Introduction
In today’s rapidly growing digital marketplace, the competition is challenging, so businesses have to adapt to digital advancement to stay competitive. B2B Commerce started aligning with digital transformation and leveraging advanced technologies to streamline processes and meet customer demands to deliver enhanced customer experience. With the evolving needs and expectations of B2B buyers, B2B businesses are moving towards a solution that can facilitate personalization, attractive deals, and simplified payment; Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) is one such solution. Let’s discuss CPQ in detail, including its role in empowering the sales team and transforming customer experience (CX) for B2B transactions.
Configure – Price - Quote (CPQ): The Overview
‘Configure, Price, Quote’ or CPQ is a sales enablement solution for B2B Commerce businesses that automates the sales tasks and processes to quickly customize, configure, and create accurate quotes for complex products or services according to the personalized and unique needs of clients and empowers sales teams for more productivity and enhanced customer engagement to immersive customer experience (CX).
CPQ helps the sales team configure specific products or customized service options using relevant rules-based pricing to produce a detailed quote document that meets all the customer requirements so the sales team can focus on intuitive customer engagement and interaction to enhance customer journeys.
Image Courtesy: IDC
– Configuration
Enable sales team members to choose a product and specify the unique requirements of the client to configure and customize it for various features, options, and add-ons with built-in rules to ensure configuration compatibility.
– Pricing
Automates the pricing calculation based on the chosen configuration and defined rules that also count applicable discounts, quantity breaks, currency conversions, and customer-preferred pricing rules.
– Quotation
Generates exclusive and branded quote documents for the client after successful configuration and pricing process to share and discuss with the client directly.
CPQ Benefits for B2B Commerce
– Faster
CPQ acts as a catalyst for handling many things in B2B commerce that enhances the overall experience. It paces up the time required to configure products, calculate prices, generate quotes, and roll it out to meet client demands.
– Efficiency
Efficiency is a key performance factor in B2B Commerce; with the help of CPQ solutions, businesses can easily achieve quick turnaround time to deliver in an efficient manner to stay ahead of the competition.
– Accuracy
There is no scope for error in the dynamics of B2B Commerce; CPQ helps to eliminate the risk of errors and brings accuracy for seamless transactions. It enables automated configuration and pricing processes with the help of a single data model and pricing engine to offer accurate quotes for an immersive customer experience (CX).
– Personalization
B2B businesses have unique needs, such as their clients demanding more personalized and tailor-made offerings for more satisfaction. CPQ solution can be more effective here as it enables B2B businesses to offer a complete range of product configurations to offer unique and personalized quotes to each client.
– Scale-up Sales Process
Sales outputs and productivity define the success of a sales team and their sales process for the B2B businesses. CPQ solution adoption for B2B Commerce streamlines the sales process, empowers the sales team, and scales up the sales so that the sales team is always updated with all the necessary information to foster better customer relationships and enhance productivity.
– Improve Customer Experience (CX)
B2B Commerce thrives when it improves the customer experience (CX), achieves customer satisfaction, and enhances customer journey. With CPQ solution, you can seamlessly craft customized quotes with accuracy that leads to engaging customer journeys, seamless transactions, and improved customer experience (CX) and satisfaction. A delighted and satisfied customer attracts more customers and enhances brand loyalty.
Customer Experience (CX): How Does CPQ Transform B2B CX
Customer experience is the key for businesses to define their success, customer loyalty, and revenue generation. Take a closer look at the efficacy of your existing sales process and analyze whether the significant time goes for manual configurations and quote generations with a risk of human errors and deals getting delayed; then, it is time to go for CPQ.
It’s conceptualized and designed to help B2B businesses manage their eCommerce, eliminate human errors, and automate the personalized configured quotation to directly share with the client and pace up the deal-closing process that leads to enhanced customer experiences. CPQ brings all the features of manual customization with automation into the sales process, generating quotes quickly and accurately so the sales team can spend more time understanding their clients and fostering better customer relationships.
