While our CPQ Leadership Series is still going on (check it here if you like) I want to share some interesting, interim learnings from these documents. But first of all I want to thank all participating CPQ industry leaders to take the time to answer these questions! I know you are very busy and that you made time to participate in this Series is greatly appreciated!

As you may know the CPQ Leadership Series document is split into three parts. The first part is the leaders profile which shows personal information about a leader. This includes questions like

  • What are your personal interests?
  • What is your favorite book?
  • What is your favorite movie?
  • Who is your favorite musician?

There were a couple of answers that I did not expect but enjoyed e.g. do you know whose favorite musician is Slash, Billy Joel or Eminem? Or do you know which leaders enjoy skiing, running or rowing? In any case I enjoyed learning these personal things and thought there were some really interesting answers.

The second part is about their companies and the third part is about the CPQ Industry. Here you find questions like

  • Where do you see the biggest growth opportunity for your company?
  • What is the next big thing in CPQ that will fundamentally change business?

While all documents are interesting to read by themselves I was also analyzing and summarizing key findings and so here are my interim, key takeaways from the second and third part:

  • Artificial Intelligence will play a bigger role (e.g. machine learning) going forward
  • Enhanced functionality will be required (e.g. display of commission information to Sales Teams, display of what-if scenarios, 2D/3D capabilities, predictive and prescriptive capabilities, Billing, CLM, PLM, connecting Internet of Things (IoT) opportunities to CPQ capabilities)
  • Solutions need to be offered across all Routes to Market (RTM)    —> Sales, Channel Sales, ecommerce
  • there will be a move from offering a CPQ Solution to offering a CPQ Platform (that allows to add more applications)

Based on these key takeaways I think it is beneficial for all CPQ Vendors to

  • Determine how IoT will be integrated with their CPQ solution
  • Determine which enhanced capabilities are required by their CORE market  
  • Specialize (especially for smaller vendors) which CRM and ERP/Accounting and 3rd party applications (e.g. CAD) they will support
  • Offer industry specific functionality (and for smaller vendors focus on your core market)
  • Find THEIR unique voice in a large pool of CPQ Vendors! Determine what makes their solution different from anyone else!
  • Automate more Lead to Cash processes

While our CPQ Leadership Series does not include all CPQ vendors (~50+ vendors) it includes some of the biggest names in the CPQ Industry today. Therefore I think it is fair to draw a preliminary conclusion that the above stated capabilities will be important going forward.

What was also interesting to notice is that all CPQ leaders continue to see strong growth opportunities across the board. This includes organic as well as M&A growth. On the flip side this means for CPQ prospects that it will remain challenging to find the right product and it will become even more challenging going forward since there will be much more information that needs to be considered before a prospect actually (pre-)selects and buys a product.

Please note that we still plan to add more CPQ vendors to our CPQ Leadership Series. Make sure to check it out while it is still available on our website.

Last but not least I want to mention that we plan to have a final analysis and summary available before we conclude this Series.