Configure Price Quote (CPQ)
Configure Price Quote (CPQ) is a phrase commonly used for the process leading up to generating a sales proposal for companies offering complex products or services. CPQ software helps companies enable their sales organizations by easing configuration of complicated product offerings, price them in such a way that the correct discounting and bundling rules apply to products or sets of products, and create fast, accurate quotes based on that information. CPQ software bridges the gap between front and back-end systems and assists companies in the lead-to-order and lead-to-cash processes.
The CPQ Acronym
Configure
Price
Quote
Product Selection
Selecting the correct products to sell to a customer is the first hurdle a sales representative must get over when quoting. This process may include answering questions to guide them, setting filters manually or using data from other areas of the system to set filters easing product selection.
Additionally, selecting products may also influence the selection of other products. There may be business rules that prevent two or more products to be sold together, demand that two or more products must be sold together, or not allow a product to be available or visible until another product has been sold.
The product selection process must maintain a balance between selling the best products and services for the customer and what the business wants to promote and sell.
CPQ Components
Product Configuration
Products may have many attributes that make them configurable to a customer’s needs such as the size, version, materials, ingredients, capabilities, technologies, and more. These attributes may drive price, revenue recognition, fulfillment, or other actions downstream. Many businesses have seen their product catalogs exponentially proliferated if their CPQ system could not handle product configuration appropriately.
IN OUR OWN WORDS
Whether our clients are looking to enable their sales teams to sell with as little friction as possible or add strict guidance and structure to existing selling processes, a well-defined product catalog coupled with a powerful CPQ tool can meet complex sales organizational goals simply. Tack on a predefined solution for amendments, renewals, and subscription management and you have a fully enabled pipeline of new and recurring revenue."
CHAD BORER
Salesforce CPQ Practice Director
at ATG Cognizant
Bundling
Products may be bundled or sold together at either a discounted rate or a preconfigured solution to make sure customers have the most value and to increase the footprint of ownership of product offerings. In many cases, a single product to a customer is the compilation of many products within the system products like automobiles, boats, pizza, and others.
Preconfigured - Top Down
This type of bundle is usually preset and pre-priced. The products within the bundle cannot be configured or changed, and the only way to change the price is to discount the entire bundle at once.
Configurable - Bottom Up
This type of bundle allows the user to select and configure products within the package. These selections and configurations will drive the price of the overall bundle.
Solution Based - Virtual Bundle
This type of bundle groups many products together for users inside the system and hold many benefits of the configurable bundle such as selection rules, product configuration, and validations. However, once the sales representative is done configuring the bundle, the customer doesn't see it being sold as a bundle. This is commonly used for selling a solution for a data center or to encourage up-selling and cross-selling.
Standard Pricing
Standard prices are provided for each product or product attribute in a catalog. Standard prices for each product are key to keeping the available products in a product catalog from growing out of control. The available product variations create the need for additional pricing schemas.
Those schemas can be added to the core product, making these options available to other products within the product catalog. This structure ensures consistency and reduces the need to build customer-specific products within the product catalog.
Up-Sell, Cross-Sell & Expansion
These sales processes are the central methods for increasing average revenue per user, an essential growth metric for most businesses using a recurring revenue business model. These businesses also focus heavily on annual contract value.
Up-selling is the process of selling more of a particular service. For example, moving from 6 MB internet speed for $25 per month to 18 MB for $45 per month is a typical up-sell.
Cross-selling is when a customer purchases a separate product or service in addition to what they had originally anticipated buying. For example, if the customer originally intended to buy internet service, but the sales representative convinced them to purchase phone and cable services too, the sales representative successfully performed cross-selling.
Expansion is the process of broadening the selling engagement with the customer to additional locations, business units, or channels. This process is not independent of up-selling and cross-selling, but it refers to specifically growing the size and buying power of the customer. For example, if a sales representative is selling software to the accounting group at John Deere in Missoula, MT, and they expand the sale to include the sales team plus two other locations, they have achieved expansion. A good CPQ application assists this process by allowing many child accounts, groups, and locations to be quoted at once.
The combination of up-selling and cross-selling is the primary method of driving more revenue within an existing customer base. Another common phrase is wallet share. Many enterprise clients have a goal of increasing the wallet share from their customer base, which is often done through up-selling, cross-selling, or both. The concept of bundling or packaging is a method for accelerating an up-sell, cross-sell, or both.
Up-selling and cross-selling can be done at the time of customer creation or over the course of the life of the customer. In the context of a call center, many agents are compensated specifically for up-selling and cross-selling they perform in their typical customer care.
