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 whole company.

But first things first. Does CPQ really impact the whole company?

Yes! To make it quick, CPQ helps your company sell more, sell faster and make more profit. If your company sells more then there is more opportunity, more promotions, more of the things you like. If your company sells less then there is less opportunity, less promotions, less of the things you like.

How is that for a compelling reason to care about CPQ?

By the way if your company’s sales numbers are already where you want them to be or even better, above your expectations then you don’t need to read on since you obviously already do what you need to do.

A key question you should ask yourself is “Do you want a thriving business or if you want a business that survives?” If you want your business to thrive you should care about CPQ and you should make CPQ an effort that has active cross-team support.

Now that we established why you should care let’s see what the teams above can do to help their company with their CPQ efforts.

First a quick recap of what CPQ is

• C = Configuration which helps you build a complex product or service that can be delivered
• P = the product or service that was build (with Configuration) needs to have the right price for you
• Q = you don’t buy the product right away but you get a quote first

and here is what the teams above can do to support it

• Product Management – this team should document all rules to build a valid product. First it helps the Sales Ops, Support or IT Teams to setup the product correctly in their CPQ tool. Second if any issues show up (e.g. a user can’t get the product they want) it helps the Support Team to find out if that is intentional or if it is an error. If they document it then they don’t have to answer the same questions over and over to Sales Reps, Sales Ops and others. Also keep in mind that your company only wants to sell products that are correctly setup. If the Product Team doesn’t document it correctly, any team that maintains your CPQ tool will have a harder time
• Legal – the legal Team should get involved when the legal documents are setup and reviewed (e.g.Terms & Conditions are changed from Net30 to Net45, legal sales contract gets signed). They approve or disapprove legal documents and need to ensure access from the order or contract to the signed legal documents. If they are aligned with the other teams that helps to make a CPQ tool more efficient.
• Marketing – In a Product Catalog a company may have a ton of information that originates from the Marketing Team. This is usually referred to as Marketing Collateral (e.g. Data sheets, Product Images, Help Texts for Product Attributes, Short Videos). This team should work closely with the other teams so that the correct information is added to the product catalog and displayed to the user. If the CPQ User Interface does not have engaging and helpful content your sales will suffer. So provide this content and make your CPQ tool more interesting
• Finance – The Finance team checks that your company’s deals make financial sense and that everyone follows your company’s financial rules (e.g. revenue recognition). The finance team should approve the price setup with the product management team. They may also help with lease terms etc.
• IT – In a fair number of cases the IT team still maintains the CPQ tool and so they need to know what they have to setup and maintain. They use the documentation from the Product Management Team to setup the product model. Additionally they need to setup the product and pricing rules with the best possible performance and scalability in mind. If they don’t get guidance from the other teams mentioned here their setup will be sub-optimal.
• Sales – Sales Reps use the tool all the time to sell your companies products and services. Make it easy and they will use it, make it hard and they will look for ways around your tools and processes
• Sales Ops – In many cases the Sales Ops Team has to support the CPQ tool (e.g. ensure Product Management Rules are documented, handed over to IT, confirm the product setup is correct, ensure Marketing provides all required data)  and needs information from all other teams to setup it up in the most optimal way for your business.
• Support Team – If anyone encounters issues with a CPQ tool they probably go to a support team. In order to help (at least the first couple of support tiers) they need documentation from the other teams to determine what is expected and what is unexpected behavior. This team keeps work away from your precious development resources. Give them the information they need to do a good job!