Configurator - (Configure - Price - Quote)
B2B sales across all industries are increasing in complexity and scope. It’s not just affecting SaaS software; many different types and sizes of companies are employing innovative sales strategies, such as subscription-based sales and customizable product packages.
The market statistics for configure, price, quote (CPQ) software bears this out: The segment is expected to maintain steady growth of 20% annually through 2020. Corporate buyers are demanding more out of their CPQ purchase, and developers are rising to the occasion by introducing new features and leveraging sophisticated AI technology to make their platforms more dynamic.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Configurator
- Increase Speed : Up to 50% of sales wins go to vendors that respond first. Long sales and quoting processes can lead to you sales reps not hitting quota. CPQ is the ultimate sales tool for speed and efficiency. It eliminates manual quoting and simplifies business complexity so you reps have more time to sell. CPQ shortens sales cycles by: having one centralized location for all product and pricing information, providing guided selling recommendations and user friendly interfaces, and configurations that manage product complexity.
- Eliminate Errors : CPQ eliminates common quoting errors and the downstream problems they cause to sales. When information delivery and timing are optimized through CPQ tools, the impact to your business is extraordinary. CPQ solutions allow companies to ensure automatic compliance with product, pricing and business rules.
- Maximize Deal Size : A sophisticated CPQ tool does more than just prevent deep discounts – it actually helps you expand the value of your deals. Guided selling highlights cross-sell and up-sell opportunities as reps build quotes and configure products.
The greater the level of complexity in your sales process, the more you need to use high-level data to make objective determinations. The data needs to be standardized across company units so that everyone in the organization is able to draw inferences from the same starting point. People in every department need to have access to the same CPQ data points, the data must be formatted the same way, and everyone should be using the same tools to analyze it.
Sales data isn’t just important to the sales department. It has implications for the people who make pricing decisions, manage supply chain operations, forecast, collect revenue, perform customer service functions, and so on. CPQ platforms will continue to feature better integration of data points across ERP and CRM platforms as well, creating a virtual warehouse of standardized, high-quality data throughout the company.
Configure, price, quote solutions of the future will facilitate even more efficient workflows than are currently possible. Employees in non-sales departments won’t have to clean up sales data as often or delay decisions because of incomplete or inaccurate information. Optimization doesn’t happen in a bubble, and advanced CPQ platforms help teams achieve productivity gains across the board.
Complex sales often hinge on salespeople’s ability to make numerous decisions quickly with the information available to them at the time. When decisions are based on faulty data points or incomplete analysis, it’s more likely that reps will make mistakes in the decision-making process. That’s why complex sales are often difficult to complete; any one of these decisions can cause a snag in the development of the transaction.
CPQ developers have always worked to create solutions that help salespeople make informed decisions. That’s because the decisions on the part of the buyer and the sales rep turn the gears of the B2B sales funnel, not technological systems. When every detail is so important to the process, you need a software tool that lays out all of the details in a clear and digestible fashion, especially when you are deciding on something that could make or break a deal.
The one impediment to sales technology is often salespeople themselves. Sales reps may feel they’re wasting valuable time on CRM data entry that could be spent on more critical tasks. So while many sales professionals are loath to put stock in a new technological platform, the developers of advanced CPQ platforms are working to change their minds. When salespeople have access to data that allows them to make split-second decisions that can close a deal faster, they just may finally start turning to their CPQ solution as a first resort.
CPQ software developers understand that customization is one of the top priorities for their corporate customers. For this reason, they continue to devote resources to enhancing the customization abilities of their solutions.
The true and lasting value of CPQ lies in its ability to be modified instantly to work with thousands of different product configurations. As developers improve the customization capabilities of their solutions, sales teams can build their specialized configurations faster and deliver more accurate proposals and quotes to prospects with a short turnaround time. With the continued improvement of CPQ software, you can reduce bottlenecks that were once an inherent part of selling complex products and systems, and move your customers closer to realizing the value from their purchase faster than you ever thought possible.