Have you heard a cross-sell like this before?
"Thank you for using our cable services and updating your credit card information! Did you notice that we have expanded our internet offerings in your neighborhood and are offering free service for three months if you add it to your plan now?"
Proposal
A proposal is a term that has many definitions in a CPQ context and means different things to different people. A proposal can be a simple informal verbal agreement such as a budgetary quote or back of the napkin quote, or it could be more complex such as an RFP response proposal that includes a full quote, contract language, and supplementary marketing material.
Quote
The quote is often the first commitment made by a business to new customers. Once the customer has selected the product or product feature set that meets their needs, a quote will be presented that demonstrates the options selected, the prices, and the discounts available to them. This ensures a complete understanding of what is being purchased, the contract terms, and any additional service details.
Customers may not agree to the first version of the quote or seek to negotiate additional terms or services. Quotes should be easy to reconfigure to represent any additional changes at a near real-time rate.
In another scenario, it may take time for a customer to return with an answer to the quote. In such a case, the quote can be stored for future reference without having to re-engineer the quote or take the customer back through the entire process again.
Some scenarios require that the quote be executable in order to confirm contractual information and acceptance of the quote. CPQ solutions should have the ability to allow for both wet and digital signatures.
IN OUR OWN WORDS
With the adoption of agile-style project management, larger and more complex projects must incorporate both short and long-term goals and objectives. A well-documented understanding of the inputs and expected outputs early in the project along with appropriate phase scheduling are two keys to a successful implementation. Phases need to coordinate realistic, achievable actions between teams and systems with clear success criteria that adds value to the business along the way. ATG's methods lead to a clear understanding of how clients achieve revenue goals, reduce their business expenses, and decrease risk across the business."
ELENA MERRILL
Salesforce Billing Practice Director
at ATG Cognizant
Approvals
The quote should provide an area for the customer to easily agree to the terms provided to facilitate the subsequent provisioning, activation, and shipping that is necessary to provide goods and services quickly and effectively to the customer. The approvals are retained for future reference.
Internally, approval may be required to provide a quote to a customer. In any case, requiring approvals for quotes, the process should be as efficient as possible. Approvals often ensure that quotes are accurate, meet internal revenue standards and margins, and the terms are sufficient. The approval process should involve the appropriate level of staff and be communicated as quickly as possible. Approvals are retained for future reference.
Certain customers require special care. These customers may receive appropriate discounts added to their quotes, special services, or renegotiated price rates outside of what is available to the sales team at that time. These require even more speed and efficiency as well as a thorough review at the appropriate levels.
Approvals during the quoting step are more important than any other step in the Lead to Cash process. Creating and sending a proposal, estimate, or quote is typically the first time the customer sees the product information, pricing, or both. Approving before this step limits the flexibility of the sales representative to negotiate, and approvals after this step are passive, causing the client to become frustrated.
FACT Framework
ATG recommends that the quoting process follow the FACT Framework – Fast, Accurate, Clean, and Transactable.
Every company is intentionally or unintentionally balancing the need for speed, quality, accuracy, and efficiency. Not only is this done for direct selling but also for channel selling and e-commerce. For example, every sales representative will tell you that the fastest way to get a quote out the door is to eliminate any approvals. However, other business stakeholders know that there are financial or legal or other risks that need to be mitigated, hence the need for at least some approval process to ensure quality and accuracy.
Each of the following questions must be asked and answers balanced to ensure an optimal selling environment. Are there too many approvals in the process? Too few? What about data? Should addresses be validated up front, or only at order time? Should customer credit be checked? If yes, should it be early or late in the process?
F
FAST
A
ACCURATE
C
CLEAN
T
TRANSACTABLE
When Is Packaged CPQ Needed?
Below is a list of compelling areas that should be considered when evaluating if a packaged CPQ solution is necessary.CPQ RESOURCES: ATG RELEVANT OFFERINGS
Quote to Cash Assessment
Advisory ServicesCore Quote to Cash processes are the key to enabling and accelerating revenue growth, allowing rapid introduction of new products and services, creating dynamic marketing strategies and efficiently managing acquisitions - all of which accumulates into the necessary ability to remain competitive in today’s increasingly dynamic markets. Agility in the Q2C environment allows enterprise clients to be responsive to the ever changing needs of the marketplace.
Find out how ATG can help.
Cloud CPQ Implementation
Implementation ServicesWe help CIOs balance technology investments with supporting people and process initiatives to ensure successful implementations. Our deep domain experience with cloud application implementations span the entire ATG Monetization Ecosystem®.
