The Tacton 2025 State of Manufacturing Report reveals that while manufacturers are doubling down on operational efficiency, many still face persistent configure, price, quote (CPQ) implementation challenges that prevent them from realizing the full benefits of automated quoting software. Even as 53% of manufacturers now respond to requests for quotes within 24 hours, 79% continue to struggle with quoting quality. Despite growing pressure to improve the customer experience with speed and accuracy, many manufacturers still rely on manual quoting, static catalogs, and siloed systems that slow down sales and introduce costly errors.
As CPQ rises on the IT agenda, this guide explores the most common CPQ implementation pitfalls and outlines a proven, phased approach to help manufacturers overcome these barriers and drive long-term value.
Why CPQ Implementation Fails — and How to Fix It
Despite growing urgency, many manufacturers continue to struggle with CPQ implementation. According to the more than 200 global manufacturers surveyed in the report, several barriers consistently derail or delay CPQ implementation success:
- Integration with ERP, CRM, and legacy systems (20%)
- Complex product configurations (20%)
- Difficulty proving ROI and securing budget approval (16%)
- Internal resistance to change (14%)
- Lack of internal CPQ expertise (10%)
- Platform maintenance concerns (9%)
CPQ implementation challenges stem from broader industry dynamics. Familiarity with existing (but inefficient) tools often leads to complacency. For example, 43% of manufacturers use spreadsheets for CPQ, and nearly half of Excel users report being “very satisfied” with their current quoting processes despite high error rates.
At the same time, product complexity is increasing. A third of manufacturers report that product selection is overwhelming due to the sheer number of options. Nearly as many cite incomplete or inconsistent product information as a barrier to guiding customers to the right solutions.
Organizational readiness is another stumbling block. While 67% of manufacturers rate digital transformation as a high or highest priority, the report indicates that 42% are still in the early stages, hindered by costs, resource constraints, and resistance to change. Sales transformation lags behind other areas: only 10% of manufacturers say go-to-market teams have significant influence on transformation initiatives. This lack of cross-functional alignment leaves CPQ efforts disconnected from broader strategic priorities.
Finally, many CPQ projects falter due to unrealistic expectations. Manufacturers often underestimate the data preparation required to enable scalable CPQ or attempt to tackle too broad a scope in the first phase.
To overcome these CPQ implementation mistakes and challenges, IT leaders must approach CPQ as a cross-functional business transformation. Here’s how we do it.
A Four-Phase CPQ Implementation Framework for Successful Deployment
At Tacton, we’ve helped leading manufacturers implement CPQ across complex product lines, geographies, and sales channels. Based on this experience and informed by the latest market trends, we recommend a four-phase framework to guide the journey.
Phase 1: Align Strategy, Stakeholders, and Scope
Too often, CPQ projects fail before they truly begin because the organization lacks a clear, shared vision for success. In this first phase, focus on building strategic alignment, defining the project scope, and engaging stakeholders early. This is where you lay the foundation to overcome common hurdles, such as uncertainty about which CPQ fits your needs, lack of internal expertise, stakeholder resistance, and integration complexity.
- Start by identifying the problems CPQ must solve, whether it’s reducing quoting errors, shortening lead times, improving configuration accuracy, or enabling self-service. Prioritize the outcomes that matter most the business.
- Hold stakeholder workshops to align goals across sales, engineering, IT, marketing, or operations and to define how your end users will use its features. Bring together functions that often have different views on what CPQ should accomplish. For instance, sales might prioritize speed and ease of use, while engineering may focus on accuracy and manufacturability.
- Define a minimum viable product (MVP) that targets one product line, geography, or sales channel to validate the tool, refine your approach, and generate early success.
- Avoid trying to integrate everything out of the gate by starting with just the systems (CRM, ERP) required for MVP success. For most manufacturers, this typically includes CRM for managing quoting processes and ERP for driving order creation and fulfillment.
- Define KPIs upfront, such as quote accuracy, cycle time, error rates, time to production, or customer satisfaction rates, to demonstrate ROI and guide future phases and justify broader rollout.
Phase 2: Enablement and Initial Success
With your strategic foundation in place, Phase 2 moves into execution. The goal of this phase is threefold: prepare foundational data, rules, and documentation; enable key users and internal teams; and build a CPQ-ready system based on real product logic.
An initial hurdle to overcome is product configuration complexity. Many manufacturers sell highly engineered, customizable products, but the rules governing how those products are configured often live in scattered spreadsheets, disconnected systems, and even in the heads of veteran employees. This fragmented state leads to bad or siloed product data.
- Document tribal knowledge—some of which may live in veterans’ heads, and centralize product and business logic, rules, and configuration data. A great way to do this is to start again in increments. Selecting one product for instance, and gathering all the data tables, UI fields, and configuration logic will show how the process should work optimally.
- Clean and structure the data before configuring the tool. It’s tempting to build out CPQ flows right away, but doing so without a solid data foundation leads to endless rework.
- Design guided selling flows and product logic that simplify complex quoting processes for your users. The goal is to make configuration as intuitive as possible, especially for sales teams that may lack deep engineering knowledge. Involving cross-functional teams (sales, engineering, and operations) in testing these flows ensures that the system is practical and aligns with real-world needs.
