The quote-to-cash (QTC) process spans every stage of the sales cycle, from opportunity creation to final billing and post-sale analysis. How well this machine is oiled dictates how effectively your company generates revenue and delivers customer excellence.  

While misalignment between functions, disconnected systems, and manual handoffs often stymie this process, the solution isn’t necessarily a single end-to-end platform. Strategic integration of specialized systems, each optimized for its part of the journey, creates a smooth, automated workflow that keeps sales, product, legal, and finance teams working in perfect sync. And at the very beginning of this optimization is Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ).  

Understanding the Quote-to-Cash Process 

The QTC process is comprehensive, involving many steps and many systems across your tech stack. It can be broken down into seven core steps: 

1. Opportunity capture: Sales teams identify potential deals in a CRM, recording initial customer requirements and contextual information. 

2. Configuration, pricing, quoting: For manufacturers, this crucial step involves configuring viable product solutions and determining accurate pricing based on complex specifications, customizations, and volume. 

3. Proposal generation: Creating professional, accurate customer-facing documents that communicate offerings, pricing, and terms. 

4. Contract management: Converting approved quotes into legally binding agreements through CLM systems, often requiring multiple reviews and approvals. 

5. Order processing & fulfillment: Translating sold configurations into actionable manufacturing and delivery instructions in ERP systems. 

6. Invoicing & payment: Billing customers accurately according to contract terms and tracking payment completion. 

7. Post-sales & renewals: Managing ongoing customer relationships, maintenance contracts, and identifying expansion opportunities. 

Where the Quote-to-Cash Process Often Misses the Mark 

Across CRM, ERP, CPQ, CLM, and other systems—along with manual processes—inefficiencies often occur at critical points in the QTC process, leading to a number of potential bottlenecks: 

• Manual data entry and disconnected systems delay quoting and approvals and slow down sales cycles. 

• Revenue leakage occurs due to inconsistent pricing and discounting. 

• Complex product configurations increase the risk of quoting mistakes when managed manually. 

• Pricing, contract, and discount approvals stall deal progression. 

• A lack of integrated data leads to a lack of transparency for decision-making. 

For companies selling highly configurable or engineer-to-order products, the configuration step presents unique challenges due to product complexity. Rather than seeking a one-size-fits-all QTC solution, these organizations benefit most from implementing a specialized CPQ solution designed for complex configurations that can integrate effectively with their existing CRM, ERP, and CLM systems. 

5 Ways CPQ Optimizes the Quote-to-Cash Process 

CPQ excels at addressing the core configuration, pricing, and quoting challenges that impact the broader QTC journey. By focusing on getting this critical middle portion right and ensuring smooth integration with surrounding systems, companies selling complex products can achieve both specialized functionality and seamless process flow.

1. Streamlining the Configuration Process

At the heart of CPQ’s value is its ability to handle complex product configurations with ease. For companies selling highly configurable products, CPQ eliminates the error-prone spreadsheets and manual processes that slow down sales. By embedding engineering rules and constraints directly into the configuration engine, CPQ ensures every configuration is valid by embedding engineering rules and constraints directly into the configuration engine, thus optimizing for the customer’s needs without requiring constant engineering involvement. It also helps reduce errors that affect downstream processes like contract accuracy, order fulfillment, and invoicing.

When integrated with your CRM, this configuration data flows seamlessly from opportunity to quote, with customer information pre-populated and product specifications accurately captured.

2. Ensuring Pricing Accuracy and Consistency

Complex products demand sophisticated pricing models. CPQ brings discipline to pricing by centralizing all pricing rules, discount structures, and approval workflows in one system. This eliminates the revenue leakage that occurs when sales teams rely on outdated price lists or inconsistent discounting practices. 

With proper integration, pricing insights from your ERP can flow into CPQ, ensuring that quotes reflect current costs, inventory availability, and production capacity—all factors that impact profitability in complex selling environments.

3. Accelerating Quote Generation and Approval

The ability to quickly generate professional, accurate quotes directly impacts sales velocity. CPQ automates the creation of customer-facing documents, incorporating not just pricing but product visualizations, technical specifications, and commercial terms. 

By connecting your CPQ system with approval workflows in surrounding systems, even quotes requiring multiple levels of review can move quickly through the process, with all stakeholders having visibility into the exact configuration and pricing details they need to make decisions.

4. Creating a Single Source of Truth

CPQ becomes the authoritative record of what was sold, at what price, and with what specifications. When integrated with contract, order, and billing systems, this data flows through the entire QTC process so that what is quoted is exactly what gets contracted, manufactured, and invoiced. By doing so, you eliminate friction and reduce disputes caused by misalignment across the value chain.

5. Enabling Data-Driven Insights

Every quote created in CPQ captures valuable data, such as product choices, configurations, pricing strategies, and customer preferences. When analyzed, this data reveals patterns that improve pricing accuracy, highlight popular configurations, and inform future product decisions. These insights flow back into the sales, pricing, and post-sales processes, closing the loop and continuously optimizing the quote-to-cash journey.

Why One-Size-Fits-All QTC Solutions Fall Short for Complex Products 

Companies that sell highly configurable or engineer-to-order products face unique challenges that generic QTC solutions often fail to address adequately. A single, all-encompassing QTC platform might promise simplicity through unification, but this approach frequently sacrifices depth for breadth. 

The complexity of your products directly impacts your sales cycle in several ways: 

• Technical validation requirements: Each configuration may need to be validated against engineering rules to ensure manufacturability. 

• Custom pricing models: Pricing often depends on complex calculations based on materials, labor, and manufacturing processes. 

• Visual configuration needs: Customers may need to see and interact with visual representations of complex products. 

• Approval complexity: Non-standard configurations typically require multiple levels of specialized review. 

• Integration with production systems: Detailed specifications must flow accurately to manufacturing systems. 

These complexities demand purpose-built systems that understand the nuances of configurable products. Rather than forcing these specialized needs into a generic QTC platform, the more effective approach is to: 

• Implement a purpose-built CPQ system designed specifically for complex product configuration. 
• Focus on integration capabilities that allow specialized systems to communicate seamlessly. 
• Maintain best-of-breed solutions across the QTC process while eliminating manual handoffs.

This approach allows you to get the specialized functionality needed for your complex products while still achieving the process efficiency that comes from integrated systems. 

Accelerate Your Quote-to-Cash Process with Tacton 

Selling highly configurable or engineer-to-order products comes with challenges, like long sales cycles, complex pricing, and slow approvals. Tacton CPQ helps you accelerate your QTC process at multiple touchpoints across the sales cycle, integrating easily with over 600+ different systems across CRM, ERP, CLM, and much more. 

With Tacton, sales teams configure and price complex solutions instantly, avoiding errors and delays. By connecting your most important functions across the sales lifecycle through strategic integration, you can reduce your sales cycle while increasing value to your customers. 

Ready to streamline your quote-to-cash process? 

