Excelling in Business Partnerships and Quote-to-Order Operations in a Complex Business Terrain - A Real-World Use Case

Exclusive insider insights for B2B manufacturers on achieving excellence in their ordering process through Quote-to-Order. (Part 2/2)

This is Part Two of a two-part series Excelling in Business Partnerships and Quote-to-Order Operations in a Complex Business Terrain.

In Part One, our expert Vineet Jain explained Business Partner Management. The foundation of managing the Business Partners in a landscape which included SAP Sales and Service Cloud, SAP Commerce, SAP S/4 HANA, SAP MDG and SAP CPI.

We discussed the following scenarios:

Customer

Fill out the Customer Request Form on SAP Commerce portal
Reach out to the support team via email.
Reach out to the support team by calling the helpline number.

Contacts

Primary contact of customer in SAP Commerce portal can add contacts.
Sales reps and/or service agent can add multiple contacts in Sales and Service Cloud environment.

You can access Part One here.

Extending the concept in part two, in this blog, Vineet Jain explains additional scenarios after Business Partner Management has been maintained. But before that, let’s dig into some fundamentals of the Quote-to-Order process.

Do you need a Quote-to-Order Process

Is a Quote-to-Order solution right for your business? Three questions can help you decide:

Why do you need a quote to place an order?
What is the importance of this process?
How will the quote-to-order process help grow your business?

The answer to the above questions will lay the foundation of efficiency and smoothness in executing the business.

Benefits of Quote-to-Order Process

To thrive in any business, you need to ensure that you can sell your products and/or services efficiently with as little to no errors and make the user journey effortless and intuitive. A Quote-to-Order process will bring the following benefits to your business.

Accurate pricing with cost breakdowns

The quoting process ensures that your customers get accurate pricing information with the breakdown of the costs involved including any additional services or charges. This transparency helps build a healthy business-customer relationship.

Customized quotes

Depending on your business, you may need to tailor your products/services to customer’s unique requirements. Your sales personnel can gather specific requirements and preferences and create a customized quote that aligns with your customer’s needs. Customized quotes enhance your customer’s experience and lead to faster closure of sales.

Faster response to customer queries

When your sales team follows a well-defined process, they respond faster to customer inquiries. With quote-to-order, your sales team can efficiently convert quotes to orders, reducing delays and minimizing the risk of errors or miscommunication.

Standardized documentation

The quote serves as an important document both for your company and your customer, as it includes all the terms and conditions, such as pricing, delivery schedules, warranties, payment terms, etc.

Data-backed decisions

This process helps generate valuable data which you can use to analyze the performance of the sales team, conversion of quote-to-order, customer preferences and market demand. It will help you in making strategic decisions, adjusting pricing strategies, and/or allocating resources accordingly.

In this blog, we are discussing two different scenarios for the Quote-to-Order process

Customer User Journey for Quote-to-Order process
Customer Service Rep User Journey for Quote-to-Order process

Customer User Journey for Quote-to-Order Process

Broadly Customer User Journey for the Quote-to-Order process can be divided into the following three stages:

Step 1: Quote Updation

The customer logs in to the SAP Commerce system and adds products to the cart and requests a quote.
The quote is replicated to SAP Sales and Service Cloud with the quote status as Buyer Submitted.
Based on the territory in the account, the quote is assigned to the CSR and Sales team. An email is sent to the CSR notifying them of the quote they have to investigate.
The CSR opens the quote and requests pricing from S/4HANA.
The system fetches the complete pricing from S/4HANA including the cost, price, gross profit percentage, and all relevant pricing information in the quote.
If the customer has requested a specific price (when requesting a quote from SAP Commerce), the CSR updates the line item by adding a manual selling price in a condition type and requests pricing again. The gross profit percentage is calculated and updated in the quote.

Step 2: Approvals

If the gross profit percentage is greater than 42%, no approval is needed. The CSR can send the quote to the customer by clicking on Send Email to the contact in the quote or to any other email address as required. The CSR will also have to click on Send Quote to SAP Commerce to send this quote update in SAP Commerce.
If the gross profit percentage is between 42% and 38% , the Director will need to approve the quote. The quote status will be changed to In Approval and the CSR/Account Manager will not be able to change anything on the quote till it is approved by the Director. The Director will receive an email with a Hyperlink to access the quote in SAP Sales and Service Cloud. The Director can either:
- Approve the quote by changing the quote status to Manager Approved. The approval will automatically be sent to the SAP Commerce system and an email with the output form will be sent to the contact in the quote.
  or
- Reject and add internal comments to the quote. The CSR/Account Manager of the quote will be notified about the rejection. The CSR will then edit the quote as per the suggestion of the Director and process the quote.

If the gross profit percentage is less than 38%, the quote will be approved by the General Manager. The quote status will be changed to In Approval and the CSR/Account Manager will not be able to change anything on the quote. The General Manager will receive an email with a hyperlink to access the quote in SAP Sales and Service Cloud. The General Manager can either:
- Approve the quote by changing the quote status to Manager Approved. The quote will be automatically sent to the SAP Commerce system and an email with the output form will be sent to the contact in the quote.
  or
- Reject and add internal comments to the quote. The CSR/Account Manager of the quote will be notified about the rejection. The CSR/Account Manager will then edit the quote as per the suggestion of the General Manager and process the quote.

Step 3: Accept or Reject the Quote

Once the quote is sent to the SAP Commerce system, no change in the quote will not be permitted in SAP Sales and Service Cloud system. A notification is also sent to the customer about the update with a hyperlink to access the quote in SAP Commerce

The customer can log into the SAP Commerce system to accept/or reject the quote.
The CSR/Account Manager can use ASM (Assisted Service Mode) to reject or accept the quote on behalf of the customer (if needed).

If the customer rejects the quote, the status of the quote will be updated in SAP Sales and Service Cloud and the CSR/Account Manager will have the option to change the quote by changing the price (go through the approval process as needed) and submit back to the customer for approval.

If the customer accepts the quote, the status of the quote will be updated in SAP Sales and Service Cloud and the Quote will also be sent to the S/4HANA system.

The customer can convert this quote to an order from the SAP Commerce system. Alternatively, the customer can call the CSR/Account Manager to order in the SAP Commerce system using ASM (Assisted Service Mode). Orders placed on SAP Commerce will be replicated to S/4HANA.

SAP S/4HANA system will send the order along with the SAP Commerce Quote Ref No to SAP Sales and Service Cloud. This will mark the quote as completed/won and will link the quote to the Sales Order in SAP Sales and Service Cloud. Further processes on fulfillment of the order like delivery, picking, packing, post goods issue, invoice, and accounting documents are done in SAP S/4HANA and the updates are sent to SAP Sales and Service Cloud. These updates can also be seen in SAP Sales and Service Cloud in the form of a visual diagram in document flow and these documents can be seen in PDF Format.

Customer Service Rep User Journey for Quote-to-Order Process

The process is initiated from C4C where the customer calls the CSR and requests a quote. The CSR/Account Manager creates a quote in C4C with quote status as Buyer Submitted. The CSR and the Sales team will be assigned to the quote based on the territory in the account. Rest all the steps in the process remain the same as above.

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