled entirely by Makula.
• High Security Standards: Hosted in secure, GDPR-compliant data centers in Germany, Makula ensures your data is protected while remaining easily accessible to authorized users.
• Quick Deployment: Most customers can start using Makula in just a few days, thanks to its plug-and-play modules and pre-configured workflows tailored to machinery businesses.

With Makula’s cloud-native approach, you gain enterprise-grade functionality without the technical headaches—so your team can focus on what matters most: serving customers and growing your business.

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