In today’s digital marketplace, B2B customer expectations are rapidly changing and new technologies continue to emerge. Distribution companies that take action to disrupt their current commercial processes and embrace the change that new technologies bring can realize significant advantages over their competition.
Over the last several years, Configure-Price-Quote (CPQ) solutions have been the new buzz, but can they really add value to the distribution business model? Beyond the ability to generate a quote, today’s Intelligent CPQ solutions provide guided selling that is integrated with your CRM and ERP tools, complex product configuration, pricing intelligence, proposal and contract support. This means more quotes that are more accurate which translates to more revenue growth.
Distributors that embrace Intelligent CPQ technology will see direct impact in two key areas: pricing effectiveness and commercial process efficiency.
Pricing Effectiveness
- Real-time, optimized target pricing. Current, situation-appropriate pricing is always ready in Intelligent CPQ delivering guidance for each quote, driving pricing improvements transaction by transaction.
- Contextual analytics drive user adoption. Real-time analytics that support pricing guidance in easy-to-understand terms are of great benefit to the field and therefore drives better user adoption. This in turns improves profitability.
- Guided selling. Whether you are recommending complementary products, choosing between a branded product or private label, or deciding among good/better/best options, Intelligent CPQ supports your decision-making process by providing recommendations that are based on your customer’s needs as well as the most profitable choice for your organization.
- Visibility into all your pricing elements. When competing with large on-line retailers, you must understand all pricing levers, including customer rebates and additional service offerings to know when you are actually offering the same price. The invoice price is typically not the final price.
Commercial Process Efficiencies
- Institutionalize valuable sales knowledge. An Intelligent CPQ tool should enable your organization to begin to institutionalize and scale valuable field experience and make your new reps as successful as your best seasoned reps.
- Mobile / web-powered quoting capability. Intelligent CPQ can provide an efficient digital process for product selection, pricing and policy enforcement, in addition to quick quote document creation by your sales team.
- Speed is the new currency. Customers expect fast as well as accurate. Intelligent CPQ enables you to offer a quick quote for the most complex orders that leaves customers feeling they had a positive experience.
At a time when the stakes for meeting customer expectations have never been higher, Intelligent CPQ supports distributors by delivering the capability to easily and quickly respond to their requests. You will also see less administrative work which means higher sales productivity and win rates; stronger sales support via the best intelligence possible at the point of decision and automated policy enforcement and sales metrics reporting which improves performance transparency and empowers your sales team. All of this results in a better bottom line.
To learn about what to look for in a CPQ solution provider and capabilities to consider, download the free guide, Top 5 Capabilities of Modern CPQ Solutions.