CPQ should lie at the heart of your digital transformation strategy
In our rapidly evolving world, businesses are gearing up for digital transformation to evolve in response. They have to: the complex nature of the digital-first landscape makes achieving success more competitive than ever.
But transformation is daunting for many organizations: although it helps businesses rise above complexities and challenges they face, they also carry the very real risk of failure.
CPQ transforms businesses by allowing them to foreground innovation, provide unprecedented agility, and sidestep workflow bottlenecks that impede efficient business operations.
By streamlining cumbersome processes, CPQ is a key element to any digital transformation strategy that fully meets the increasingly multi-faceted requirements of modern-day businesses.
An Era of Intelligent Selling
It is unfortunately very easy for businesses to drown in complexities and information overload. Employees can become overwhelmed with the amount they need to digest, leading to error, sub-standard pricing, inaccurate quotes, lower NPS and ultimately fewer sales.
In this climate it is crucial for organizations to know that orders, pricing quotes and delivery are 100% accurate.
With CPQ software, employees are able to put together above par product configurations and pricing quotes, allowing for a higher degree of consistency and quality, leading to more deals being closed.
Modern CPQ overcomes challenges and produces the right price to the right customer with the help of price optimization. In doing so, businesses experience profit opportunities, faster time-to-quote, and enhanced customer experience.
AI and automation
Businesses across all industries are held back thanks to their legacy systems, forcing employees to rely on manual and swivel-chair processes. Time is money, and wasted time leads to lost revenue.
Studies have shown that up to 65% of sales reps' time is spent on non-revenue generating activities. Businesses unable to optimize the potential of their product catalog due to outdated IT systems are faced with an array of complex configurations. Without a well-optimized CPQ, mistakes are inevitable.
Peace of mind comes from digital transformation, and with the help of a CPQ solution, AI and automation can help eliminate human error and support decision making.
The removal of manual processes and the need to monitor data and markets thanks to automation, ensures that quotes are 100% accurate and time is used more efficiently. Sales representatives are able to spend more time on conducting deals instead of inputting data
Cross-Channel Integration
According to Microsoft: “Digital transformation is about bringing together people, data and processes - disrupting technology to transform your company and create value for your customers”.
With digital transformation objectives looming over all organizations, there is an imminent need to adapt faster than competitors.
From any one month to the next, product sets and service arrays expected by customers will change, and businesses without the ability to bring new offerings to market quickly will find themselves experiencing high rates of customer churn, and failing to attract new business.
Additionally, as product sets become more complex, cross-department collaboration becomes more challenging. Internally, this necessitates the implementation of new operational systems that seamlessly connect order management to sales to billing to delivery. If a business has a cumbersome existing architecture, it is easy for new channels to not be effectively integrated, leading to inconsistencies and suboptimal outcomes.
Very quickly, a business that is racing to keep up with contemporary requirements can find both their internal and external operations hitting a brick wall.
56% of survey respondents prefer self-service solutions, and with Gartner reporting customer self-service as the top priority in customer service CRM applications, CPQ meets these new organizational needs.
The future is never certain, so businesses need systems that are flexible to keep up with the change in consumer demands.
CPQ supports teams throughout the entire product lifecycle and fosters a sense of collaboration. Disconnected systems become unified, encouraging new levels of data connectivity, and removing unnecessary tasks for employees and customers.
Success in today’s digital landscape requires systems and teams that work well together. As such it is imperative that these channels are integrated within the business to eliminate any inconsistencies.
With a CPQ, siloed and disparate elements of a business can operate like a single organism.