Learn More About Tacton’s CPQ Solution

The shift to digital-first B2B sales has made speed and accuracy essential for winning and retaining customers. Buyers expect fast, error-free transactions, yet many manufacturers still rely on outdated manual quoting and contract processes that introduce delays and errors, adding friction to the buying process.  

As IT’s role evolves from support to strategic enablement, IT leaders must drive digital transformation initiatives that reduce friction in sales and improve business agility. Contract lifecycle management (CLM) solutions can help standardize contract processes, but they aren’t enough on their own to accelerate deal velocity. Transforming deal velocity requires an integrated approach where pricing, product, and contract data flow seamlessly from quote creation to final signature. Businesses can then maintain deal momentum when buyers are most eager to complete their purchase. 

To solve this challenge, IT can create a streamlined, automated quote-to-contract process by integrating Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) with their CLM. 

The Need for CPQ and CLM Integration 

Companies that fail to integrate their quoting and contracting systems hinder their own sales cycles and create obstacles that make it harder for customers to do business with them. When CPQ and CLM systems operate independently, misaligned pricing and contract terms become a common problem, leading to discrepancies that slow down approvals and introduce unnecessary legal risks.  

Beyond efficiency, compliance and risk management have become more complex. Ensuring that contract terms align with approved pricing and company policies is more important than ever. Automating and synchronizing the quote-to-contract process can reduce noncompliance risks while structuring every contract correctly from the start.  

How CPQ and CLM Streamline Deals 

To understand how CPQ and CLM integration works, take the example of a heavy equipment manufacturer that builds custom industrial machinery for large-scale infrastructure projects. The company’s sales team frequently deals with complex product configurations, fluctuating raw material costs, and multimillion-dollar contracts that must align with strict compliance requirements.  

Connecting the company’s CPQ and CLM can eliminate manual processes and other friction points throughout the sales process. Here’s how it works: 

• Quote generation: A sales rep receives an inquiry from a construction firm needing a specialized crane. Using CPQ, the rep configures the crane based on the customer’s project specifications, applying dynamic pricing rules that factor in material costs, production timelines, and bulk discounts. The system confirms that the selected configuration is manufacturable and compliant with industry regulations. 

• Contract creation: After the quote is finalized, the CPQ platform automatically transfers all quote details—product specifications, pricing, delivery schedules, and warranty terms—into the CLM system, which generates a contract draft without requiring manual data entry from legal or sales teams. 

• Compliance check: Before sending the contract to the customer, the CLM system applies predefined business rules to identify terms requiring additional review. If a discount exceeds the configured threshold, for example, the system can automatically route the contract for approval from finance. (In advanced CPQ solutions like Tacton CPQ, margin control and discount approvals are already embedded in the CPQ workflow prior to this stage.) When the system detects non-standard clauses that deviate from approved templates, it triggers legal review according to the company’s governance policies. 

• Execution: Once approved, the contract is sent to the customer via DocuSign for a fast, secure digital signature. The CLM system then stores the executed contract. 

• Ongoing contract storage and management: After execution, the contract is archived in the CLM platform, making it easy to track key milestones such as payment schedules, renewal dates, and compliance obligations. If the company needs additional equipment later, the sales team can pull historical contract data from CLM into CPQ to generate a new quote that aligns with previously negotiated terms. 

An integrated CPQ and CLM system helps manufacturers deliver high-quality products and close deals faster instead of dealing with manual errors, slow approvals, and compliance risks. 

The Key Benefits of CPQ and CLM Integration 

Integrating CPQ and CLM delivers benefits that streamline sales, enhance compliance, and drive revenue growth.  

Faster Sales Cycles 

Integrating CPQ and CLM software eliminates fragmented handoffs between quoting and contracting processes. Quote data automatically flows into the CLM to produce an accurate contract, helping sales teams reclaim valuable selling time they previously lost to manual data entry and document creation. This seamless flow eliminates bottlenecks and accelerates contract execution through integrated e-signature solutions like DocuSign. 

Improved Compliance and Risk Management  

Pulling existing agreements into CPQ ensures every new quote aligns with pre-approved pricing models and contractual obligations, preventing pricing discrepancies and unauthorized terms from entering contracts. This approach to compliance reduces error-prone manual reviews, strengthens audit trails, and provides both sales and legal teams with greater confidence in each agreement’s integrity. 

Increased Revenue and Deal Optimization 

Integrating historical contract data into CPQ gives manufacturers deeper visibility into upsell, cross-sell, and renewal opportunities. Sales teams can reference prior agreements to ensure consistent, compliant pricing and avoid unnecessary discounts, helping protect margins. This data-driven approach enables manufacturers to uncover and act on recurring customer needs, such as maintenance or consumables, and proactively extend contracts, maximizing long-term revenue.

Better Customer Experience 

Buyers value transparency, speed, and consistency in their sales interactions. A well-integrated CPQ-CLM system eliminates delays and misalignment between pricing and contract terms. This seamless experience builds customer confidence, as buyers receive accurate quotes that translate directly into contracts without unexpected changes. Manufacturers build customer relationships on reliability, professionalism, and improved efficiency, leading to stronger relationships and higher deal velocity.  

Best Practices for CPQ and CLM Integration 

CPQ and CLM integration requires a thoughtful approach. Following these best practices can help your company achieve optimal results. 

1. Ensure System Compatibility

CPQ and CLM must seamlessly integrate with existing enterprise systems such as CRM, ERP, and e-signature tools to create a unified workflow. Without proper compatibility, data silos can emerge, causing inefficiencies and manual workarounds that negate the benefits of integration. IT teams should review whether CPQ and CLM solutions support API-driven connectivity or pre-built integrations that enable smooth data exchange across the sales ecosystem. 

2. Review Automation and Approval Workflows

IT teams can help eliminate unnecessary delays and reduce administrative burdens by structuring automated workflows that align sales, finance, and legal approvals. For example, once you generate a quote in CPQ, an automated workflow triggers contract creation in CLM, then sends the contract to the right stakeholders for review and approval.

3. Strengthen User Adoption

Even the most advanced systems will fall short if sales and legal teams struggle to use them effectively. IT leaders can drive greater engagement and simplify the transition by training end users on how automation improves efficiency and reduces workload. 

4. Prioritize Compliance and Security

Sensitive pricing and contract data require robust security measures to protect against unauthorized access and regulatory violations. CPQ-CLM integration should include built-in controls to ensure that contracts align with approved pricing models, discount policies, and legal requirements. IT teams must also implement access controls and encryption protocols to safeguard confidential information.  

Easier CPQ Integration for Manufacturers 

Briding your systems can be easy with the right partner. Tacton’s CPQ is built for complex manufacturing sales, offering seamless integration with leading CLM solutions, such as: 

• Sirion

• Icertis

• DocuSign

Tacton’s Connect to Anything, powered by Workato, provides a flexible, no-code integration framework with 600+ enterprise applications that allows manufacturers to bridge data silos and create a unified sales ecosystem. 

