The ABCs of CPQ Part II: Beyond Configure, Price, Quote

In part one of the ABCs of CPQ we discussed what is CPQ and uncovered how this technology can help to improve your quoting process. In part two of this series, we’re highlighting six additional capabilities of this technology that go beyond configure – price – quote.
 

Transcript

Welcome to the ABCs of CPQ. My name is Loretta Faluade, and today I'm going to help you to understand the additional benefits of CPQ technology that goes beyond configure, price, quote.

CPQ is a tool that is used by your direct sales teams or your resellers and helps to accelerate the quoting process. However, CPQ solutions pack a lot of benefits that go beyond configure, price, quote. There's six benefits which I want to talk to you about today so let's take a look at them.
 

One: a digital catalog.

If you remember, the C in CPQ stands for configure. However, many organizations have products and solutions or services that do not require configuration. A CPQ solution provides a digital catalog that is easy to be searchable by a salesperson. They can also provide things like guided selling questionnaires that can help a salesperson find the right product for the customer.
 

Two: visualization.

Lots of CPQ solutions provide basic visualization capabilities such as 2D. Well, if you have a really really complex product and it's hard for a salesperson to visualize what that end product looks like, you can provide additional visualization techniques such as 3D. What this does is that it helps a salesperson find the exact product or understand the exact part that they need to be configuring. The other thing that a company can do to take their game to the next level is to use advanced visualization techniques such as augmented reality and even virtual reality.
 

Three: industry-specific modules.

CPQ solutions are used in a wide variety of industries such as medical technology, industrial manufacturing, chemicals, oil and gas, and much more. A lot of vendors provide pre-built packages that help to support these industries. To give you an example, if you have a CPQ solution that has a pre-built package for a manufacturing industry, you can already include features and benefits such as being able to support 3D visualization. Or, you can even have your CPQ solution do something more sophisticated such as automatically generate the bill of materials for the configuration that you just put together. This is a way in which CPQ solutions can help to accelerate that quoting process.
 

Four: sales agreements.

You already know that the Q in CPQ stands for quote. But what if your business runs on subscriptions or sales agreements? Well, a CPQ solution can also help in that type of scenario. With CPQ, your sales team or your reseller can put together the subscription offering for that product for the customer. Or, they can put together a sales agreement with more customized things such as the terms and conditions, or even include price protection clauses for that customer.
 

Five: analytics.

CPQ tools include analytics that can help a salesperson make decisions quickly. For example, one of the things that is very very difficult for a salesperson is to understand how to price. Well if you think about an analytics chart within a quoting process, this can help a salesperson to understand the revenue and the profitability impact of their every pricing decision.
 

Six: e-commerce.

Many buyers desire to self-serve. They want to be able to go on your website and understand what products you have, which offerings you have, or maybe even put together their own customized configurations. With CPQ, you can take all the great capabilities that you're providing to your sales team or your resellers and provide that to the buyers in an e-commerce portal. With CPQ in your e-commerce portal, a buyer will be able to easily find a right product, or configure the right product that meets their needs. These are just some of the additional benefits that you can realize with CPQ that go beyond configure, price, quote. In the next video, I'm going to have a special guest and we're going to start to look at how does an organization know they need to CPQ.

Thanks for watching.

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