At the heart of the ATG Monetization Ecosystem are CRM, CPQ, and Billing. ATG has developed special accelerators to streamline the implementation while stepping through up to 75 different processes to ensure no stone is left unturned for a smooth and timely implementation.
Salesforce CPQ Health Check
Implementation ServicesATG’s Salesforce Quote to Cash Expert Services provides Salesforce CPQ Health Checks to test the FACT (Fast, Accurate, Clean, Transactable) capabilities of your implementation. In the Health Check, ATG will evaluate the performance, usability, and agility of your current Salesforce CPQ implementation.
Our goal is to help you find a path forward to optimize your use of the Salesforce CPQ product. We will show you how we can make your process more efficient and improve user experience.
Production Success
Application SupportEnsure full adoption of your Quote to Cash implementation by strategically combining the skills and workforce of specially-trained analysts with seasoned implementation experts from ATG. ATG’s Production Success team helps our clients take the reins in post-implementation from the implementation team by leveraging the best practices learned over 20 years of CPQ and Billing implementations.
ATG’s unique Production Success approach enables cost effective adoption without losing access to the knowledge base from the original implementation team.
Key Benefits of CPQ
Guided Selling
Feature: Guided selling helps sales representatives.
Benefit: Sell more deals at a faster pace. These gains are achievable even with junior or inexperienced salespeople, and they will quickly become more effective.
Bigger Deals
Feature: CPQ typically allows bundles to be quoted and it has up-sell and cross-sell capabilities.
Benefit: Sell bigger deals by presenting targeted offers to customers during the selling process.
Sales Productivity
Feature: All quotes, their users, and the approvers are using the same tool, eliminating the need to search for status updates.
Benefit: Salespeople have more time to sell.
Efficient Risk Management
Feature: Approval steps for key access to design, inventory, price discount, credit worthiness, and legal review.
Benefit: Risk is mitigated by the ability to enforce company policy.
IN OUR OWN WORDS
For a large complex customer with multiple business units and sales processes there can be a conflict between implementing a solution to meet tactical needs of the individual units and building a plan to achieve the enterprise benefits of an integrated CPQ experience. It is important to establish the long-term goals and gain agreement across the enterprise for these goals. Once this plan is defined, the steps to that end goal can be defined to achieve tactical benefits along the way while maintaining the path to the desired end state."
KEVIN YORK
Executive Director
at ATG Cognizant
Key Requirements for CPQ Tools
Product Catalog
Ability to interact with typical product catalog environments:
- Customer-Facing Selling catalog
- Billing & Rating catalog
- Provisioning & Fulfillment catalog
Pricing Types
Ability to support pricing for usage, recurring, percent of the total, and non-recurring charges for a single product
Bundling
Ability to support bundling of multiple products and services into a standardized offering
Assets & Inventory
Ability to quote off of existing assets, subscriptions, or entitlements. This includes rules that include past purchases or client loyalty programs
Omni-Channel Selling
Ability to operate efficiently in an omni-channel selling model with multiple quote entry points:
- Salesforce CRM
- Call Center
- eCommerce
- Partners
- API
Exceptions Process
Ability to manage exceptions process efficiently
Needs fine-grained level of precision for conditional branching, full visibility to quote regardless of stage, and intelligent routing and queuing
Discount Types
Ability to support discounts at each level of charge:
- Unit Based
- Monetary
- Percentage
- Void
- Targeted Pricing
Pricing Environments
Ability to work effectively in a list, standard, special, customer, partner, and customer-specific pricing environments
Channel Selling
Ability to provide specific services, selling pricing, and quote views for different types of partners:
- Distributors
- Resellers
- Wholesalers
Quote Quality
Ability to present professional, easy-to-digest quotes and proposals. This quote must have some dynamic capabilities to be able only to show information needed
Customer Hierarchy
Ability to quote to multiple entities, subsidiaries, or locations and maintain flexible renewals functionality.
Customer Lifecycle
Ability to support the lifecycle of the customer throughout their tenure with the company:
- New
- Add
- Renew
- Up-Sell
- Cross-Sell
Marketing
Ability to market and promote new products and services to both users and end customers while quoting. This often promotes the strategic selling and direction of the overall business.