If you have a subscription-based pricing model or recurring billing, then the CPQ solution will easily handle the tasks associated with repeat orders and generate renewal quotes for subscriptions. Additionally, if you integrate CPQ with your CRM and ERP solutions, then you’ll get better customer insights and can easily strengthen your customer relationships. We want to draw your attention to the improvements CPQ brings to CX. Let’s take a look.
– Rapid Customer Service
Faster service delivery and the quickest time to attend to a customer make an impact on customer experience (CX). Quick time is the primary driver for customer satisfaction; the CPQ solution helps the sales team quickly take customer configurations into personalized quotation and pricing to share with customers and speed up the deal closing. Even if the customer configurations are complex, yet CPQ can easily generate the quotation in no time and share it with the customer to swiftly move forward for closing. A faster configuration, pricing, and quotation are always appreciated by the customer and positively impact their decision-making, satisfaction, and experience.
– Endless Configuration Capability
One of the most critical factors of customer satisfaction is desirable configuration and customization; if they don’t find a specific configuration with a particular B2B Commerce, then they either move to another competitive B2B Commerce or unwillingly buy from you but won’t be delighted customers. It is vital and essential to provide configurations that meet your customers’ demands; here, CPQ helps B2B eCommerce businesses offer innumerable configurations. Customers can easily get their desired configuration and feel delighted which elevates the customer experience and turns them into loyal customers.
– Easy Discount and Approval
One way to enhance the CX is by offering special and exclusive discounts with instant approval to pace up the decision-making. Usually, discount offers are the same for each customer according to the sale, yet sometimes, a customer asks to avail of special discounts to close the deal. In such cases, your quotation needs to reflect the special discount offer quickly after quick approval. Ideally, it takes time to get approved, but with a CPQ solution, the sales team can get the fastest approval for such a special discount and directly share it with the customer to move ahead in the decision-making to close the deal. CPQ increases the credibility of your quotation with quick approval and elevates customer experience with special discounts.
– Omnichannel Experience
Sometimes, customers conveniently switch multiple channels and touchpoints before closing the deal. If the experience differs or is inconsistent, then the customer experience may get ruined. CPQ enables omnichannel customer experience by integrating field sales, direct sales, indirect sales, internal quoting, cross-sell, up-sell, renewal, recurring subscription, and contact center sales with its intuitive customer-focused configuration, pricing, and quotation to craft an immersive experience irrespective of the channel. The sweet spot is a consistent experience across channels that helps to earn customer loyalty and leads to enhanced customer experience.
– Personalized Experience
Personalization can be a great way to highlight your B2B expertise and offer exclusive products or services based on customer insights like behavior, purchasing activity, buying patterns, and detailed requirements. CPQ enables B2B eCommerce owners to provide more personalized offers, deals, and discounts based on customer insights. Not only will this improve your customer experience, but it will also increase their loyalty towards you.
Final Words
B2B commerce has changed drastically over the years with the introduction of advanced technologies, communication modes, and touchpoints. With time, B2B customers expect and demand similar convenience, comfort, and customer experience (CX) from B2B Commerce as they experience B2C Commerce in their personal lives. B2B customers need quick access to product configurations and pricing information with an immersive and seamless experience.
That is exactly what CPQ B2B Commerce solution does; ‘Configure, Price, Quote’ or CPQ is the sales enablement solution that empowers B2B Commerce sales teams to deliver the desirable experience. It enables the B2B sales team to configure complex products or services, calculate rules-based accurate pricing, and generate quotations in no time. CPQ simplifies and streamlines the ‘quote-to-cash’ process so the sales team and representatives can focus on customer engagement that ultimately leads to enhanced customer experience and boosts revenue growth for B2B owners.
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Sumesh Soman is an Enterprise Sales and Client Management professional with expertise in eCommerce & online marketing. Since a decade, he has been working as a strategic, digital commerce consultative resource for global clients. Having deep relationships with key platform and ecosystem partners, he is an expert at empowering driven and efficient digital transformations that exceeds client goals.
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