For IT leaders at manufacturing companies, CPQ-CLM integration is a strategic move to accelerate deal cycles, improve the customer experience, and drive revenue growth. 

Want to simplify your quote-to-contract process? 

Review Tacton’s CPQ Integrations 

The opportunity to capture value exists across the entire customer lifecycle, and manufacturers are cleverly differentiating themselves in the market by taking full ownership of their entire solution ecosystem to capture total value. The ability to execute efficiently and at scale, however, is what keeps most enterprises from maximizing their revenue. These four strategies will help you more effectively monetize the entire lifecycle, from initial engagement to post-sale and expansion.  

1. Engaging Buyers Before the Discovery Call

Most manufacturers still wait for customers to initiate the buying process, but modern B2B buyers expect self-service tools that let them explore solutions independently before engaging with sales. While lead forms and brochures provide information, the modern buyers seek interactive, personalized experiences that empower them to make informed decisions on their own. 

A self-service experience lets potential buyers explore their options easily on your website with deeper product information. A strong self-service configurator will do the following:

• Ensures all product variants are configurable so customers can explore solutions without the risk of incompatibility. 

• Uses visualization tools like AR and VR to help customers see how products fit into their specific working environments. 

• Enables customers to share potential solutions internally before requesting a quote, helping them gain buy-in from key decision-makers. 

Manufacturers that offer these experiences early in the sales cycle will accelerate decision-making and drive higher-value deals before a sales conversation even begins.

2. Eliminating Revenue-Leakage During the Purchasing Stage

Manual and inefficient sales processes are some of your biggest sources of revenue leakage. Sales teams without proper product expertise or real-time pricing data often introduce costly errors into the quoting process that slow down deals and revenue growth. 

To drive more value during the purchase stage, manufacturers need a faster, more disciplined approach to quoting that improves accuracy, protects margins, and eliminates inefficiencies that hold deals back. A manufacturing specific Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) tool enforces product and pricing rules, so that your sales team can simplify complex configurations and approvals and ensure consistent pricing.  

Manufacturers like Metso, a sustainable technologies manufacturer, increased their quote volume by 20% by automating sales processes through CPQ integration. In addition to more quotes, manufacturers that invest in purpose-built CPQ systems are reducing the resources needed for technical approvals and proposal management. Now, those technical resources can be used for value-add activities and innovation.   

3. Integrating Product and Aftermarket Sales into One Solution

In addition to streamlining their quoting process like Metso, commercial printer manufacturer Durst has been able to integrate their printer, software, and service contract configurations into one unified configuration. In such a competitive market, they’re differentiating themselves with a holistic solution and embedding capital equipment sales and aftermarket sales into the initial quoting process.  

Rather than waiting for customers to manually reorder spare parts, for example, make services and aftermarket sales part of the initial value package. That means:  

• Configuring service plans as part of the original equipment sale rather than selling them separately. 

• Using equipment usage data to forecast maintenance needs and translating those insights into a configurable service offering alongside your capital equipment. 

• Integrating additional services into your revenue model, like consumables, break-down support, training, or software upgrades. 

The goal post-sale is to keep your customers in your ecosystem. You can start to plant these seeds at the buying stage by offering value at every level of the solution. When customers see continued value in your solution, they’re likely to become a recurring revenue stream for your business.  

4. Optimizing for Future Revenue Opportunities

Your last sale can tell you as much about your next revenue opportunity as it can about your new customer. Use it to understand how you can maximize revenue more efficiently across the customer journey. 

• Turn lost deals into future wins. Use lost vs. won data to refine pricing, adjust configurations, and target similar prospects more effectively. 

• Focus on high-value customer segments. Identify where you win the most profitable deals and optimize sales strategies for similar buyers. 

• Proactively drive renewals. Track contract status and engage your current customers before service agreements or subscriptions expire to prevent churn. 

• Create expansion sales through product updates. Use past purchase and service data to offer relevant upgrades, add-ons, or efficiency improvements at the right time. 

Monetize More of the Customer Lifecycle with CPQ 

Maximizing revenue doesn’t have to mean that you’re simply selling more. It means that you’re selling smarter and more efficiently to capture value across the customer lifecycle.   

CPQ enables manufacturers to engage buyers earlier, accelerate the sales cycle, and more effectively monetize the full solution ecosystem. Tacton’s CPQ, built for manufacturers that sell highly configurable products, ensures that businesses capture every revenue opportunity while simplifying complexity.  

Tacton offers many ways to capture value:  

• Self-service integration with your website or distributor’s website  

• Configuration and pricing automation to streamline quoting and eliminate errors 

• Service sales in the same place that you configure capital equipment  

• Real-time sales performance data to help you optimize future sales for even greater revenue  

Learn how you can drive greater revenue growth with smarter deal structuring, seamless integration, and a frictionless buying experience.  

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Many manufacturers are caught in a catch-22: they must invest in digital transformation to stay competitive and drive efficiencies across business functions, yet they need those same cross-functional connections to ensure transformation success. Too often, digital transformation initiatives fail to deliver the expected value. In fact, across industries, companies capture less than a third of the expected value from transformation initiatives.  

For manufacturers facing pinched margins and rapidly shifting market demands, new technological investments need to be more closely tied to broader business strategies. But digital transformation strategies today are happening in silos. The most successful transformations will see IT executives leading conversations across business functions—most notably with go-to-market teams—early in the journey to connect new technologies to revenue growth, buyer engagement, and long-term competitive differentiation.  

Early Collaboration Changes the Trajectory of Your Transformation 

IT has typically led the evaluation and implementation of new technology, often focusing on backend optimization, cost reduction, and infrastructure management. But today, technology leaders have a unique opportunity to step into a broader role: acting as cross-functional connectors and ensuring that digital transformation becomes a catalyst for long-term growth and go-to-market success. And the broader business wants this too—32% of IT executives report being asked to advise on their company’s go-to-market strategy more often than in previous years.  

Yet this is not how businesses are currently approaching their transformation journey.

Gaining Buy-In from the Start 

Lack of early stakeholder buy-in is putting digital transformation initiatives at risk before they begin. In one scenario, IT may select a new tool and introduce it to sales and marketing with a proof-of-concept demo at an annual kickoff. The response is generally positive—teams see how the tool makes their jobs easier and it feels exciting. But does the team fully understand how to maximize its value? Have they defined how success will be measured beyond surface-level improvements? Without clear alignment on expectations and business objectives, adoption is limited, and the technology never reaches its full potential.  

Addressing resistance to change is equally critical. In another scenario, teams are hesitant to adopt new technologies that may disrupt their usual workflow. However, these stakeholders often have valuable insights about potential implementation challenges. By acknowledging concerns early and creating space for constructive feedback, leaders can turn skepticism into engagement and address real-world needs rather than theoretical benefits.  

