CPQ – Configure Price Quote can mean anything from just selecting the colour of a product through to building a fully bespoke custom design. In either instance consumers expect the build-and-buy process to be smooth, following an easy system of tick-box choices (guided selling) and be presented with a quick price for their selection. Also, customers expect their bespoke build and dimensional items to be quickly quoted and then manufactured properly. If manufacturers and distributors cannot keep up with these expectations customers will look elsewhere. So…
- Do you struggle with a complicated and long quote and pricing process?
- Are bad quotes and order entry mistakes costing your business time and money?
- Do new product options and releases take weeks to be implemented?
If you answered YES to one of more of these questions now it the time to start using a product configurator or what is known as a Configure Price Quote tool (CPQ).
The clever bit of CPQ is the smooth movement from selection to manufacturing of a complex product build. For this to take place the quote needs to turn into a BOM (Bill of Materials) and be passed seamlessly to the manufacturing system with the full details and specifications of what needs to be built, by when, for whom and at what cost. Ideally, the product is built, warehoused, despatched, invoiced, paid for and all recorded in the ERP, tracked through each phase. Because CPQ helps eliminate errors and delivers an exponentially faster sales process it should no longer take hours to prepare quotations.
CPQ needs to integrate into your ERP and other systems, otherwise the left hand won’t know what the right hand is doing. That may seem obvious, but it never ceases to surprise me when we find disparate systems working in parallel needing manual intervention and re-entry, which always results in errors. The product configurator needs to be robust, flexible and offer an easy UX (user experience) for both customers and administrators in both B2B and B2C use-cases and with an open ability to integrate.
We partner with CPQ specialists Renaissance Tech who can provide more guidance for anyone looking for an ERP agnostic product configurator solution.who can provide more guidance for anyone looking for an ERP agnostic product configurator solution.