Streamline CPQ Process
The solution configurations that CPQ Software proposes, the pricing details, and the final quote are comprehensive as the software includes in its consideration all the relevant product and pricing information. This helps to streamline the CPQ process. Most of the CPQ software incorporate industry best practices.
Increase in Sales
CPQ Software enables accurate, quick sales. Hence salespersons can handle more deals. It also makes it more likely that they would close deals.
CPQ Software produces configuration recommendations that incorporate all relevant information. So, recommendation engines for cross- and upselling allied solutions would be natural add-ons.
With the ability to produce more comprehensive, very accurate, extra-quick quotes, with the added advantage of recommendations for additional sale opportunities, sales cycles are faster and sale volumes are larger. Customer satisfaction too is boosted, and this seeds a virtuous feedback cycle of repeated business.
Higher Pricing Power
Pricing power, especially for highly competitive, mature markets, is determined by the perceived quality of sale. Customers value the promptness, completeness, and pleasantness of their purchase experience in addition to how the product/solution performs against their requirements. A good CPQ Software used intelligently can lend significant pricing power.
Dynamic Responsiveness to Business Changes
The platform makes it possible to instantly change any product, pricing, and policy information, and updates thus made are instantly effective organization-wide.
Improved Customer Satisfaction
CPQ process is one of the key contributing factors to Total Customer Satisfaction. Organizations with complex product/solution offerings and pricing structure often struggle with their CPQ process and it results in bad customer experiences which in turn negatively impact customer satisfaction. Adopting a CPQ software greatly streamlines this process, reduces errors thereby greatly increasing customer satisfaction.
Industries that benefit from CPQ Software
CPQ Software originated in complex B2B manufacturing industries like aviation, where the sheer variety of components were beginning to overwhelm manual capacities, just as computing technology was maturing enough to take on some of the load. B2B industries with complex BOMs continue to be heavy users of CPQ Software.
Not limiting the power of this platform to internal teams, B2B customers also have been benefiting from the ability to directly configure their purchases on vendors’ CPQ platforms.
B2C customers also are now accustomed to the freedom of putting together their preferred version of the products on offer through B2C instances of CPQ software. It has become commonplace to pick out your choice of colors, accessories, and other specifications on company websites of consumer products from automobiles to gourmet coffee.
Users of CPQ Software
Especially in the B2B context, it is the salesperson’s job to put together a good product configuration, work out the best pricing, and draw up a quote document to present to the customer, but sales teams are not the only users of such a versatile software product as a CPQ platform.
CPQ works best when engineering, manufacturing, marketing, product management, and finance buy into it, and so, staff from all these departments are potential users at some point, although sales staff are likely to be the most frequent users.
In customer-facing CPQ implementations, the customer is a user too. In those cases, the user experience must be paid special attention, including its coherence with the brand’s identity.