When IT and go-to-market teams evaluate technology together, then sales, marketing, and product teams become equal owners in the adoption and roll-out of the new technology. It drives accountability, but it also gives less technical business functions a more realistic understanding of how they can use the tool and what the roadmap looks like for time to value.  

Overcoming Misalignment and Objections 

In many cases, IT and go-to-market teams are working from fundamentally different assumptions about what they need. IT believes that the business needs to increase sales before investing in a more advanced tool, while go-to-market leaders argue that they need the right tools in place to generate those sales. If these teams are not engaged in early, structured conversations, they remain entrenched in their perspectives, never addressing the root issue.  

Among the same IT leaders surveyed about their role in strategic go-to-market conversations, 54% report experiencing stress from cross-functional work.  It’s enough to stop early conversations in their tracks.  

Consider refocusing the conversation. Technology should be a means to an end—not the starting point. When teams align first on the business outcomes they need to achieve, whether it’s increasing deal velocity, improving customer experience, or enhancing margin control, they create a common foundation for decision-making. From there, the conversation naturally shifts to how technology can support those goals, rather than forcing teams to justify technology choices in isolation. By framing discussions around shared success metrics and strategic priorities, IT can better handle objections and bridge gaps in understanding how the technology provides value.  

Creating Market Agility and Real-Time Responsiveness 

McKinsey research has found that top-performing companies in digital transformation focus on customer engagement and innovation rather than pure operational efficiency. As market instability and supply chain disruptions continue to challenge manufacturers, agility has never been more critical. Businesses can no longer afford to wait for the “perfect” moment or tool to invest in technology. The market moves too fast, and you must be able to adapt in real time. 

For IT leaders, this means shifting the conversation from rigid technology roadmaps to dynamic business strategy. Rather than waiting for stability, organizations need systems and processes that enable agility. This requires IT and go-to-market teams to move beyond isolated technology decisions and instead align on a strategy that connects digital investments to broader business responsiveness. 

When IT facilitates cross-functional conversations focused on adaptability (e.g., how quickly teams can adjust pricing strategies or respond to shifts in buyer demand), they enable market agility. Technology then becomes the mechanism that allows businesses to pivot at the speed of change and differentiate themselves in the market.  

A Framework for Leading Early Cross-Functional Conversations  

Ensure digital transformation delivers real value by engaging in outcome-driven conversations from the start. This will include relevant business functions and even the vendor for the technology you’re evaluating. A strong framework helps teams and technology partners move beyond technology discussions and instead focus on strategic impact. 

1. Start with business objectives, not technology. IT, sales, product, and executive teams must first define the key outcomes they want to achieve, whether it’s increasing quote-to-order efficiency, improving customer engagement, or enhancing product data management. These objectives shape all technology decisions. For example, IT and sales should begin their discussions with revenue growth strategies and sales process pain points, not software capabilities. 

2. Work with the vendor as a collaborative partner. Bring in your potential vendor to help facilitate discussion and answer key strategic questions. Move beyond feature lists and lead the focus on how different solutions contribute to broader business goals. For example, how well does the potential technology support complex product sales and accelerate sales cycles? How does it align with the buyer journey, sales process, and channel partner needs? How effectively does it support engineering and product teams in managing customization, compliance, and product lifecycle considerations? When conducted alongside your vendor, go-to-market teams will get the most realistic understanding of how the solution can help drive value, while dispelling potential objectives.  

3. Define best practices and deployment strategies. IT must work cross-functionally to ensure the technology is effectively adopted. This includes co-developing usage guidelines tailored to different teams. The C-suite will prioritize long-term scalability and ROI, while sales and product teams need clarity on how the tool enhances day-to-day execution.  

4. Map out deployment milestones and KPIs. A structured project plan ensures every team understands its responsibilities at each stage of deployment. By clarifying roles early, IT minimizes misalignment, accelerates adoption, and transforms digital investments into business-driving initiatives. Teams should clearly identify KPIs around both adoption and performance post-launch.  

Lead Your Digital Transformation Success  

The role of IT is no longer confined to cost efficiency. It’s a driver of business growth. By breaking down silos, embedding technology into go-to-market strategies, and fostering cross-functional collaboration, IT can ensure that digital transformation investments deliver real, lasting value. Organizations that embrace this shift will not only see greater ROI from their technology investments but also build a more agile, aligned, and future-ready business. 

At Tacton, we help manufacturers accelerate their digital transformation with our industry-leading CPQ solution. Our consultative approach ensures that IT and business leaders align on strategic objectives before making technology decisions, reducing misalignment and accelerating adoption. With our proven evaluation framework and industry expertise, we empower companies to turn digital transformation and investment in CPQ into a competitive advantage. Let’s start the conversation. 

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Reducing the cost of sale is one of the most important ways for businesses selling complex products to combat increasing competition, long sales cycles, and margin pressures. A strong upsell and cross-sell strategy cannot be overlooked, but sales teams with complex product portfolios may lack the bandwidth and even the technical or institutional knowledge to understand how to best configure solutions that maximize profitability.  

A data-driven sales strategy gives your sales teams an edge in identifying the right opportunities and personalizing them for better success. Uncovering these opportunities, however, requires more strategic use of sales tools and their data, and companies often overlook the power of Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) systems and their data in enabling smarter selling strategies. When this data is used effectively, you can identify opportunities faster and with confidence.  

Why Cross-Selling and Upselling Should Be a Major Focus for Industrial Enterprises 

Most sales teams are familiar with upselling and cross-selling. Upselling encourages customers to choose a more advanced or higher-value product, while cross-selling involves recommending complementary products or services. While these strategies are well understood, many enterprises are not fully capitalizing on them as growth levers. 

But manufacturers of complex products are now seeing major shifts in their industry that are driving the need for streamlined cross-sell and upsell strategies. For example:  

• The shift from transactional to value-based and solution-oriented selling allows sales to guide customers towards a more holistic solution. Teams are more often selling advanced features, bundled services and accessories, and even training services to better align with customer business objectives.  

• Increasing adoption of servitization and product-as-a-service (PaaS) models makes it easier to introduce add-ons or complementary products, as well as encourage customers to upgrade to higher-tier service packages.  

• Digital transformation is driving smarter sales insights and decisions, whether companies are using predictive analytics to suggest relevant products, or they’re investing in better analytics from their sales tools.  

The Benefits of Upselling and Cross-selling: What’s the Impact?   

When you rely less on increasing your customer acquisition to drive revenue and profitability, you create better relationships with the prospects and customers you already have. This in turn creates additional revenue opportunities down the line. Just a five percent increase in customer retention can potentially lead to 25% more in profits, according to Bain & Company.  And when your customers are provided with solutions that continuously deliver more value to their business, they become fiercely loyal, potentially championing your solutions to their peers.  

Ultimately, your cross-sell and upsell strategy is about creating efficiency to protect your bottom line.   

• Increased revenue: Selling higher-value solutions and complementary products drives more profitable growth. 