Downstream Integration
Ability for downstream integration with ordering, contracting, and fulfillment applications. This is while maintaining data integrity for the account, product, and pricing masters
The Will of the Business
Effective implementation of a CPQ tool provides a company with the ability to fine-tune their selling environment, speeding up (more risk) or slowing down (less risk), adding complexity (more product options or bundles) or reducing complexity (all you can eat pricing). It can be useful to think of this environment as a combination of gauges on a dashboard that reflect the balance of speed, quality, and risk. It is important to pay attention to people, process, and technology when attempting to obtain optimal transformation.
CPQ RESOURCES - CASE STUDIES
Stanley Black & Decker: Overcoming Complex Quoting & SAP Integration Challenges with Salesforce CPQ
Salesforce CPQ Implementation & Integrations Move Tech Company to Value-Based Selling Model
Salesforce CPQ Implementation Gives Manufacturer Better Visibility to Selling Channels, Performance
People, Process & Technology of CPQ
People
CPQ is the Thing in the Middle, meaning it comes between opportunity and order, and in typical larger B2B enterprises, you can’t get from here to there without it.
Both inside sales and field sales, as the direct conduits to the potential customer, use CPQ extensively. However, the customer service, product, and operations groups are all closely involved with CPQ, while the finance group and legal are key points on the journey from prospect to a sale. In many organizations, the executive team gets involved in large or potentially risky deals.
There is always a team that is administering the CPQ technology. It is important that this team has a say in the project to be able to scale any new processes the rest of the business may need to begin using.
Sales
Product
FINANCE
LEGAL
OPERATIONS
I.T.
Customer Service
Process
The process of quoting is very important and affects how a business will sell, renew, amend, approve, and send information downstream. However, using a complicated methodology is dangerous, requiring custom technology and leading to frustrated users.
Streamlining these processes and simplifying things like pricing, product selection, and approvals will enable the FACT Framework in a company.
 ATG maintains a set of 100 key business processes to support the management of customers and revenue for businesses. Thirty-nine of these processes originate or are impacted by the CPQ function. Below are the key processes that are touched in CPQ, categorized by the organizational unit that owns the process:
Opportunity Management
Prioritizing, tracking, and managing of sales opportunities.
Quote - Product Configuration
Configuration of features and attributes of products and services prior to a sale. Typical in a custom solution environment.
Quote - Product / Service Pricing
Configuration of product and service prices available through quoting tool, other than purchasing cart.
Quote - Product / Service Discount
Configuration of product and service discounts relating to certain criteria (e.g. volume discounts, geography, trying to win the deal, etc.).
Cross-Sell Processing - Initial Order
Selling a customer an additional product or service from what they had originally requested at the time of ordering. This process is separate from Cross-Sell Processing - Ongoing.
Up-Sell Processing - Initial Order
Selling customers a better product or service than they originally expressed interest in, at the time of order.
Order Entry - Call Center (Inbound or Outbound)
Creating a new service for a customer originated by internal users such as an inside sales organization. Or a customer support group wants to create new orders for an existing customer. Includes capturing the necessary information to provision and bill for the service effectively.
Order Entry - Call Center (Inbound or Outbound)
Creating a new service for a customer originated by internal users such as an inside sales organization. Or a customer support group wants to create new orders for an existing customer. Includes capturing the necessary information to provision and bill for the service effectively.
Order Entry - E-Commerce
Creating a new service for a customer originated by internal users such Customer Support or Partners, as a culmination of the opportunity, quote, contract, and order lifecycle.
Order Entry - Partners
Creating a new service for a customer that is originated via a Partner Channel, including capturing the necessary information to provision and bill for the service effectively.
New Product Introduction Process
Introduction of a new product or service to the Product Catalog and supporting quoting, ordering, contracting, provisioning, ticketing, invoicing, payment, usage, and revenue recognition systems. Includes definition of product attributes, pricing rules(usage, recurring, non-recurring), discounts rules, product/service lifecycle, revenue recognition, reporting attributes, and bundling concepts.
New Product Introduction Process - Mobile
Configure attributes and introduce new products and services, with specific focus on making the product available on mobile devices.
New Pricing Introduction - New Construct
This process is for creation of a new pricing construct for an existing product or service. For example, creation of a monthly subscription where previously there had only been annual.
New Pricing Introduction - Existing Construct
This process is for creation of a new pricing rate for an existing construct. For example, creation of a $24.95/mo. plan for a geography that previously had been at $27.95/mo.
Bundled Product Introduction Process
Configuring and introduction of a bundled product or service to the product catalog and supporting systems. Includes definition of product/bundle attributes, pricing rules (usage, recurring, non-recurring), discounts rules, product/service lifecycle, revenue recognition, and reporting attributes.
