As sales cycles lengthen and digital buyers drop off at the first sign of friction. Buyers now need more guidance, support, and understanding of their business goals beyond what the current configure, price, quote (CPQ) process provides.
Manufacturers must shift from internal sales enablement to buyer engagement, creating a seamless, transparent, and scalable experience across every touchpoint of the buyer journey. That’s the difference between standard CPQ software and a CPQ buyer engagement platform—a new evolution in CPQ for manufacturing that centers the buyer and brings sales, engineering, and manufacturing excellence around the buyer’s needs.
What traditional CPQ gets right and what it misses
Traditional CPQ systems were designed to help internal sales teams quote faster and with fewer errors. They do this well. By standardizing quoting processes, automating pricing rules, and reducing basic configuration mistakes, CPQ tools have long served as a reliable engine for internal efficiency.
But that was before ecommerce, smart factory software, and the expectation of real-time customer personalization became the norm.
In the current, buyer-driven world, modern manufacturers need internal speed and external alignment. Unlike buyer-centric CPQ, traditional CPQ tools…
- Lack buyer-led discovery, forcing customers to know what they need before the process even begins.
- Operate in silos, disconnected between what the buyer needs and what can be delivered.
- Fail to provide visualization, relevant information, and peace of mind in buyers’ decision making.
- Don’t scale across channels, making it difficult to deliver a consistent experience across direct sales, ecommerce, or dealer networks.
What is a buyer engagement platform?
A buyer engagement platform is the foundation for how modern manufacturers orchestrate the entire sales-to-production lifecycle. Unlike traditional CPQ, which kicks in after a product has already been selected, a buyer engagement platform starts at the very beginning of the buyer’s journey.
A buyer engagement platform is the evolution of CPQ—one designed for how buyers buy today. Instead of beginning after a product is selected, it starts at the very first moment of exploration, guiding buyers through a tailored journey based on their needs and goals.
At the heart of a buyer engagement platform is a centralized product model that unites sales, engineering, and manufacturing teams. As buyers configure solutions, the platform dynamically applies engineering logic to guarantee that every option is valid, buildable, and visualized in real time.
Because it’s built to scale, a buyer engagement platform can adapt to a wide range of sales motions and customer needs. It empowers buyers with flexible, intuitive tools while giving manufacturers the confidence that every quote is aligned with operational realities. It’s the connective tissue between customer experience, engineering automation, and manufacturing execution.
Connecting front-end and back-end manufacturing leads to buyer confidence, speed, and trust
Traditional manufacturing sales processes often follow a rigid, disconnected path: the buyer selects a product, sales configures it, engineering validates it, and manufacturing figures out how to build it. Every step creates friction, risk, and delay.
A CPQ buyer engagement platform like Tacton changes that dynamic. By aligning every stakeholder around a shared configuration engine rooted in real engineering logic, it eliminates the need for revalidation and removes the guesswork from quoting. As the buyer explores options, CAD and BOMs are generated automatically. Sales knows the solution is valid. Engineering knows it’s buildable. The buyer knows it’s real.
This tight integration unlocks something manufacturers have struggled to deliver: buyer confidence. Buyers can see exactly what they’re getting, understand how it fits their needs, and move forward without hesitation. With fewer handoffs, shorter quote cycles, and complete transparency, decisions happen faster and trust in the process grows, so manufacturers can turn more interactions into deals.
What does a buyer engagement platform entail?
Not all quoting solutions are created equal, and not every platform that promises “buyer engagement” delivers it. What sets a true buyer engagement platform apart is how deeply it’s built to support the complexity, scale, and collaboration required in modern manufacturing.
A buyer engagement solution should enable:
- Buyer-led configuration. Modern CPQ processes are more collaborative in nature, focusing on how solutions impact business strategy and outcomes. This collaboration is key to buyer confidence. Start with the buyer’s needs—not product codes—guiding them through a process that’s intuitive, visual, and personalized.
- Independent exploration with real-time visualization: Help buyers explore and understand what they’re getting through interactive, visual tools that build confidence.
- Real-time alignment across sales channels: Enable seamless coordination between internal teams and external partners, ensuring consistent, high-value engagement across fewer digital touchpoints.
- Built-in engineering validation and automation: Instantly generate CAD and BOM outputs from a shared product model, ensuring every quote is accurate and buildable, and buyers are informed on the product and its delivery.
- Connected front-end and back-end experience: Align sales, engineering, and manufacturing on a single platform, eliminating silos and reducing misalignment.
- Scalable, faster delivery of innovation: Support everything from ecommerce to dealer portals with flexible product model updates rather than custom code and IT bottlenecks.
- Continuous optimization through buyer insights: Capture data from every interaction to refine offerings and improve future buyer experiences.
Why manufacturers choose Tacton
Tacton goes beyond CPQ—it’s a CPQ buyer engagement platform. That distinction matters. In a landscape where traditional quoting tools struggle to meet the expectations of today’s digitally empowered buyers, Tacton empowers manufacturers to go further: to deliver personalized, accurate, and scalable buying experiences across every channel.
What makes Tacton different is what’s behind the experience. A single, intelligent configuration engine connects sales, engineering, and operations, ensuring that what’s promised in a quote can be delivered without compromise. Buyers get real-time guidance and visualization. Engineers get instantly validated CAD and BOM outputs. And manufacturers get a unified platform that accelerates sales cycles, reduces risk, and builds long-term customer trust.
Explore how Tacton goes beyond CPQ to support the connected, buyer-centric smart factory.