As an entrepreneur, you probably have already heard about businesses using CPQ software and how it has contributed to their company’s success. But do you know what CPQ software is? Configure Price Quote (CPQ) software is a technology that helps businesses generate sales quotes for their prospects. CPQ software is an attempt to develop accurate price quotes, helping you boost your business’s efficiency.
In addition, CPQ software can help you when your product offering grows. For instance, when your business offers a wide variety of products, it might be tough to manage product pricing. Specifically, keeping track of external factors like special offers from competitors might be challenging, making it beneficial for you to use CPQ software.
Not just that, CPQ tools are used to generate quotations based on predefined criteria. This ensures that information about quantity or any modifications is considered, lowering the risk of producing wrong quotes. Moreover, CPQ software gives you the unique opportunity to unlock more upselling and cross-selling prospects.
Still unsure how your business can benefit from CPQ software? Here are some reasons your company will benefit from CPQ software.
1. Eliminate supply chain issues
Did you know CPQ software can streamline the sales cycle by eliminating many elements in the supply chain through powerful automation? Conventional supply chain processes contain numerous variables and stages, making them unnecessarily complicated even for seasoned supply chain experts and managers. Accounting for each variable is challenging, preventing lead-to-order drives’ execution. As a result, it adversely affects your sales performance.
Hence, integrating a CPQ solution with supply chain management allows you to monitor supply levels closely. Not just that, it helps in automatically updating purchases and inventory whenever supplies or items are depleting. This ensures that your business has enough supply in stock when an order comes through, ensuring your business runs smoothly.
2. Valuable insights through analytics
Consider the amount of data that passes through CPQ software: selling prices, customer information, approvals, and what now. Don’t you think intelligence automation around all this information can benefit your business greatly? When analyzed properly, this data provides excellent insights into various metrics.
For instance, achieved prices and win rates could be evaluated to help affect future prices. Moreover, you can track the amount of time a contract spends with various approvers and find bottlenecks.
3. Easy to decipher quotes and proposals
Easy to decipher proposals, and quotes can help you crack the deal easily. But how can you do that? One way to do this is to develop a template to ease the problem. However, this requires you to be a great designer. Even if you have such skills, making a well-designed document is time-consuming, making it vital to look for other practical ways.
Hence, a better way is to create a proposal by using CPQ software. A CPQ solution will provide you with detailed document structure tools in which templates can be made with the required guidance to get a brand agreement. Using such templates, you can easily create personalized quotes.
With the help of CPQ software, it’s easy and quick to add and revise accurate data.
4. Enhance the deal approval process
Is getting a deal approved a complicated and long process in your business as well? The good news is that CPQ software can help you eliminate or reduce these interruptions. Approvals through CPQ can be quicker than using manual methods. With one software covering the deal or quote and the set of incorporated triggers, the experts who give their approval are informed electronically.
Not just that, the CPQ system provides information about a specific item that needs to be approved by displaying a user role-specific view on a screen in an email. Moreover, CPQ can handle serial and parallel approval chains, offering the deal’s development visibility to every employee involved.
A CPQ system also offers a strong audit trail of who made a critical decision, why, and when it was made. Having such records in one system can make the change in passing or failing an assessment, helping you improve the deal approval method.
5. Error-free orders
Do you know why your business must have error-free orders? When incorrect orders aren’t caught before supply, the customer might receive the wrong piece, making them unhappy.
So, how can you ensure your orders are error-free? Take advantage of CPQ software. This software provides you with orders free of any errors or mistakes. But how does CPQ help give error-free orders? A fundamental part of this software’s system is the configuration engine which shows you how to build proper order.
Besides that, the pricing element of CPQ software usually refers to a deal’s contractual and commercial terms. Rules are checked at this point, so all essential information is taken and shared with other systems. In addition, you can also specify billing terms and establish prices, ensuring your orders are without any mistakes.
It is essential to make clients happy so that you can increase your sales, revenue, and profits.
6. Reduce managerial burden
Wouldn’t you rather spend your time selling than filling out documents? A CPQ solution plays a significant role in helping you reduce the burden of administrative tasks. But do you know how CPQ software does that?
You and your managers can work together through the deal’s lifecycle by putting its details into the CPQ system and looking for consent in advance. This not only boosts your confidence but helps you deal with challenges in an effective way. Even if a customer’s needs change, the systems get updated automatically.
Besides that, CPQ also reduces time-consuming managerial tasks needed to create a proposal document by creating professional-looking templates. This allows you to take monotonous tasks away from your employees and let them do what they do best-sell.
final thoughts
Does your team often have problems creating correct price quotes in the time period expected by customers? If yes, consider using CPQ software. In addition, look at the compelling reasons mentioned above and see how you can use this software to streamline your business tasks.