Promotion & Discount Introduction
The configuration of standard, pre-defined promotions and discounts of products or services.
Trial Processing
Configuration and management of trial products that do not bill at all during an agreed-upon time frame, or under a certain set of use restrictions. Includes processes for provisioning and reporting.
Entitlement Processing
Management of active products and services within a customer account.
Credit Card Processing
Methods to receive credit card payments including authorization, payment gateway, processing, interchange, and credit card success/failures.
Payment Processing
The steps taken to process different payment methods from customers.
Invoice Finishing & Delivery
Typically, billing engines produce raw invoice or statement data. Often, external applications are used to package this data for presentation on a paper invoice, electronic distribution, or alternate media. Most billing engines have rudimentary invoice presentation capability.
Dunning Processing
The process a business goes through to initiate collection of a past due payment from a customer. Includes reporting on aged balances and monitoring revenue leakage associated with past due balances.
SOX/Regulatory Compliance
The ability to provide proof of internal controls to prevent fraud and material misstatements.
System Auditability
Provides assurance that source system data is accurate, and a paper trail exists from a transaction to financial statements.
Quote - Product / Service Approval
Configuration of required approvals for products, services, discounts, and pricing configurations prior to the sale.
Pro-active Customer Notification - Operations Focus (CC Expiry, Notification of Payment Received)
A proactive approach to notify customers of pertinent payment information, particularly keeping Credit Cards current to limit number and impact of reject processing.
Inventory Management - Physical
The process a company uses to manage the consumption and replenishment of tangible inventory levels.
Professional Services Automation
Tools and processes related to management and deployment of professional services.
Proactive Customer Notification - Marketing Focus (New Lead, Up-Sell/Cross-Sell Existing)
Similar to pro-active notification from a Customer Success perspective, this process is specifically targeted to generating additional revenue from information captured about a customer, account, or user that can be turned into a Lead.
New Customer Onboarding
The process of creating a customer account, properly provisioning products and/or services, and communicating welcoming messages.
Up-Sell Processing - Ongoing
A central method for increasing Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) and is the process of moving a customer to a better or higher version of a product or service throughout their lifetime with your company. This process is separate from Up-Sell Processing - Initial Order.
Cross-Sell Processing - Ongoing
A central method for increasing Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) and is the process of selling additional product(s) or service(s) to a customer during the customers' entire lifetime with your company. This process is separate from Cross-sell Processing - Initial order.
Currency Conversion
The point within a multinational company's sales cycle where currency is converted. This conversion may occur at the transaction or during the commissioning process, and must be carefully monitored to ensure accurate conversion rate and payment amount, and to enable standardized reporting.
Credit Check Management
The process of verifying customer credit history, during new the prospecting process, new customer creation, or during the life of a customer.
Financial Statement Preparation
Production of accurate, auditable, and presentable financial statements in the most efficient manner possible.
Collections/Treatment Processing
For net terms customers, the ability to pro-actively manage a process to collect money from customers who have fallen behind in the periodic billing. These are processes specifically designed to keep customers, that for one reason or another have balances in 30-60, 60-90, etc., day buckets.
Data Stewardship Across Monetization Ecosystem
Process of assigning ownership and sources of truth for data within the organization.
Cross-Training of Monetization Ecosystem Components
Process for training organizational resources
Daily, Periodic, or Ad Hoc Reporting (ETL, Report, Dashboard)
Movement of data between domains to create a single source of truth for reporting and dashboarding. Includes key metrics such as revenue analytics and other KPIs
Technology
As more and more companies look for ways to capitalize on recurring revenue sources and utilize usage data to create new revenue streams, CPQ will continue to grow at an accelerated pace.
CPQ has been around a long time, notably in the communications and I.T. arenas. Today, it permeates most verticals and is delivered via the following means:
- Multi-Tenant Cloud
- Single-Tenant Cloud
- Salesforce.com Native Platform
- On-Premise Software
CPQ Learning Aids
Key CPQ Vendors
ESSENTIALS
Founded: 1999
HQ: San Francisco, CA
Company Type: Public
Website: www.salesforce.com
Delivery Method: Cloud
OVERVIEW
Salesforce CPQ, formerly Steelbrick, is an optional extension for Salesforce Sales Cloud to speed up proposal and quote generation dramatically, allow image-based product selection constrained by your configuration rules, and control discounts and processes. It connects product catalogs, quotes, and orders to the CRM system. Salesforce also has a complementing billing option that extends capabilities to invoicing and revenue management.
