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
Contacts
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.
Is a Quote-to-Order solution right for your business? Three questions can help you decide:
The answer to the above questions will lay the foundation of efficiency and smoothness in executing the business.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Broadly Customer User Journey for the Quote-to-Order process can be divided into the following three stages:
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
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.
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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