• Cost efficiency: Expanding sales within your existing customer base reduces acquisition costs and maximizes profit. 

• Sales efficiency: Providing relevant, well-timed recommendations shortens sales cycles and improves win rates. 

• Customer experience: Making buying easier with personalized offers increases satisfaction and repeat business. 

• Pipeline resilience: Strengthening customer relationships through upselling and cross-selling creates more predictable revenue. 

Effective Upsell and Cross-sell Strategies (and How CPQ Can Help You Achieve Them) 

For sales to be effective in selling upgrades or added products, they need the data to find the right recommendations at the right time. Personalization is key to offering value-based solutions, but doing this at scale requires two things:  

1. Strong historical sales, configuration, and pricing data 
2. Strong technical understanding of the possible product configurations and services 

When these elements come together, manufacturers can optimize upselling and cross-selling in a way that maximizes revenue while improving customer experience.  CPQ software, integrated with CRM and other tools, plays a crucial role here. 

How CPQ Empowers Data-Driven Sales 

CPQ empowers sales teams to recommend more value through upgrades, add-ons, and service plans quickly and accurately, without requiring deep technical knowledge. Beyond ensuring accuracy in configurations and quotes, it’s a valuable data source that can refine and optimize your sales strategy. Every transaction, configuration, and price point captured in CPQ creates insights that help identify the right opportunities. 

By extracting CPQ transactional data, like historical configurations, sales BOMs, frequently selected options, and won/lost deal trends, companies can analyze real purchase behavior and move beyond assumptions or gut-instinct. Integrating CPQ data with BI tools like Microsoft BI or Tableau make it even easier for sales teams to visualize this data and make recommendations based on what has actually converted. 

Applying CPQ for Effective Upsell and Cross-Sell Strategies 

When applied strategically, CPQ can help you streamline common upsell and cross-sell strategies that your competitors may—or may not—be achieving in the market already. It’s a differentiator for businesses looking to build more lifetime customer value.  

Consider how CPQ enables smarter selling: 

• Creating smarter bundles: CPQ offers data on historical configurations, frequently bought-together features, and sales BOMs that helps businesses identify which products and services are most commonly sold together. By analyzing patterns in won deals, sales teams can suggest preconfigured bundles that align with real buyer behavior, rather than guesswork. 

• Knowing and personalizing to your customers: CPQ insights on product-market fit, regional purchase trends, and configuration preferences reveal which product variants, upgrades, and features perform best across industries and customer segments. Sales teams can use this information to tailor recommendations based on real adoption patterns rather than relying on broad assumptions. With data on previous configurations and buyer behavior, sales can also tailor conversations with current customers based on their past purchase drivers.  

• Offering the right incentives, profitably: CPQ’s automatic margin control and pricing intelligence ensure that when discounts or incentives are applied to drive upsells and cross-sells, they remain strategic and financially viable. 

• Selling proactively: A CRM-CPQ integration can notify sales when customers approach an upgrade, renewal, or replacement cycle based on service records and equipment lifespan. Instead of waiting for customer requests, sales can proactively suggest upgrades or additional features to maintain continuity and avoid downtime.  

• Expanding product sales with service offerings: Customers often underestimate the value of service plans, warranties, or preventive maintenance until faced with costly downtime. Companies often use failure rate data, service history, and industry benchmarks to position these as strategic investments. But CPQ streamlines the process by integrating services into the product configuration, while leveraging equipment usage data for service forecasts.  

• Sustainability & compliance-based upselling: For customers with sustainability goals or regulatory requirements, CPQ-integrated sustainability calculators compare environmental impact, efficiency, and compliance benefits of different configurations. Instead of offering just a “greener” product, sales can provide data-backed insights on energy efficiencies, making upgrades easier to justify. 

Despite the many use cases for CPQ in frontline sales, many companies still treat CPQ as a back-end tool rather than a strategic sales asset. Those that do leverage CPQ unlock faster, smarter, and more profitable selling opportunities. 

Sell Smarter with Tacton’s CPQ Solution

Data-driven insights and faster quoting make every recommendation relevant, timely, and valuable. Tacton’s CPQ helps manufacturers identify high-impact upsell opportunities, streamline cross-sell recommendations, integrate service selling, and leverage sustainability to strengthen customer relationships. 

With a constraint-based configuration engine, sales teams can ensure technically valid solutions while automating service and product recommendations. Real-time data enables smarter decision-making, simplifying the selling and buying experience, increasing retention, and driving profitable growth. Learn how you can leverage CPQ in your sales strategy with Tacton.  

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Digital transformation in manufacturing is an ongoing challenge as the sector navigates Industry 4.0, supply chain disruptions, competitor innovation, and a growing market of digital-native buyers. To stay competitive, manufacturers must move beyond fragmented digital initiatives and build a connected ecosystem—one that unifies engineering, production, sales, and service into a seamless, data-driven network. 

What’s Driving Today’s Digital Transformation Strategies? 

Digital transformation in the manufacturing industry involves incorporating digital technologies into all facets of the production lifecycle. Unlike simple automation solutions, digital transformation facilitates transitioning from traditional, siloed processes to interconnected, data-driven operations. This shift encompasses every aspect of manufacturing, including product design, supply chain management, sales, and customer service. 

Several factors are driving manufacturers to modernize their operations and adopt digital-first strategies: 

• Evolving customer expectations & market pressures: Manufacturers are responding to a growing demand for personalized, flexible, and seamless buying experiences. A KPMG survey found that 44% of industrial manufacturing executives identified customer feedback as a top driver of digital transformation. This pressure pushes companies to enhance engagement, responsiveness, and digital sales channels for today’s buyers. 

• Breaking down data silos for unified decision-making: The focus is shifting from isolated operational improvements and data silos to a holistic, interconnected system. By linking production, sales, customer service, and beyond, companies can ensure that every step—from design to delivery—is data-driven, agile, and aligned with modern market demands. 

• Connected ecosystems & service-cased innovation: Manufacturers are leveraging real-time data, AI, and automation to build connected services like predictive maintenance, pay-as-you-go models, and digitally enabled aftermarket offerings. These innovations open new revenue streams and deepen customer loyalty. 

• Optimizing production processes & supply chain resilience: Digital tools are revolutionizing the production life cycle. Advanced analytics, IoT, and automation are being applied to optimize product design, streamline production workflows, and enhance supply chain management. This approach not only improves operational efficiency, but it also increases quality control and helps mitigate disruptions across suppliers and logistics. 

Digital Transformation is Reshaping Manufacturing from Operations to the Buyer Journey: Key Benefits 

Adopting digital strategies and emerging technologies—AI, for example—is yielding impressive results for those who embrace them. McKinsey notes that adapting to Industry 4.0 has led to such benefits as increases in labor productivity by 15 to 30%, improvements in forecasting accuracy by up to 85%, and reductions in machine downtime by 30 to 50%.  

