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The Manufacturers Guide to CPQ

Today’s manufacturing customer profile is evolving. It’s no longer about the in-person sales pitch. Your buyers wants to access their products online in a frictionless buying experience. But many manufacturers are failing to utilize software that connects internal operations to deliver exceptional customer experiences. This solution requires a data-driven, digital approach that enables internal operations to thrive while also meeting customers anywhere they need. The solution you’ve been looking for is Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) Software. Learn more in our Manufacturers’ Guide to CPQ!

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What is CPQ?

Wondering “what does CPQ stand for and how does CPQ technology work?” Let’s start with a quick CPQ definition and an explanation of what our industry-leading software does.

CPQ stands for Configure Price Quote. CPQ software platforms help users utilize self-service, guided and remote selling to accurately configure complex products and services for prospective customers. CPQ solutions help manufacturers ensure correct pricing and deliver personalized and highly customized quotes and proposal documents.

What is CPQ used for in manufacturing?

CPQ tools are particularly useful for companies that produce products with many possible variations and options, like machinery, equipment, and vehicles. By using a CPQ solution, manufacturers can ensure their sales teams are providing accurate quotes in a timely manner, reducing the risk of errors and delays, and increasing the likelihood of closing deals.

What is CPQ’s effect on manufacturing pricing models and sales revenue?

CPQ solutions help manufacturers optimize pricing strategies by providing insights into pricing trends, competitive benchmarks, and customer preferences. This helps you set prices that are both competitive and profitable, identify areas where you can improve product offerings to meet customer demand, and facilitate guided selling to optimize sales. Guided selling is often a key component of successful CPQ implementation. By incorporating CPQ-enabled guided selling, you can streamline sales processes and increase revenue by providing customers with a more personalized and relevant buying experience. Looking to get technical with how to use CPQ software? Check out the Tacton CPQ Product Sheet

What is Guided Selling?

Guided Selling empowers anyone to be a product configuration expert by creating an interactive dialogue about customer needs to find a solution that is both accurate and optimal. Think of your best salesperson. They have the experience to suggest what would work in a certain situation but are still prone to making mistakes. Guided Selling is like your best salesperson minus the potential for errors. Guided Selling creates a personalized experience by showing customers additional products and features that they didn’t yet know they needed. This empowers them to take a deep dive into products, and analyze how and when they’d use them. Offering solutions that customers hadn’t even thought of before helps them get the most out of their products. The best bit? No technical knowledge is required to facilitate Guided Selling using CPQ meaning it’s easy for both sales and customers to use. [Blog] CPQ and Guided Selling: Empowering Manufacturing Customers

Who uses CPQ?

Your internal team

  • What does CPQ mean for your sales team?

    CPQ sales tools that can be utilized across an organization. Our software massively accelerates the time it takes your salespeople to create a proposal using spreadsheets. Time-consuming back-and-forth approvals between customers, the engineering team, and the sales team are also minimized. Guided selling lets your customers become configuration experts by showing them how each product option fits or doesn’t fit to create a truly optimized product.

  • What is CPQ’s value for your marketing team?

    From your CMO to your web team, CPQ helps deliver an unforgettable buying journey. CPQ for marketing may seem like a farfetched idea, but digital transformation can start with a rich visually engaging experience right from your website.

    With visual configuration, it’s easy to create a way for customers to build their product down to the smallest detail. Your marketing team needs to think about how they can provide the best customer experience possible. From your CMO to your web team, CPQ helps deliver an unforgettable buying journey.

     

  • What does CPQ mean to your engineers?

    Engineers need solutions that enable them to eliminate manual handovers and inefficient processes. CPQ for engineering ensures fast and accurate product configurations and eliminates repetitive tasks using Design Automation. With CPQ software detailed 2D and 3D product designs can be quickly created using product information from your engineering team.

