While many business changes are called transformational I don’t think every change is transformational or for that matter needs to be transformational to be a business success. But if you are either implementing a new Configure/Price/Quote (CPQ) tool or change your existing CPQ process(es) and tool(s) you most likely want to make a fundamental / [...]
This time of year provides a good opportunity to determine where the CPQ (and Quote-to-Cash) market is and where it may go over the coming calendar year. Through the Salesforce acquisition of Steelbrick* and the M&A Rumor that Oracle may acquire NetSuite** it becomes very interesting to see where the market may turn this year [...]
I assume it is a valid question when you are not in Sales or Sales Operations but if your company is selling products or services, CPQ (Configure/Price/Quote) impacts more people than you may think. In addition to Sales and Sales Ops Teams it also impacts Legal-, Product Management-, Finance-, Marketing, IT Teams and literally the [...]
Product Configurators are available as part of a Configure/Price/Quote (CPQ) tool or eCommerce package and they come in many flavors and are used for many different purposes. From showing different colors on a T-Shirt to building Power Plants. Because of this variety it is helpful to understand what configurators are available and determine how much [...]
As more CPQ vendors add functionality to their Solutions to become Quote-to-Cash vendors it makes sense to have a look at both terms to see what the difference is. Let’s start with looking at their definitions: Definition (from wikipedia): Quote-to-cash (or QTC or Q2C) is an information technology term for the integration and automated management [...]
If you read a good number of CPQ articles, blog posts, websites, tweets and so on or listen to podcasts, videos etc you can’t help but get the feeling that CPQ Change or Change in general is easy and that everyone who considers himself/herself open and modern is very excited about change. Really? That is [...]
That is a headline I did not expect to use at any time but after reading this article I decided to do it anyway. Basically the article states that the Configure/Price/Quote (CPQ) area is not sexy but that it is an important space. I certainly agree with the notion that CPQ is an important space [...]
Make sure you read the first part of this Blog Post here before you read on. 5. Establish a CPQ tool selection committee Should consist of members from Business and IT. Keep the team size as small as possible and practical (ideally 3, 5 or 7 members*.) These selection committee members will make the final decision about [...]
As I finished this Blog Post I realized that this was too much information for one Blog Post and and hence I broke it up into two separate Blog Posts. I expect that this will help to read and digest the information better. Please note that while I consider the information below very important I strongly encourage you to [...]
How do you measure if your Configure/Price Quote (CPQ) initiative was a success? One obvious option is to track if the CPQ tool helps you achieve the basic CPQ benefits (increased revenue, increased margins, eliminate quote/opportunity/contract errors and close more deals). Basic CPQ Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) [...]