These results not only optimize production and reduce waste, but also pave the way for further benefits downstream: 

• Enhanced customer experiences: Digital software like CRM and CPQ systems, AR/VR visualization, chatbots, and self-service portals enable faster and more personalized customer interactions.  

• Improved decision-making: Leveraging big data analytics and AI promotes informed decision-making by enabling you to analyze trends, predict demand, and identify potential bottlenecks, so you can deliver the right products to customers at the right time—on time. 

• Cost reduction: Predictive maintenance and automated quality control keep operations running smoothly and eventually lower production costs. Meanwhile, smarter sales tools can reduce cost-of-sale and eliminate rework in the quoting process by connecting sales with accurate product and engineering data.  

• Greater agility and flexibility: Cloud-based platforms and smart manufacturing systems are handy when scaling production based on demand. Furthermore, various digital tools shorten product development cycles or reduce administrative tasks to allow teams to focus on product innovation.  

How Manufacturers are Leading with Digital Innovation: Examples and Real-World Applications 

Today’s most competitive manufacturers are leveraging these emerging trends and technologies not just to improve production efficiency, but to create seamless, data-driven experiences that place customers at the center of their business model. 

These examples of digital transformation show how manufacturers are using data and automation to drive smarter decisions and elevate customer experiences. 

Creating a Faster, More Personalized Buyer Experience 

Manufacturers are transforming the buying experience by integrating data from sales and engineering systems that enable real-time customization and visualization. CPQ is helping bridge the data gap between engineering and sales teams by ensuring that sales configurations always align with production capabilities, reducing costly order errors and accelerating fulfillment times. CPQ software captures product rules and constraints so that sales teams can configure complex products accurately without the need for frequent engineering involvement.  

When paired with CAD systems or advanced AR/VR visualization tools, these platforms generate precise technical drawings and 3D models, allowing sales to provide customers with real-time product previews that drive confident purchasing decisions.  

Manufacturers like FLSmidth have reduced lead times and engineering errors by automating CPQ and CAD processes, improving efficiency and customer communication. Similarly, Metso has centralized CPQ to replace manual configurations, speeding up quote generation by 20% while cutting proposal management efforts by 40%. 

Shifting to Predictive Maintenance and Smarter Service Solutions 

To meet customer expectations for reliability, manufacturers are shifting from reactive to predictive maintenance models, ensuring minimal disruptions. Industrial IoT sensors and AI-powered analytics continuously track equipment performance, detecting early signs of failure and scheduling proactive maintenance. This shift not only improves product uptime and order fulfillment reliability but also creates more transparent service agreements that build trust with customers. 

Intelligently Forecasting Demand for Smarter Operations  

AI-powered demand forecasting enables manufacturers to optimize inventory, align production with market demand, and enhance supply chain agility. By analyzing real-time data using machine learning algorithms, companies can anticipate shifts in customer needs, reduce excess inventory, and prevent stockouts. 

This enhances: 

• Supply chain efficiency: Better coordination with suppliers reduces delays and disruptions. 

• Production planning: Adjusting schedules in real-time maximizes resource utilization. 

• Sales strategy: Proactive insights help sales teams sell profitably and ensure product availability to meet customer expectations. 

Navigating Common Challenges in Digital Transformation

Despite the known benefits of digital transformation in the manufacturing industry, the road is stalled for many. One IFS report finds that fewer than 10% of global manufacturers qualify as “digital leaders”, and 65% of manufacturers label themselves as “laggards”, having stalled in the early stages of transformation.  

 The challenges extend beyond cost and technical expertise. Here’s how manufacturers can overcome key roadblocks. 

Securing Stakeholder Buy-In  

A significant challenge in digital transformation is securing executive support and sufficient funding. The aforementioned KPMG survey reports that 39% of manufacturers say projects stall due to a lack of executive buy-in and investment approval. 

To prevent stalled or underutilized investments, involve cross-functional leaders earlier in the evaluation process. IT leaders who drive new software purchases, for example, should work with the appropriate business leaders to identify pain points, uncover relevant use cases, and align investments with real business needs. Stronger stakeholder alignment ensures healthier adoption and builds a clearer business case for long-term funding and scalability. 

Legacy Systems and Technical Debt 

Outdated legacy systems continue to be a barrier. Many manufacturers are burdened with high levels of technology debt, where systems built decades ago fail to communicate effectively and limit data accessibility.  

When evaluating new technology, prioritize scalability, interoperability, and long-term viability. Middleware solutions can bridge current systems and new technology without the need for extensive coding, ensuring data flows across the value chain without disrupting operations. Opting to buy rather than build a homegrown solution can also speed up time to value, reduce the need for full-time maintenance resources, and allow for future scalability. A strategic IT assessment helps pinpoint areas where investment will have the greatest impact. 

Capturing Data and Demonstrating ROI 

Despite having transformation roadmaps, many manufacturers struggle to define actionable KPIs that directly measure the impact of digital initiatives. Broad goals like “improving efficiency” or “enhancing customer experience” aren’t enough. Companies need specific metrics tied to cost, cycle times, or other relevant metrics to accurately assess ROI. But this also requires that teams can understand, access, and interpret their data effectively.  

Enhance Your Digital Strategy with Tacton’s CPQ Solution

Tacton goes beyond traditional CPQ, enabling manufacturers to seamlessly connect sales, engineering, and production for a frictionless buying experience. By streamlining processes and ensuring real-time data flow, our platform helps you deliver faster, more personalized customer interactions while reducing complexity. 

Purpose-built for manufacturing, our CPQ solutions unify every touchpoint of the buying journey—from interactive visualization and CAD integration to self-service experiences—to help you deliver a truly customer-centric buying process. With multiple integration options, from no-code to open APIs, you can connect data across ERP, CRM, PLM and other systems to boost efficiency across the value chain. Ready to experience a more agile, connected, and efficient manufacturing future?  

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As a CIO, you need solutions that drive digital transformation without adding complexity and cost. A homegrown CPQ may seem like the best way to align to your company’s needs and complexity, but many IT leaders find it quickly becomes a resource drain—expensive to build and maintain and difficult to scale. 

Tacton CPQ is purpose-built for complex manufacturers, eliminating the risks of custom development while ensuring flexibility, seamless integration, and long-term scalability. There are three core ways that Tacton helps CIOs create a more cost-effective, future-proof solution. 

1. Homegrown CPQ Is a Multi-Year, Multi-Million Dollar Commitment

Time to value is mission critical for staying competitive and realizing ROI. But building a CPQ is a long-term, resource-intensive commitment. Developing an enterprise-grade CPQ solution requires a full-scale software development team and years of effort before delivering business value.  

