Get Started with Industries CPQ
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Identify key challenges that businesses face with order capture.
- Explain how Industries CPQ solves the challenges.
Prerequisites
How much do you know? We assume you’ve already:
- Completed the Industries CPQ Foundations module.
- Created and amended quotes and orders in your workplace.
- Acquainted yourself with your company's proposal and contract-negotiation process.
Not sure? Then complete the Industries CPQ Foundations badge, and discuss the key quote and order processes with the sales team at your office.
Common Business Challenges
Remember Sophia Perez, the sales manager at Infiwave?
You met her in the Industries CPQ Foundations module. Sophia and her team had some serious quote and order challenges to deal with. Sophia was delighted when she found out how great Industries CPQ was at solving those challenges—and she couldn’t wait to tell her team.
Let’s recap. Here are some comments from Sophia’s team and how Sophia suggested Industries CPQ can help.
CPQ Business Solutions
Goodness! Looks like Infiwave has many issues to address with their current processes. Let’s now look at how CPQ can help solve each of these problems. Shortly after their meeting, Sofia emails her team with the following information.
Streamlined Quote and Order Creation
Industries CPQ integrates with Industries Digital Commerce and Industries Guided Selling to simplify the sales process. It guides and prompts the sales team based on customer context, sales and approval processes, and industry best practices. With Industries CPQ, the sales team will be able to create even the most complicated, multisite quotes and orders in minutes.
Order and Quote Accuracy
Industries CPQ provides guided-selling processes to support the sales teams. Eligibility, qualification, and availability rules, and context-sensitive pricing will ensure that products are correctly configured, compatible, and delivered at the right price for each customer. Perfect orders every time!
Automated Approval Systems
Industries CPQ automatically validates quotes and orders against predefined rules using customer context information, product information, and data from other departments and external systems. This validation drastically reduces the strain on the approvals process.
Industries CPQ is customized to suit business requirements, so Infiwave will have automated customer credit checks, service checks, and external pricing support. All these capabilities will reduce manual approvals, eliminating the bottlenecks the sales team currently experience.
Improved Customer Service
With Industries CPQ, when a customer creates a quote on the Infiwave website, the products and pricing that display are personalized to their requirements. They can only select items that are valid and deliverable. If the customer has a question, they can phone the call center, who can see the information they entered online. There’s no need to retype any details. How’s that for efficient, personalized customer service?
Adaptability to Changing Markets
Industries CPQ, uses a shared catalog to reduce the time it takes to design, develop, test, and deploy new products and services. The shared catalog is a collaborative workspace where you create products, services, resources, rules, and prices as components and then build them into customer offerings. With built-in product lifecycle tools, you can automate future-dated prices and product changes. This means less development time, less QA time, and a faster time to market.
Next Steps
Sophia’s team is piloting Infiwave’s Industries CPQ, starting tomorrow, and they’re excited to test out the order-capture capabilities. The product design team is also happy, because they can use Industries CPQ to design and apply business rules. These rules ensure that products and services presented for customers to buy are:
- Available to the consumer or business account
- Items for which the customer is eligible
- Priced accurately
- Compatible with any existing products and services the customer has
Now that you’ve learned how Industries CPQ can help, we’re sure you’re as enthusiastic as Sophia and her team about creating quotes and orders with Industries CPQ.
Next, you’ll learn some theory about the difference between quote-to-order processes for business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) orders. After that, get ready for some hands-on practice.