Many manufacturers struggle with the expansion of their product offerings. Pressure from sales teams and their customers cause manufacturers to build out an increasingly complex list of product choices. Meanwhile, the product teams are often focused on meeting these requests without a broader view of how additional options will affect sales or the organization as a whole.

Configurable products have their own kind of complexity. This is not the typical “big data” complexity, but data challenges that arise from the combinatorial issues of multi-dimensional data. Simple configurations could include paint color or tire selection, but the entire scope of options offered by a manufacturer could be in the hundreds, from interior options to specialty earthmoving or demolition attachments.

READ the entire article here.