Configure, price, quote (CPQ): A crucial piece of the manufacturing success puzzle

November 23, 2020

If you are in the industrial equipment and manufacturing business, you’d easily agree that quoting is often a nightmare. How can it not be when it’s sluggish, costly, and tricky? The reason quoting in the industry has become so tedious? Well, I’ll tell you the top three reasons for that:

  1. Technical errors with quoted products due to their structural complexity
  2. The need to provide a variety of options to the customer and also offer support for the customized offerings, and
  3. Pricing complexity. Oh, and the most important reason? There’s often the lack of a centralized knowledge base for product, price, and supporting information.

Unfortunately—to add to all this—there is an undeniably increased need for collaboration. But, it turns out that all you need to counter all these challenges in one fell swoop is a flexible and comprehensive sales configuration approach that involves the implementation of a supporting CPQ software.

What your approach should be like

There are many facets you need to take care of. Here’s how I can best encapsulate the key points:

  • Focus on using CPQ to create a centralized knowledge base and a harmonized model to support the quoting process, thereby increasing the quote accuracy and velocity
  • I always recommend analyzing the product complexity and variations and developing a scalable configuration and quoting model in CPQ
  • Always analyze quote process variations and resources required to develop a scalable workflow to include all users involved in supporting sales with the quote process
  • Make sure you evaluate the CPQ solution in the context of your current and planned system landscape to ensure integration of the quote process with front-end sales & back-end fulfilment processes

We have used this approach to effectively help many of our customers in the industrial equipment and manufacturing industry capitalize on seamlessly managing their proposals to reduce expenses and boost profits. These businesses have (only too gladly) realized a larger rate of success for the products they offer by considering all the possibilities of the quote creation process and lowering complexity.

Author: R.K.Pai

R. K. Pai is a CPQ Architect at Knack Systems. With over 20 years of experience, RK has served various roles, including Business Transformation Lead, Solution Architect, and Chief Technology Officer, leveraging SAP ECC, VC, Commerce, and CPQ solutions. He is based out of Durham, North Carolina.

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