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CPQ: Three letters capable of significant business benefits

Capgemini
February 12, 2020

Faced with an increasingly complex sales environment, companies are looking for innovative technology solutions to help them manage their growing product and service portfolios, and to provide their customers with a more comprehensive purchasing experience. In searching for solutions to make their existing sales process faster and more efficient, our customers are increasingly evaluating the potential and benefits of CPQ.

CPQ stands for configure, price, quote and refers to a software solution that supports the sales representative with the configuration of product and service offerings based on specific customer requirements. In so doing, it eliminates or simplifies the significant manual effort involved in preparing quotations. The CPQ application helps users configure the right product based on current business rules and restrictions, dynamically prices the resulting sales offer, and automatically requests the necessary approvals – enabling the sales representative to generate a binding customer proposal as quickly as possible.

Enable your sales force to focus on the customer

For many companies, the preparation of proposals is a time-consuming process that entails a lot of manual effort. This is particularly the case in industries with complex and multifaceted products and services, and in companies that tailor their offerings to the specific needs of their customers. In these situations, sales representatives spend a lot of time researching possible product combinations, assessing pricing strategies with their managers, verifying agreed customer discounts, and compiling documents for a contractually binding offer.

By automating and optimizing many of these manual process steps with a consistent CPQ solution, the time required to prepare the offer is shortened and the sales representative is able to focus on value-added activities again. Research by one of our strategic partners and leading CPQ software vendor, Tacton, has shown that their customers are able to reduce the order error rate of their sales process by 82%, decrease their sales support costs by 60%, and significantly accelerate the sales of new products and services by their sales force.

By implementing a CPQ solution, companies enable their sales representatives to respond more quickly to customer enquiries and consequently help them get back in touch with the customer earlier to close the deal. In addition, modern software solutions empower salespeople to work jointly and in real time with potential customers on product configuration. Involving the customer more actively in the sales process makes the company and the product more attractive. Based on our experience, we see that companies can shorten their sales cycle by about a third as a result of these changes.

Make the first step

Through our project experience in designing and implementing multiple CPQ solutions, we know that this new technology will increase the effectiveness of your sales organization and enable your company to develop further. With the Capgemini Group’s broad range of capabilities, we can support your CPQ ambitions all the way from the strategic analysis of benefits to the successful implementation and deployment of the software tailored to your company’s needs. As a first step to explore and test the potential of CPQ for your business, we happily support you with the design and implementation of a demonstrator based on your company’s strategic requirements.

To find out more about how CPQ can help you to position your company’s sales organization to thrive in the age of digitization, how the tool can support your in tailoring your sales processes to the needs of your customer, and how Capgemini can support you along the process we look forward to hearing from you.

This article is co-authored by Stig Dreyer.