Breaking Down the Resource Investment 

Role	Team Size	Estimated Cost (Annual)
Software Developers (Front-End & Back-End)	5-10	$1M – $2M
Solution Architects	1-2	$250K – $500K
DevOps Engineers	1-2	$200K – $400K
Business Analysts	2-3	$200K – $400K
Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)	2-3	$200K – $400K
QA Engineers	2-3	$150K – $300K
IT Security Specialists	1-2	$150K – $300K
Project Managers	1-2	$150K – $300K
Total Estimated Cost	15-25 FTEs	$2.5M – $5M+ per year

Beyond the cost of a full-time development team—often made up of multiple engineers, architects, and project managers—time to value is a critical factor. Even with a viable solution, the timeline to get there is long and complex. A homegrown CPQ implementation often unfolds like this: 

• Six to 12 months to build a working prototype 

• 12 to 24 months to reach a minimally viable solution  

• Two or more years to realize true business impact  

 This prolonged timeline delays efficiency gains, strains IT resources, and increases the risk of misalignment with evolving business needs. 

The Alternative: Value in Just Six to Eight Months 

Rather than investing years into development, Tacton CPQ provides manufacturers with a purpose-built, out-of-the-box solution that can be deployed in months rather than years. With industry-specific capabilities, seamless integrations, and continuous innovation, Tacton eliminates the burden of custom development while ensuring a faster, lower-risk path to transformation. 

 2. The Hidden Cost of Maintenance

The greater challenge—and cost—comes after deployment in maintaining and evolving the system over time. Unlike an out-of-the-box solution, which benefits from ongoing vendor-driven enhancements, a custom-made CPQ requires continuous internal investment to remain functional, secure, and aligned with business needs. 

The True Cost of CPQ Maintenance 

The annual cost of maintaining a homegrown CPQ is typically 20-40% of the initial build cost, translating to $1M–$4M per year depending on complexity. These costs stem from: 

• Bug fixes and system stability: IT teams must continuously monitor, troubleshoot, and resolve performance issues, ensuring the CPQ system remains reliable. 

• Pricing and product updates: Every adjustment to pricing rules, product configurations, and sales workflows requires dedicated engineering time and testing. 

• Feature enhancements: As business needs evolve, so does the need for new capabilities. Each enhancement adds to the ongoing backlog, consuming IT resources and budget. 

Unlike a vendor-supported CPQ, where updates are delivered seamlessly, every improvement in a homegrown system is an internal project that leads to longer timelines, increased costs, and IT backlog.

3. Your Homegrown CPQ Is Built for Today, But What About Tomorrow?

A homegrown CPQ may seem like a tailored solution today, but as your business evolves, it can quickly become a liability. Maintaining a custom-built CPQ demands ongoing investment and introduces risks that can hinder long-term growth. 

• Losing key talent, like engineers or developers, can leave your CPQ a black box. Developers stay an average of 2–3 years, and when they leave, your system becomes difficult to manage. Even simple updates can cause delays, disruptions, and extra costs due to knowledge gaps. With Tacton CPQ, you get a continuously evolving, enterprise-grade solution—no internal expertise required. 

• Security and compliance require constant attention. Homegrown CPQ solutions often lack enterprise-grade security, leaving sensitive data exposed. Keeping up with GDPR, ISO 27001, and industry regulations requires continuous IT oversight. Tacton CPQ is ISO 27001 certified and ensures built-in security and automatic compliance updates without adding to IT’s workload. 

• Scaling with business growth adds complexity and cost. Expanding product lines, pricing models, or markets requires continuous custom development. More complexity means higher IT overhead, more staff, and constant maintenance. Tacton CPQ’s cloud-native architecture scales effortlessly, adapting as your business grows. 

The Smarter Path Forward: Why Tacton CPQ is the Right Partner for IT Leaders 

As a CIO, your mandate is to drive business growth while optimizing IT resources. A homegrown CPQ is often seen as a customized solution, but in reality, it ties up critical talent, inflates costs, and delays business impact. Tacton CPQ offers a smarter, more agile alternative to deliver scalability, security, and continuous innovation without the burden of custom development. 

How Tacton CPQ Outperforms a Homegrown Solution 

Factor	Build In-House	Invest in Tacton CPQ
Time to Value	2-3 years	6-8 months
Total Cost Over 5 Years	$10M – $20M+	Fraction of that
Security & Compliance	High risk, requires IT oversight	ISO 27001 certified & always up-to-date
Scalability	Limited, requires custom dev work	Cloud-native & scales with your business
Continuous Innovation	Requires dedicated R&D team	Automatic updates & new features
Total IT Burden	Heavy, requiring ongoing development	Minimal, fully managed by Tacton

With Tacton CPQ, manufacturers get an enterprise-grade solution that accelerates implementation, lowers costs, and eliminates IT headaches.

• Fast implementation: Avoid 2–3 years of custom development. 

• Lower total cost of ownership: No surprise costs or IT overhead. 

• Enterprise-grade security: ISO 27001 certified, built-in compliance. 

• Evolving capabilities: Continuous innovation without internal maintenance. 

• Scalable & future-proof: Grows with your business, adapting to evolving needs. 

Why take on the cost and complexity of building a CPQ when you can partner with a solution designed for long-term success? Tacton CPQ delivers faster ROI, lower IT burden, and the scalability manufacturers need to stay competitive. Connect with us today to see how Tacton can support your business. 

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Smart manufacturing is a booming field expected to grow from $233 billion to $479 billion over the next five years. Growing customer demands and production complexity are requiring brands to turn to emerging technology and automation tools to improve their operations and deliver a better experience for their teams and their customers.

It’s important to understand the core principles and technologies driving smarter production, from AI-driven automation to robotics. However, leading manufacturers aren’t stopping at production efficiency; they’re extending these principles beyond the factory floor to reimagine the buyer journey and commercial strategy for long-term growth. This evolution is shaping the future of manufacturing, turning operational excellence into a competitive advantage across the entire business.

What Is Smart Manufacturing?  

Smart manufacturing uses advanced technology, such as robotics, AI, and cloud computing, to increase efficiency at every step of production. Unlike traditional manufacturing, which relies on stable, repetitive assembly lines, smart manufacturing is dynamic, leveraging real-time intelligence to optimize operations.  

This category of manufacturing is quickly being adopted in facilities—often referred to as smart factories—across countries like China, the United States, and India.  

Smart manufacturing typically involves three core components:  

• Automation: Using technology to automate repetitive processes and complete tasks more quickly 

• Quality Control: Using advanced technology to identify and correct errors, which helps prevent faulty products from going to market 

• Optimization: Helping organizations analyze manufacturing data to optimize their processes and identify opportunities for reducing costs and waste 

The primary focus of smart manufacturing is on enhancing production process efficiency. However, manufacturers should not stop at the production line, as these smart manufacturing principles—automation, data-driven optimization, and quality control—can also be extended to the customer’s journey and the sales process. By doing so, manufacturers can build a more agile and seamless operation across the entire business ecosystem.  

The Benefits of Smart Manufacturing Processes 

By reducing inefficiencies in production, smart manufacturing is not only lowering production costs but also enabling manufacturers to be more agile in responding to market shifts and evolving customer demands. The ability to adapt quickly strengthens manufacturers’ competitive edge and their ability to deliver high-quality products faster and more cost-effectively. 