PRODUCT & SERVICES:
- Configure Price Quote (CPQ)
- Order Management
- Billing & Collections
- Revenue Recognition Management
TARGET MARKET
Salesforce targets organizations in many industries and of any size.
CUSTOMERS
- Kronos
- Informatica
- Ellie Mae
- RentPath
- Atlassian
ESSENTIALS
Founded: 2014
HQ: San Francisco, CA
Company Type: Public
Website: https://www.salesforce.com/solutions/industries/
Delivery Method: Cloud
OVERVIEW
Salesforce Industries, formerly Vlocity, builds on and extends standard Salesforce objects' functionality. Salesforce Industries applications leverage all the powerful extensibility, workflow, analytics, and collaboration capabilities of the Salesforce platform.
In addition, Salesforce Industries provides unique capabilities for declarative, guided process flows (OmniScript), flexible UIs (FlexCards), interface implementations, and a library of plug-and-play, industry-specific features.
PRODUCT & SERVICES:
- Headless CPQ Cart and Digital Commerce APIs
- Seamless integration to Industries Order Management (OM)
- Modify assets and amend in-flight orders
- Change plans
- Multi-site quoting and ordering
TARGET MARKET
Salesforce Industries CPQ targets medium to large enterprises in the telco, media & energy industries.
CUSTOMERS
- TELUS
- Telestra
- Sky Italia
- T-Mobile
ESSENTIALS
Founded: 2021
HQ: Chicago, IL
Company Type: Privately Held
Website: www.logik.io
Delivery Method: Cloud
OVERVIEW
Logik.io is a next-generation configuration technology company focused on improving the selling capabilities of its customers. They are a B2B technology company focused on improving the selling practices of customers by building a high-performance, enterprise-ready, headless configurator that augments Salesforce CPQ and eCommerce Applications.
PRODUCT & SERVICES:
- Logik for Salesforce CPQ
- Logik for B2B & B2C Commerce
TARGET MARKET
Logik targets large enterprise customers on the Salesforce platform.
ESSENTIALS
Founded: 2009
HQ: London, UK
Company Type: Privately Held
Website: www.cloudsense.com
Delivery Method: Cloud (Salesforce)
OVERVIEW
CloudSense is built on Salesforce and is an end-to-end, omni-channel solution. CloudSense CPQ offers industry-specific functionality for businesses in communications, media, utilities and beyond. CloudSense is designed to transform sales effectiveness for high complexity business to business products to high volume business to consumer services.
PRODUCT & SERVICES:
- E-Commerce
- Configure Price Quote (CPQ)
- Contract Management
- Order Management
- Product Catalog Maintenance
TARGET MARKET
CloudSense targets organizations in the communications, media, government, energy, data center, and logistics industries. Target organizations are generally medium to large enterprises.
CUSTOMERS
- Spotify
- Informa
- Newsday
- Liberty Global
- Proximus
- Compass
ESSENTIALS
Founded: 1972
HQ: Walldorf, Germany
Company Type: Public
Website: www.calliduscloud.com
Delivery Method: Cloud
OVERVIEW
SAP acquired CallidusCloud in 2018, bolstering their impressive lead to cash offerings by providing sales, marketing, learning, and customer experience solutions. The acquisition by SAP will significantly strengthen SAP’s position in the customer relationship management (CRM) and other front office products’ space. SAP CPQ is a cloud-based solution for configuring, pricing, and quoting complex products and services. The product offers solutions for modeling and executing sales commissions and rewards, configuring and setting quotes, sales enablement portals, sales coaching, and managing partner channels.
PRODUCT & SERVICES:
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
- Configure-Price-Quote (CPQ)
- Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM)
- Commission Management
- Revenue Recognition Management
TARGET MARKET
SAP targets organizations in automotive, communications, financial services, high tech, insurance, and life science industries. Target organizations are medium to large enterprises.
CUSTOMERS
- Pivotal
- Lenova
- Shaklee
- Caterpillar
- Allstate
ESSENTIALS
Founded: 1977
HQ: Redwood City, CA
Company Type: Public
Website: www.oracle.com
Delivery Method: Cloud
OVERVIEW
Oracle, a global provider of enterprise cloud computing, provides capabilities in software as a service, platform as a service, infrastructure as a service, and data as a service. Oracle CPQ Cloud helps businesses improve margins and increase sales productivity. Flexible, scalable, and enterprise-ready, Oracle CPQ Cloud enables companies to accurately capture orders for complex products and services and generate quotes within minutes.
