Understanding Cloud CPQ – Applications and Uses

Author: Sandeep Arora

Configure, price, quote (CPQ) apps and software can help your company when you need to accurately determine the price of products across a vast and ever-changing spectrum of factors. Cloud-based CPQ is one of the latest developments that work in the same manner as conventional software, but with exclusive value-added services to enable your business to make faster quotes, proposals, and sales, while eliminating errors in orders.

Improve Your Sales Process

Cloud CPQ transforms your sales process into a more accurate one. At the same time, it manages and streamlines the whole quote-to-cash process, from the inquiry stage to the fulfillment of orders. Cloud CPQ is a unique cloud-based solution that guides your business toward better product configurations and options, whether these are simple or complex. Likewise, it lets you apply discounts and significant up-sell or cross-sell opportunities automatically.

As the platform provides a more streamlined sales process, you can be sure that your sales performance can be smoother and error-free. A cloud-based CPQ can be combined with an existing CRM platform to further reduce the time it takes to complete your sales cycle. This way, you can improve customer experience in all channels, while increasing average deal volume and size as well as user adoption. A guided selling process can help your channel partners, sales staff, and customers seek the right products. Hence, it can generate proposals and sales quotes directly from your CRM system.

Linking the Back and Front Offices for B2B, High-Tech, Machinery, and Manufacturing Industries

Some of the best cloud CPQ solutions streamline processes in a single platform. Such solutions can provide all the relevant price data and product information from SAP ERP to Cloud for Customer or a similar tool for salesforce automation in real-time to significantly reduce errors. An effective cloud CPQ solution seamlessly integrates end-to-end processes and lets your business leverage existing investments in legacy systems.

The drag and drop functionality of cloud CPQ simplifies the way you configure products and services, so you can easily edit your product catalog. Products can be priced with high discount flexibility and backed with constantly updated cost data from an ERP. Flexibility lets you manage roles and users to limit or ensure data access according to the compliance structure of your business. Integrated ATP checks are leveraged from the front office, and quotes can be created in editable PDF files, which can showcase your brand too. Cloud CPQ is highly scalable, so it grows with your business while minimizing the overhead costs for updates.