Proactive Enterprise Product Costing With FACTON

In today’s global market, companies have to make reliable and smart decisions in order to sustain and succeed. To make intelligent decisions, the companies need full transparency and control over the cost structure of complex products as it plays a pivotal role in enterprise management, amplifying innovation, and managing global competition. FACTON provides this transparency and control with its costing software for manufacturing companies from every industry.

Established in 1998, FACTON is the market leader for enterprise product costing. The company’s flagship product, FACTON EPC - brings together the financial view and the engineering perspective of costs and enables companies to accelerate their costing processes and to improve cost accuracy for greater profitability. Often used in automotive, aerospace and mechanical engineering sectors, FACTON EPC can also benefit consumer goods, high-tech and electronics industries.

FACTON was originally set up as a consulting company which provided engineering services to manufacturing companies, mostly automotive suppliers. Over time the company broadened its customer base from automotive OEMs, aerospace companies and other manufacturing companies. FACTON’s clientele includes Ford Motor Company, TI Automotive, DURA Automotive Systems, Henniges Automotive, Airbus, Behr, Deutz MANN+HUMMEL, Porsche, and many more.

Chatting with Alexander M. Swoboda, CEO and Co-Owner

Tell us about your first product launch?

The first commercial version of the product was developed for and together with a number of global automotive tier 1 suppliers. Back in those days, the software was still very much driven by individual customer requirements. Nevertheless, the successful launch at those customers enabled us to raise the funding required to grow into the company which we are today.

How successful was your first project?

Our very first projects were successful to the clients but costly to FACTON. All of those customers are still FACTON customers, but admittedly we invested a lot into the relationship to ensure successful projects. Over time, we have perfected our delivery model and have developed a standard approach to project delivery based upon industry best practices.

What are the greatest attributes of FACTON?

• Our customers: We have an installed base with almost no customer churn, which gives us stability in terms of planning and is a strong foundation for growth.
• Our team: It is crucial to assemble a team with joint goals and values. Everybody needs to be excited of the vision to build a world class company and is willing to go the extra mile for everyone else.
• We have an unparalleled unique combination of expertise in three areas: business costing, technical costing, and software development.
• A steadfast investor who has supported us in good times with growth investment as well as in difficult times.
• A brilliant technical platform, which provides scalability. It took us many years to develop our product to a point where it got easy to add additional business logic and functionality without jeopardizing performance, but now that we have it in place, it is a tremendous advantage.

Describe any trigger factors that have been vital to FACTON?

While we always catered to large organizations, winning our first true enterprise customer, Ford Motor Company, with more than 500 global users was a huge step for us. It took the best of our organization in sales, professional services, and all other business functions, to successfully win the deal against strong competition and to implement the project in time and budget. This deal instantly doubled the size of our business and was the foundation for the next growth step.

Road Ahead

FACTON is developing an array of additional solutions. Last year, the company launched its dedicated solution “Should Costing” which offers the ability to run its platform in the cloud. The company recently released design costing solution, which provides the benefit to calculate product costs early in the life cycle of a product. FACTON will soon be launching Cost Controlling, Cost Analytics and Quotation Costing solution to address additional areas of large enterprises with tailored offerings. With the exponential growth rate of 30%, FACTON continues to expand both in US and in Europe.

Contact us: www.facton.com/en

call us at 248-687-1120.

Meet the Man behind the Success

Alexander M. Swoboda, CEO and Co-Owner: Alexander, a graduate of the Vienna University of Business and Economics, worked in various positions in the international, financial and strategy sectors for over fifteen years. Among his former employers are Siemens AG and McKinsey & Company. Alexander is a former Associate Partner of an Austrian venture capital fund and has served on several boards of international startups. He is a guest lecturer at Hasso Plattner Institute and Vienna University of Business and Economics. Alexander joined FACTON in October 2009 as CFO, later took over the role of COO and in 2015 was appointed Chief Executive Officer.

"We enable companies to accelerate their costing processes and to improve cost accuracy for greater profitability."