  • The CPQ process in your factory

    The factory must deliver on what your engineers have designed and your sales and marketing teams have sold. It’s therefore vital that the factory has access to the necessary CAD drawings and components to build products. If you don’t connect your digital investments in the factory with CPQ software, processes will continue to be disjointed, and you’ll struggle to connect your end to end process and deliver exceptional customer experiences. The factory and the back office must leverage their combined efforts to manufacture the exact deliverables customers buy.

  • The CPQ benefits  for your customers

    Slow quoting processes don’t suit today’s buyer who want their custom products fast and to specification. Integrating CPQ into eCommerce enables you and your team to quickly provide product specification in minutes instead of days. This keeps customers satisfied and more likely to make repeat orders. Customers begin their B2B buying journey online, making it essential to have an engaging online presence to generate leads. This is something manufacturers have struggled with in the past. CPQ with self-service changes that experience. Embedding CPQ technology directly onto your website enables customers to configure, price and quote your entire online product portfolio creating a truly omnichannel experience. Visual configuration also gives your customers stunning, real-time visuals in their own environment. No more lengthy waits for text-based product descriptions. No detail too small to be configured. CPQ and visual configuration technology allows you to provide products that are an exact match for your customers needs and offer a one-of-a-kind buying experience while simultaneously saving time, money and resources. [eBook] Enhance the Customer Experience by Going Beyond Quote-to-Cash 

What is the CPQ process?

Pricing and quoting in the manufacturing industry can be highly variable. By using CPQ software, businesses can streamline their sales processes, improve pricing accuracy, and reduce the risk of errors and inconsistencies. As we know, CPQ stands for configuration, pricing, and quoting, and the process in each stage typically involves the following steps: Configuration: The sales rep or customer selects and configures the product according to their needs and preferences. Guided selling prompts help each user to choose the right features and options for their needs. Pricing: The system uses algorithms to calculate prices based on the chosen features, options, and any available discounts or promotions, taking into account both customer needs and manufacturer profitability goals. Quoting: CPQ systems generate a quote including the suggested price, terms and conditions, and any other relevant information. The quote may be sent to the customer for review and approval, and can be revised as needed until a final agreement is reached.

Why is CPQ used? 

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Need-based guided selling captures every customer requirement to find the optimal solution 

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Accelerate sales by offering the 100% correct product configuration to your customer in minutes 

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 Eliminate error-prone handovers between your sales and engineering teams

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Produce accurate, high-quality proposals down to the bill-of-material

CPQ Advantages

There are several business advantages of implementing CPQ software. Primary CPQ benefits include:

Faster and More Accurate Quotes: With a CPQ solution in place, sales reps can quickly and accurately generate quotes for even the most complex product configurations, reducing the time and effort required to complete the sales process. Improved Sales Productivity: CPQ tools help teams to work more efficiently by automating sales process workflows. By reducing the amount of manual input required, your teams can focus on higher-value tasks like building relationships with customers and closing deals. Increased Sales Revenue: CPQ accelerates the sales cycle by reducing the time required to close deals. Increasing your sales velocity results in increased revenue because deals move through the sales pipeline quicker. Better Pricing Control: With real-time updates on product pricing and inventory levels, pricing errors can be eliminated. CPQ tools enforce pricing rules to ensure quotes are consistent, in line with your company’s pricing policies, and optimized for maximum profitability. Enhanced Customer Experience: Providing fast and accurate quotes is a proven way to build stronger relationships and improve the buying experience. Plus, CPQ-enabled guided selling personalizes buyer experiences, which further enhances customer satisfaction.

Is Tacton CPQ specific to any industry? 

Tacton CPQ was purpose built for the industrial manufacturing sector.

Our CPQ solution has seen success in industries such as automotive, production lines, medical devices, fluid control systems, and even elevators and lifts.

[Blog] CPQ Software: Is my Product a Good Fit for Tacton?

What are CPQ integrations? 