PRODUCT & SERVICES:
- Configure Price Quote (CPQ)
- Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM)
- Order Management
- Product Catalog Maintenance
TARGET MARKET
Oracle CPQ targets large enterprises with complex configuration, pricing, and approval needs.
CUSTOMERS
- Concur
- FICO
- INAP
ESSENTIALS
Founded: 1998
HQ: Denver, CO
Company Type: Privately Held
Website: www.vendavo.com
Delivery Method: Cloud
OVERVIEW
Vendavo CPQ offers a cloud-based CPQ solution that combines well with their price optimization and management solution, and is best suited for selling a simple or lightly configured products & services. Their CPQ product also integrates with their PricePoint, Deal Price Guidance, Deal Manager, Business Risk Alerts, and Profit Analyzer modules.
Vendavo CPQ platforms are natively-hosted in the cloud and then integrated into industry-leading customer relationship management (CRM) suites such as Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, and Sugar CRM.
PRODUCT & SERVICES:
- Configure Price Quote (CPQ)
TARGET MARKET
Vendavo CPQ targets organizations in manufacturing, distributing and original equipment manufacturing (OEM). Target organizations are generally small to medium size enterprises.
CUSTOMERS
- TriTech
- FreedomVOICE
- Hidrstal
- Lutronic
- Hartwig
ESSENTIALS
Founded: 1985
HQ: Houston, TX
Company Type: Public
Website: www.pros.com
Delivery Method: Cloud
OVERVIEW
PROS is a cloud software company that provides solutions for companies to price, configure, and sell their products and services to their customers. Cameleon CPQ was acquired by Pros who absorbed the software into Pros Smart CPQ. It offers Dynamic Pricing Science, a patented data science-driven pricing feature, with configuration and quoting capabilities. The offering also includes 2D and 3D visualization during configurations, and it integrates with multiple CRMs or can be a standalone system.
PRODUCT & SERVICES:
- Configure-Price-Quote (CPQ)
- E-Commerce
- Product Catalog Maintenance
- Business Intelligence
- Revenue Recognition Management
TARGET MARKET
PROS targets organizations in the airline, automotive, industrial, B2B services, logistics, chemical, food, and healthcare industries. Target organizations are generally medium to large enterprises.
CUSTOMERS
- Aeromexico
- Qantas
- Cargill
- Land O' Lakes
- Autozone
ESSENTIALS
Founded: 1998
HQ: Stockholm, Sweden
Company Type: Privately Held
Website: www.tacton.com
Delivery Method: Cloud
OVERVIEW
Tacton CPQÂ provides tools for e-commerce, proposals and documentation, sales configuration, design automation, visualization, product configuration, enterprise configuration, and mass customization solutions. Tacton CPQ also offers design automation and 3D visualizations to aid in the guided selling process. An extension for Salesforce CPQ is also available.
PRODUCT & SERVICES:
- Configure-Price-Quote (CPQ)
- E-Commerce
- Product Catalog Maintenance
TARGET MARKET
Tacton targets organizations in manufacturing industries. Organizations are generally medium to large enterprises which focus on manufacturing large complex products.
CUSTOMERS
- CAT
- Siemens
- GE Healthcare
- Swisslog
- ClearStream Environmental
ESSENTIALS
Founded: 2009
HQ: New York, NY
Company Type: Public
Website: www.infor.com
Delivery Method: Cloud
OVERVIEW
Infor builds complete product suites in the cloud and deploys software that puts the user experience first, leverages data science, and integrates easily with a company’s existing systems. Using Infor CPQ, a business and its entire sales network can generate accurate quotes and proposals that take advantage of 2D and 3D images for faster ordering and customer confirmation. Companies can reduce costs by eliminating manual entry for sales order details, bills of materials (BOMs), and routings for all potential product combinations.
PRODUCT & SERVICES:
- Configure-Price-Quote (CPQ)
- Business Intelligence
- Financial Management
TARGET MARKET
Infor targets organizations in many industries and of any size.
CUSTOMERS
- Pilot Flying J
- Siemens
- Meyn
- El Tiempo
- Dematic
ESSENTIALS
Founded: 1983
HQ: Frisco, TX
Company Type: Privately Held
Website: www.fpx.com
Delivery Method: Cloud
OVERVIEW
FPX Enterprise CPQÂ optimizes the experience of buying and selling across sales, partner, and e-commerce channels. FPX delivers enterprise CPQ using a proprietary engine and data modeling combined with a logic-based application. FPX leverages customer data, product catalogs, price books and business attributes from diverse systems of record in a single location, by creating a Master Commercial Definition that is distributed across all buying and selling channels.
