The Real CPQ Stakeholders

Key Stakeholders and Their Roles in a CPQ System Upgrade

?Contrary to popular belief, the sole objective of a Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) application is not just to get a quote out to the customer.

Certainly that is the ultimate goal of the powerful application; however, to generate a signed order or Statement of Work (SOW), there are certain steps that are necessary, and these require involvement of additional stakeholders. ?

The first stakeholder is your management team that hopefully recognizes that as the company has evolved, so has the requirement to include new products into the application. Starting with the product development team and maybe a connection to a Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) tool, every component of the new product must be added to the CPQ application, or else no accurate quote will get out the door.

?A key element in the introduction of a new product is the timing of the retirement of the older offerings.?If this involves a significant inventory, rules on how that will be quoted must be updated in the CPQ application.?Should it still be quoted in some regions where the latest version of the product is no longer available, or in the case of a global product release, how can the CPQ application be leveraged to provide incentives for customers to purchase ’older technology’??There are methods that we will discuss in a later post.

?The second stakeholder is your IT department. If the necessary updates require only minor modifications to your CPQ system, then the system’s administrator can probably do that, and still, keep the flow of quotes going.?If there is a requirement for much more effort, then the IT team needs to be brought to the table to understand the level of priority of the project in order to keep the quotes and the revenue flowing. This can be challenging, as there are various other priorities on the IT department’s plate.?But there are always system integrators and application partners who are willing to chip in and get the job done quickly and efficiently.?As a matter of fact, if the CPQ system is integrated effectively with the PLM, inventory management, production and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) tools during its initial implementation, the effort needed to update the former will be significantly reduced.

?The third stakeholder is your sales team. ?It is here that behavior modification opportunities may be at their greatest. The team must ensure the quotes are neither too complex that they are almost impossible to be understood by the customer ?nor too basic that sales opportunities are lost. You must make sure upselling and cross-selling opportunities are not lost to the urgency of getting the quote in for the customer.

?In concert with the introduction of the new product, new decision-making processes should be introduced to your sales team - if there is an opportunity to upsell or cross-sell a product, are you prompting the sales rep with the additional commission opportunity that is associated with that upsell or cross-sell???

?In its simplest form, an upgrade of the process could help bump a commission rate significantly and present a roadmap to a higher plateau of commission or a monthly bonus.?Unfortunately, many configurations that we have seen completely ignore these opportunities.

?It goes without saying that not to be forgotten in the desire for incremental revenue is the best interests of the customer.

?As you can see, proper involvement of the three stakeholders mentioned above goes a long way in enabling you to upgrade your CPQ system with high efficacy. At Solunus, we help you make the best use of cutting-edge CPQ systems to enhance your selling efficiency and maximize your revenues. Keep your eye out for a future Lunch ‘n Learn ?about how we can help you leverage the immense power of state-of the-art CPQ tools to achieve your business goals.

Check out this interesting post to know about the key stakeholders in the implementation of a Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) system and the role played by them.