Connecting your systems is necessary to build a truly customer-centric buying experience and facilitate data-driven decisions that position your organization for sustainability and growth. Manufacturers who choose to implement CPQ tools as part of their digital transformation strategy often find themselves asking how they can fit a new solution in an already existing framework of Customer Relation Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Computer-Aided Design (CAD). CPQ software integrations create a connected experience for both buyer and seller. Data flows with ease between Tacton CPQ and other business-critical systems. Creating a connected system from CPQ directly to your systems creates a good internal experience which in-turn offers your customers configurations, quotes, and final products faster and more efficiently. [Learn more] CPQ Software Integrations

So, what are some of our most common integrations?

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CPQ for Salesforce 

Tacton CPQ extends Salesforce with powerful capabilities that make selling custom manufactured products easy for manufacturers. Developed specifically for the manufacturing industry, up to date pricing is always available within Tacton CPQ for Salesforce. What sets Tacton CPQ apart is a powerful, constraints-based configuration engine built to handle the most challenging configuration environments. The complexity of your product portfolio will never be a limiting factor. Manufacturers who use Salesforce can now tackle the most complex sales and product configuration challenges – all within the Salesforce Lightning environment. Tacton for Salesforce drives revenue growth and profitability by making it simpler and faster to sell complex solutions while dramatically reducing the number of order errors. The solution also includes capabilities such as visualization and optimization as well as CAD/CAM integrations. [Webinar] How is Tacton’s Product Configuration enhancing Salesforce CRM?
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CPQ for Microsoft Dynamics

Tacton CPQ for Microsoft Dynamics integrates your data by eliminating manual maintenance, syncing data across your systems, automatically aligning configurations and quotes, and creating a simplified process, so you can close complex deals faster. Accurate, high-quality quotes with supporting documentation including drawings, technical summaries, BOMs, manuals and spare parts lists are generated automatically, within minutes. Integrations speed up the quotation process dramatically, keeping you one step ahead of the competition [Product Sheet] Tacton CPQ for Dynamics 
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CPQ for SAP

Tacton CPQ extends SAP with powerful capabilities that make selling highly configurable manufacturing products easy. Bill of material (BOM), orders, and other information is quickly transferred between Tacton and SAP facilitating a fast and efficient way to work with your customers products.

What else can Tacton integrate with?

  • CPQ for eCommerce 

    CPQ is a new way to execute your eCommerce journey. Embedding a product configurator with visualization right on your website shows customers how simple and easy it is to manufacture their products, no matter the complexity. This is a chance to win on two fronts in the battle for customer engagement. First, customers can configure their product without the help of your sales team then request a quote or add to a shopping cart using self-service integrations to buy from anywhere. Self-service creates a shortcut for your customers. Giving both customers and sellers a head start on configuration makes the negotiation process easier. [Blog] eCommerce for Manufacturers: An Untapped Opportunity

  • CPQ Analytics 

    CPQ analytics software creates a wealth of data that can provide critical insights on products, customers, and pricing structures. Tapping into the data from the everyday usage of Tacton can help you track changes and turn insights into actionable responses. These key data points can help optimize processes leading to internal and external success. Check out some of our additional reading on analytics 
Configure, Price, Quote technologies are redefining how manufacturers are doing business. Customers are more demanding than they’ve ever been. Mistakes caused by inefficient processes will inhibit you from connecting end to end processes. If you do not connect your processes with a CPQ, you will continue to operate in department and data silos. The wealth of data across these investments is critical to delivering an industry leading customer experience. Utilizing CPQ enables you to create a seamless process from the initial sales pitch to the product rolling off the assembly line. CPQ is the tool that eliminates manual handovers, silos, connects your systems from end to end. Regardless of the industry or vertical, all of our customers say the same thing: we’ve made investments to transform our processes, we have an abundance of data from all our systems, but aren’t sure if they are leveraging it properly for efficiency and customer experience. If you’re ready for more, schedule your demo with us!