PRODUCT & SERVICES:
- Configure-Price-Quote (CPQ)
TARGET MARKET
FPXÂ targets organizations in a variety of industries, including automotive, transportation, CPQ for financial services, medical device manufacturing, and high-tech manufacturing. Target organizations are of many sizes and include Fortune 100 companies.
CUSTOMERS
- Wayne
- Freightliner
- Splunk
- Fujitsu
ESSENTIALS
Founded: 1999
HQ: San Mateo, CA
Company Type: Public
Website: www.modeln.com
Delivery Method: Cloud
OVERVIEW
Model N CPQÂ uses machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques to predictively guide customers and sales representatives to the correct products and prices for the most optimal and personalized solution. Model N provides an omni-channel experience enabling customers to buy through their preferred sales channel.
PRODUCT & SERVICES:
- Configure-Price-Quote (CPQ)
- Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM)
TARGET MARKET
Model NÂ targets large enterprise life sciences and high-tech companies to drive growth and market share.
CUSTOMERS
- Johnson & Johnson
- AstraZaneca
- Seagate Technologies
- Stryker
ESSENTIALS
Founded: 2006
HQ: San Mateo
Company Type: Privately Held
Website: www.conga.com
Delivery Method: Cloud
OVERVIEW
In 2020, Conga and Apttus merged with the combined companies rebranded as Conga.
The heritage Apttus CPQ product provides a broad set of CPQ capabilities suited to most industries that sell across all channels on the Salesforce platform. It integrates with Salesforce Sales Cloud and Salesforce Partner Communities. Companies running Microsoft Dynamics 365 have the option of integrating with Conga CPQ running on Salesforce, although few companies do this today. Self-service digital commerce is built on the same platform as the other channels. A Salesforce1 UI enables use of mobile devices.
PRODUCT & SERVICES:
- CPQ
- Commerce
- Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM)
- Order Management
- Billing & Collections
TARGET MARKET
Conga target organizations in many industries of any size.
CUSTOMERS
- Adobe
- Box
- Thomson Reuters
- CenturyLink
- Sungard AS
Key CPQ AR/VR Vendors
ESSENTIALS
Founded: 2005
HQ: Chicago, IL
Company Type: Privately Held
Website: www.threekit.com
Delivery Method: Cloud
OVERVIEW
Threekit for CPQ streamlines the quoting process by integration with CPQ to provide an amazing 3D visual and configuration experience. Threekit enables product visualization automation, it enables real-time customization so that users can see exactly how the product will look. The use of augmented reality enables the buyer to put the product right in front of them.
PRODUCT & SERVICES:
- Configure Price Quote (CPQ)
- eCommerce
TARGET MARKET
KBMax targets organizations that focus on commerce and would benefit from 3D visualizations of their product.
CUSTOMERS
- Crate & Barrel
- Hewlett-Packard (HP)
- Nikon
- LoveSac
ESSENTIALS
Founded: 2009
HQ: Austin, TX
Company Type: Private
Website: www.kbmax.com
Delivery Method: Cloud
OVERVIEW
KBMax is redefining CPQ & eCommerce for companies globally. Our product configurator is the only one that can handle complex business rules, visualization, real-time pricing, CAD automation & integrations. This end-to-end solution results in an awesome buying experience, a faster sales cycle & a more efficient manufacturing process.
PRODUCT & SERVICES:
- Configure Price Quote (CPQ)
- Product Configurator
- 2D Drawing
- 3D Modeling
- Visual Configuration
- Engineer to Order Automation
TARGET MARKET
KBMax targets organizations primarily in the BioTech, Industrial Machinery, eCommerce and Oil & Gas industries that are generally medium to large enterprises.
CUSTOMERS
- GE Healthcare
- Tuff Shed
- Caterpillar
- Merck
- Everbrite
- Spacesaver
- Teledyne Marine
ESSENTIALS
Founded: 2019
HQ: Austin, TX
Company Type: Privately Held
Website: www.renderdraw.us
Delivery Method: Cloud
OVERVIEW
RenderDraw allows for customizable, real-time, 3D configuration within any CPQ. Customers can use RenderDraw for visual configuration, self-service, and guided selling of their products. This makes the product catalogs become interactive and integrate directly with any Salesforce application. Engage users, reducing errors and enhance the customer experience using RenderDraw.
PRODUCT & SERVICES:
- Configure Price Quote (CPQ)
- eCommerce
TARGET MARKET
RenderDraw targets customers that would benefit from 3D visualizations of their product.
