How and Why Implementing the CPQ Software will Benefit your Organization?

Want to configure the complex quotes faster with a few numbers of errors? Or want to speed up the sales cycle associated with complex quotes with increased revenue? Both of the situations demand to discard manual methods of quoting and switching over to automation by using a CPQ software. The robust tool has a wide range of features that can serve fully customizable complex quotes. CPQ software has built a strong market presence, and its popularity is also increasing with each passing day.

Scroll down, to take a deep dive into the information about CPQ.   

What is CPQ?

CPQ stands for “Configure Price Quote”, but it's far more than that. This powerful software can deal with every aspect of your business. It can give you all sales-related answers to such questions: What to sell? How to sell when to sell? Where and whom to sell? 

CPQ tools are designed to simplify and accelerate the sales process of complex products. As we know, quoting complex products can be a painful process if you perform it manually. However, with software tools, you can translate your tedious quoting activity into a highly efficient one.

This software can help you to stand in a position where you can easily and quickly create error-free quotes. Moreover, any created complex quote can be transformed into a purchase order with a single click. Whether you want to bundle extra options or add more components to the product configuration, it can be done in a matter of minutes.

Why use CPQ?

• Build it once and then use anywhere- With CPQ you can store all the data at one place, and can manage it efficiently. It allows users to get insight into what drives revenue to them, so they can get a clear understanding of sales quotes. Since CPQ is cloud-connected, you can access all the latest data from anywhere at any time. Apart from that data isn’t duplicated, so the storage space is not the problem anymore, as it saves an only copy of the data and eliminates others.
• Observe, malpractice and security-CPQ arranges the sales channels & processes while making all the needed information centralized. The ability to control all sales channels from one place reduces the mitigation risks. To implement company policies and ensure that they are followed throughout the organization, CPQ plays a crucial role. It also prevents unauthorized discounts and stops malpractice of business. Furthermore, performing audits on infrastructure use and new software version release, boost the security measures.
• Better integration option-The cloud-based industry-standard APIs allows users to connect across the premise system of business so they can perform seamlessly. CPQ allows the businesses to collect data easily thus pricing, quoting and configuration is not only faster but easier. This integration becomes the reason behind the smooth and error-free data flow.
• Modern UI design concepts-In the responsive web design, CPQ software provides users with a piece of easy-viewed-to-the-point information and enhances the interaction experience. CPQ can work on multiple devices, so it shortened the Sales cycles, which means salespeople can easily generate quotes on devices. If devices such as smartphones, tablets are running the CPQ apps, they can share information immediately from anywhere.

Tips to implement CPQ software

1. Know your customers first Knowing the customers should always be the first step of the business. Know everything about their online shopping activities and behaviour such as: Do they shop across the channels? According to your customer base, you should choose from global implementation or location-wise implementation. This will make several things easy for you, such as:
   • You will understand which product model support's your customer’s buying behaviour. 
   • You can maintain the competitive pricing of products.

2. Know your Salesforce- Before starting the process of developing and implementing, consulting with the Salesforce team is a smart move. The Salesforce is those people that use the software the most. So consult first with the sales representative.  
3. Maintain the constant price-A tuneful pricing sometimes becomes the most challenging part for CPQ designers. The pricing engine helps in the centralization of the various pricing rules, special pricing support such as it keeps the pricing consistent in various customer interactions. Salesforce CPQ implementation must assure that the pricing rules don’t overlap customizations. Make sure when considering bundled, discount keeps the pricing items updated so it can reflect correctly on the buyer's cart.  
4. Know your software- The sales professionals increase the visibility of the sales of your organization’s sales which utilize the software capabilities to its max. The development teams must try to golf the CPQ tool’s features to minimize customizations. The poorly done CPQ implementation can be baggage of poor code and can be customizations to automate business processes. The out of the box features are responsible for high-quality customizations. 
5. Leverage guided selling, cross, and up-selling- The CPQ implementation will help sales representatives via guiding them for selling, as it obtains a list of products according to specific buyer needs. It also suggests sales options to sales reps rather than presenting a fixed catalogue to the customers.
6. Capitalize on workflow automation- Create a strong CPQ design which can automatically scale or escalate to minimize process inefficiencies and adopts a smart workflow. Reduce administrative tasks by automating business processes and also can design sales processes to guide prospects and qualify leads.
7. Know your integration- All the accessible information about customers, from multiple sources, are needed to access form a typical sales organization. These sources interact with other multiple legacy systems to ensure service delivery. The CPQ software is designed to integrate with other systems which must be designed well to seamlessly integrate with external systems.
8. Strategize and prioritize testing- An implementation in the presence of bugs can be the reason for lack of system adoption, so the testing is highly important. However, it doesn't get that much attention. 

To get success, implementing CPQ software is a need of time. CPQ is growing day-by-day and companies are starting to use cloud-based CPQ to achieve a faster ROI. To keep going in this cut-throat competition of business, a system that can shorten the sales cycle and increase productivity with improved CRM can be helpful. What you need is just the right Salesforce CPQ Implementation Partners