Read this blog post to know about the benefits of using an effective Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) application and why Salesforce is one of the most widely used CPQ systems in the world.
The world of business is undergoing a major transformation – the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic had (and continues to have) a profound impact on companies, as they grapple with volatile demand and disruptions to supply chains.
To overcome these problems, many organizations are trying to make their business processes more effective. A key area most firms are focusing on is making their Quote-to-Order (QTO) cycles shorter and more robust. An efficient QTO cycle goes a long way in helping companies improve their selling efficiencies and increase margins.
Several businesses are using state-of-the-art Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) software tools to enhance and automate their QTO processes. One of the most popular tools used to enhance QTO efficiencies is Salesforce CPQ. Today, we’ll learn how this innovative application helps firms sell with high levels of efficacy and increase their profits.
This Post Will Help You Find Answers to the Following
- How does a traditional QTO cycle looks like and what are its limitations?
- How does Salesforce CPQ empower businesses to create the best value?
- How can firms implement Salesforce CPQ in an efficacious manner?
Let’s now examine the 5 steps of a typical QTO process that companies followed to close deals.
The above-mentioned process proved its efficacy and allowed firms to sell efficiently for many years. However, with the advent of the digital age, this process is creating problems for businesses due to its 3 key limitations.
3 Major Limitations of the Traditional QTO Process
- Considerable amounts of time and money are consumed due to manual execution of tasks
- Significant challenges in scaling the process to cater to ever-evolving needs
- Serious problems in using data effectively
1. Considerable Amounts of Time and Money Are Consumed Due to Manual Execution of Tasks
This is inarguably the biggest limitation of the traditional QTO process. Most firms use MS-Excel workbooks for storing information pertaining to prices of products; salespeople often find it very hard to go through the spreadsheets to prepare quotes in a timely manner. Needless to say, it severely impacts their ability to sell effectively.
2. Significant Challenges in Scaling the Process to Cater to Ever-evolving Needs
We all know businesses need to scale up their processes to cater to their ever-changing requirements. Companies that implement the traditional QTO process face difficulties in adopting new sales models; this is because considerable amount of time must be spent to make changes to the process, and this badly affects the ability of the business to respond to rapidly-evolving needs of clients efficaciously. Consider the following scenario.
An emerging logistics company that delivers medicines to druggists experienced a sudden increase in demand for its services, during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The firm wanted to switch over to a new, highly flexible pricing model that would enable it to provide higher discounts based on rapidly-changing levels of demand. But it couldn’t implement the model due to its inability to scale its QTO process, resulting in it missing a major revenue generation opportunity.
3. Serious Problems in Using Data Effectively
Proper use of data goes a long way in helping salespersons close deals efficiently; unfortunately, the traditional QTO process prevents the reps from making the best use of data. They need to spend a lot of time to reconcile revenue figures to those in business contracts, resulting in significant delays in recognition of revenues.
So far, we’ve examined the traditional QTO process and its drawbacks. We’ll now see how Salesforce CPQ enables firms to overcome the challenges and help companies create the best value.
Salesforce CPQ – Enabling Businesses Fulfill the Requirements of the 21st Century Customer
Salesforce CPQ is a robust, cloud-powered solution, offered as a part of Salesforce Revenue Cloud. The novel solution goes a long way in helping companies fully utilize marketing and customer data to provide the best value. Salesforce CPQ empowers firms to overcome the issues with the traditional QTO process and enhance sales cycle efficiencies considerably. The smart solution is much more than a tool used to build pricing models and generate quotes – it empowers companies to meet the needs of their clients at the right time, for the right price, using the right channel, thereby ensuring customer delight.
Let’s now proceed to look at some of the key benefits of Salesforce CPQ and how it enables organizations to sell successfully.
Configuration of Products is Simplified
Salesforce CPQ helps businesses to come up with the right configurations of their products with little effort. You can create automated rules for configurations and come up with Bills of Materials (BOMs). The solution allows you to perform thorough analyses of different options to configure a product and helps guide sales reps based on the unique needs of each client. Salesforce CPQ also enables you to identify potential up-selling and cross-selling opportunities.
Development of Pricing Strategies Is Made Hassle-free
You can leverage Salesforce CPQ to define customized pricing parameters for each of your clients with high efficacy to utilize attribute-based pricing frameworks effectively. You can also come up with pricing structure for each item and offer discounts on the basis of customer, buying channel, volume of purchase and product.
Creation of Quotes Is Seamless
Salesforce CPQ helps make generation of quotes and orders easy; businesses can utilize the innovative solution to generate various sales-related documents including dynamic templates for quoting. You can also empower your business partners to make the best use of data for creating highly accurate quotes in no time.
Companies can integrate Salesforce CPQ with a wide range of software systems such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), accounting and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools.
We will now move on to examine 5 key aspects companies must focus on to use Salesforce CPQ effectively.
5 Aspects Businesses Must Consider to Ensure Efficacious Use of Salesforce CPQ
Salesforce CPQ is a powerful solution, and firms must come up with a well-defined lead-to-order framework to fully exploit its capabilities. They also need to focus adequately on the following 5 aspects.
1. Development of a Robust Change Management Plan
You must remember implementation of Salesforce CPQ will involve a significant redesign of your QTO mechanism. The novel solution helps you automate all quote-generation activities and eliminate manual intervention. This makes modifications to your sales process necessary, and these modifications can be handled effectively only by implementing a good change management plan.
2. Identification of Users’ Requirements and Needed CPQ Features
It is important to prepare an exhaustive list of the CPQ abilities you require such as creating and managing catalogs, guided selling, streamlining workflows pertaining to approval of quotes and performing analyses of data. You must also have a clear idea of what your team and channel partners want.
3. Integration with Various Software Applications
Effective integration of Salesforce CPQ with various software systems used by your organization such as ERP, accounting and CRM tools helps your business enhance efficiency and improve accuracy of quotes. You can facilitate smooth, real-time movement of product-related data by integrating customer and product master hubs with the CPQ solution.
4. Facilitation of Data of High Quality
Companies must develop a Master Data Management (MDM) framework of high efficacy to ensure effective usage of Salesforce CPQ. A robust MDM framework will go a long way in creating a Single Source of Truth (SSOT).
5. Enablement of Smooth Collaboration Between Various Teams
Salesforce CPQ has a major impact on various organizational functions such as management of products, engineering, IT operations and accounting; you must ensure efficacious coordination between various teams to facilitate seamless resolution of the problems faced by each team, thereby enabling proper use of the CPQ solution.
As you can see, Salesforce CPQ plays a key role in helping firms enhance their QTO processes and ensure high levels of organizational productivity. At Solunus, we enable you to harness the immense potential of this novel solution to sell more, faster and cheaper. Our proven ‘business-requirements-first’ approach and unrivaled expertise of Salesforce CPQ allows us to create the best value.
Hope you liked this post. How do you intend to utilize Salesforce CPQ? We’d love to know.
About Solunus
Solunus is a dedicated Salesforce partner organization, headquartered in Dallas, Texas. Our unrelenting focus on comprehending the unique needs of our clients coupled with our unrivaled expertise of the Salesforce platform enables us to deliver the perfect solutions that create the best value for IT and business analytics firms.