- Set up a controlled test environment using real scenarios to validate configuration logic and usability before rolling out to a broader audience. Gather user feedback and refine the configuration before scaling to a larger audience.
Phase 3: Drive Adoption and Test at Scale
Even with a well-configured CPQ system, success ultimately hinges on user adoption and proper change management. At this stage, manufacturers often encounter internal resistance to new tools; some underestimate the rollout effort. Phase 3 focuses on a thoughtful, phased rollout designed to build momentum.
- Test the solution with real users, ideally in a limited rollout. Many manufacturers pilot CPQ with a single product line, sales region, or customer segment, allowing the team to validate the system and the broader sales process while managing risk.
- Target training to each function. For example, sales teams may focus on guided selling and pricing workflows, while engineering users might engage more deeply with product logic and exception handling. The goal is to equip every user with the knowledge and confidence to use the system effectively.
- During the pilot, gather feedback through multiple channels: user testing, surveys, support logs, and direct input from sales and engineering teams. User interface testing is especially important; if the interface is unintuitive, users will revert to old manual processes.
Treating the rollout like a product launch can build internal excitement. Share early success stories, communicate benefits clearly, and provide visible leadership support. Engaging pilot users as internal advocates can help drive broader buy-in across the organization.
Phase 4: Continuous Optimization
Successful CPQ implementation is not a one-and-done event; manufacturers must invest in continuous optimization to ensure long-term impact.
At this stage, several new CPQ implementation challenges often emerge, including ongoing administration and maintenance concerns, the need to prove long-term ROI, and lack of internal ownership for post-launch success. Many companies underestimate how much attention CPQ will require after go-live. Without a clear plan for continuous optimization, progress will stall.
- Establish release management and ongoing user training as standard processes. CPQ systems should evolve along with your products, pricing strategies, and customer needs. Establish a governance framework that defines how you will update product logic, rules, and integrations.
- Track and report on your defined KPIs. Demonstrating clear improvements in quoting accuracy, cycle time, or error rates will sustain leadership support and secure future investment.
- Look for opportunities to expand usage to new teams, product lines, or sales channels. Many manufacturers start with a focused MVP and gradually roll out CPQ to a broader audience as internal expertise grows. Add advanced capabilities, such as visualization and CAD automation, in future phases once the core system is performing well.
- Build internal capability to manage and optimize CPQ over time. The more self-sufficient your teams become, the less dependent you’ll be on external resources. Train internal administrators and “power users” to handle day-to-day maintenance, support, and minor enhancements, which will foster a culture of continuous learning and keep the solution aligned with your evolving business needs.
CPQ Implementation Best Practices and Pitfalls to Avoid
Even with the right phased approach, CPQ implementation can run into common pitfalls. Many of these challenges stem from the same patterns we’ve seen across hundreds of manufacturing projects.
- Consider third-party platforms that speed up time to value and reduce the need for continued maintenance resources. Homegrown tools can cost millions to implement without easy long-term scalability or innovation, and they create risk when internal CPQ expertise leaves the company. Software services provide the ongoing support and expertise to continue deriving value from your investment.
- Don’t customize too much, too soon. It’s tempting to take on complex integrations or advanced features from day one, but this often leads to project delays and user frustration.
- Don’t lose focus on customer-centricity. CPQ enables you to get more out of your internal processes with faster quoting, better accuracy, and better alignment between sales and production. This is great, but sometimes companies lose track of how it can help customers. A well-designed CPQ project helps enable your company to use not only CPQ, but build a tool that empowers customers to get the information they need as easily as possible.
- Avoid scope creep. This is very common in CPQ projects as you learn about and define processes that quite often were never documented before. Define project objectives early and refer to them as much as possible when deciding on changes to the project. Have a defined change control process with a steering group that has backing from senior management.
- Invest the time upfront to clean and structure product data. If product and pricing data is inconsistent or incomplete, even the best-configured CPQ system will struggle to deliver value.
- Involve all affected departments from the very beginning and keep them engaged throughout the project. Too often, companies implement CPQ in a silo, leading to poor adoption and disconnected processes.
Why Tacton’s CPQ Approach Delivers
While many CPQ solutions can help streamline quoting, not all approaches are designed to handle the unique challenges of manufacturing, especially when products are highly configurable and processes span complex systems. That’s where our CPQ implementation methodology stands apart.
- We take a consultative approach. From discovery through deployment, we work closely with customers to align scope, goals, and stakeholder priorities to help you build the best business case and maximize ROI.
- We prioritize enablement. Our methodology is designed to build internal expertise so manufacturers can own their tool.
- We’re built for manufacturing realities. Our solution handles complex product configuration, including engineered products, BOMs, regional pricing, and multi-system environments with ease.
- We support every step of the journey. With a proven customer success framework, we help manufacturers achieve impact from MVP through continuous optimization and expansion.
Start with the right foundation from proven CPQ implementation best practices.
Where is your organization in the CPQ journey? Whether you’re evaluating your first CPQ solution or looking to transition from an existing system, Tacton can help you take the next step.