Manufacturers are seeing benefits like: 

• Improved efficiency and productivity: Smart manufacturing systems help production teams increase their output without compromising quality. Robots, for example, can often complete rote manufacturing tasks faster than humans.  

• Enhanced product quality: AI-powered IoT devices can identify and prevent possible manufacturing errors, resulting in higher-quality products.  

• Real-time monitoring and maintenance: IoT sensors and devices constantly monitor your manufacturing systems, helping you schedule preventive maintenance and keep essential devices functioning properly.  

• Cost reduction and resource optimization: AI and smart technology can help identify opportunities to save money throughout production. For example, they can create more efficient labor schedules or reallocate machinery for more efficient operations.  

• Environmental sustainability: Smart manufacturing systems allow you to track the waste generated by your production processes and find ways to reduce it.  

• Improved warehouse safety: Tools like IoT devices and digital twins identify possible safety risks, allowing you to address them and protect your team.  

Manufacturers have the opportunity to build on these benefits by extending smart manufacturing principles to customer engagement. While smarter production improves profitability by reducing costs and inefficiencies, smarter selling enhances margins by driving deeper market penetration, strengthening customer relationships, and accelerating revenue growth. 

The Smart Manufacturing Technology Powering Innovation 

The benefits of smart manufacturing are clear, but how do smart factories get there? Several innovative technologies are used throughout smart factories to make operations more efficient.  

Automation and Robotics  

Many smart factories use robots to automate production processes, such as transporting items from place to place or assembling products. Automating these repetitive tasks gives employees more time to focus on complex challenges that require human input. It also helps factories increase their output and get products to market faster.  

Internet of Things (IoT)  

The Internet of Things is a network of devices connected to the internet that share data with other devices or systems. Smart thermostats, sensors, and security systems are common examples of IoT devices.  

IoT devices monitor equipment performance, predict maintenance needs, and improve workplace safety. By minimizing downtime and ensuring consistent production, manufacturers can reliably fulfill orders and maintain high service levels for their customers. 

Artificial Intelligence (AI)  

AI is transforming smart manufacturing by enabling real-time decision-making, predictive analytics, and process optimization. For example, AI is often used in demand forecasting to analyze market trends, customer orders, and supply chain data, helping manufacturers better align production capacity with actual demand.

When integrated with IoT devices and other smart technologies, AI can analyze vast amounts of manufacturing data, identifying inefficiencies and quality issues before they become costly problems. Machine learning algorithms detect patterns in production performance, allowing manufacturers to predict maintenance needs, reduce downtime, and optimize resource allocation.

Cloud and Edge Computing  

Instead of having physical servers on-premise, smart manufacturers are switching to cloud computing. Cloud-based systems enhance scalability and data access, while edge computing improves real-time processing for faster responses. These technologies ensure that real-time production insights are accessible across the organization, improving coordination between operations, engineering, and sales teams. 

Digital Twins  

A digital twin is a virtual replica of a real-life production system. It’s powered by data from the physical system, which is collected in real time. Digital twins are generally created using AI to optimize manufacturing processes. Digitizing these systems makes it easier to catch inefficiencies and optimize processes. You can also use digital twins to simulate future scenarios and see how your system would perform.  

Blockchain 

Blockchain ensures secure, real-time tracking of materials and compliance across supply chains. This transparency enhances trust with customers by providing verifiable sourcing and sustainability credentials for manufactured products. 

Connecting Innovation with Business Strategy 

As these technologies continue to evolve, they are not just reshaping production processes but also redefining how manufacturers interact with customers and bring products to market. The future of smart manufacturing will be driven by the seamless integration of these innovations with business strategy, so that companies can remain competitive in complex and dynamic markets. 

The Next Evolution of Smart Manufacturing: Bridging the Gap to Smarter Selling   

Smart manufacturing optimizes production to meet customer demands, but if buyer engagement remains outdated, much of that value is left untapped. Smarter manufacturing strategies should encompass how complex products are sold, not just how they’re produced or designed. As manufacturing technology advances, companies must integrate innovation with customer engagement and sales strategies. The future of manufacturing involves aligning production capabilities with customer needs.  

How can the same principles (e.g., technological innovation, automation, quality control, data-driven decision-making) apply to smarter selling? 

Sales Automation and Guided Selling 

Manufacturers can automate sales processes by streamlining configuration and pricing of complex products. Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) software, when used as a frontline sales tool, integrates product engineering rules with sales logic to help sales build solutions quickly and autonomously.  

Emerging AI-driven guided selling tools can analyze customer needs, recommend optimal configurations, and ensure that what is sold aligns with production capabilities. This reduces errors and shortens sales cycles, while enhancing the buying experience with real-time, data-driven recommendations. 

Pricing and Proposal Consistency  

Just as quality control ensures high production standards, manufacturers can use sales automation to apply consistent pricing logic to quotes and proposals. By leveraging real-time cost and production data, manufacturers can offer dynamic pricing that reflects production constraints, competitive positioning, and profitability goals.  

Visualization in the Buying Experience

Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) are changing how manufacturers showcase complex products, making the buying experience more interactive and informed. AR enables customers to visualize products in their real-world environment, while VR immerses them in a fully digital experience where they can explore configurations and customizations firsthand. By reducing reliance on physical prototypes and simplifying complex decision-making, these technologies help manufacturers communicate value more effectively and accelerate the path to purchase.

Data-Driven Sales Performance and Profitability Insights 

Smart manufacturing principles don’t just improve operations; they also enable data-driven sales strategies. By leveraging analytics tools, manufacturers can track their most profitable products, assess sales performance across regions and industries, and identify opportunities for growth. AI-driven predictive analytics can further aid teams in forecasting demand and predicting customer behavior to adapt their sales strategies.  

Efficiency Across Systems 

Smart selling is most effective when data is seamlessly integrated across systems and teams can work with one source of truth. This connectivity ensures that sales teams have real-time access to production constraints, lead times, and engineering feasibility, resulting in a more accurate and efficient sales process that aligns with manufacturing realities. 

Sustainability as a Sales Differentiator 

Real-time tracking of carbon footprints, material choices, and sustainability metrics is no longer just for regulatory compliance, it’s a value driver in the sales conversation. Customers are increasingly prioritizing sustainable options, and manufacturers that integrate sustainability data into the sales process can better align with customer values and differentiate their offerings. 

Embrace Efficiency with Tacton 

Bridge the gap between production and sales by equipping your teams with the same efficiency and intelligence that drive modern manufacturing. Tacton’s CPQ solutions help you streamline complex configurations, apply real-time engineering and pricing rules for accurate quotes, and provide data-driven insights to optimize sales. As a 3x Leader in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for CPQ Applications, we help manufacturers ensure every quote is manufacturable, profitable, and aligned with business goals—so you can sell with confidence and stay ahead in a competitive market.

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