Why Integrating CPQ and ERP is a Great Idea- Also, A Few Tips to Nail the Integration

[KBMax]

For any business operation, a few factors take top priority for ensuring success in the overall working- reduced time to sales, reduced errors within the process, and better visibility and process collaboration are a few of them.

These are a few things where you might still be falling short despite putting a CPQ or ERP, or even both systems in place for that matter. Integration of ERP and CPQ can help you to a great extent in that matter.

In this post, we are going to discuss and bring a lot more about CPQ ERP integration into the light for you, and also why this integration can make a huge difference for your business process and teams as a whole.

Bringing the Front and Back Offices Together with CPQ and ERP

If understanding things in a simple manner is your thing, then you can say that CPQ ERP integration brings the front and back offices of a manufacturing process together with perfection and in a unified manner.

While the back-office processes include processes like inventory management, invoicing, fulfillment, and production among others; processes that get managed by your ERP system. On the other hand, the front-end processes include sales management, sales pipelines, and the handling of quotes with the help of a CPQ system.

The processes are pretty independent in their own right, but they still need data from each other to operate at the best of their capabilities. A big instance of this dependency can be understood by a sales team requiring enhanced visibility into the inventory levels and their fulfillment, while the ERP platform needs information like sales, quotes, and inventory management for customer invoices.

This entails a lot of back-and-forth between the front and back-end systems.

In a situation where CPQ ERP integration is not available, organizations have to depend on manual processes to go ahead with their organizational process. While they might get the job done, the errors simply skyrocket through the roof and make everything more time-consuming.

The result is a multitude of blind areas for sales reps who are tasked with the management of the entire customer lifecycle for that matter.

Implementing automation through the integration of ERP and CPQ makes the complete process of data transfer among these tools seamless from both ends, enhancing overall visibility from both sides.

ERP Integration with CPQ- How it Works

To better become aware of how ERP CPQ integration works, it’s ideal to have a look at the quote-to-cash process.

A major part of this entire process resides within the CRM system in the form of leads and opportunities in the CPQ process, but the final few steps like fulfillment and invoices are taken care of in the ERP system. With the integration of CPQ and ERP, a closed opportunity gets logged in the CRM system to be only pushed in the ERP platform for fulfillment and its subsequent invoicing.

Such an integration allows sales reps to understand the status of a certain sale by only looking into the CRM for the required details without logging in multiple platforms for every part of the process.

Tips to Avoid During ERP Integration with CPQ

Other than the many usual benefits that can be provided with CPQ ERP integration, there are a couple of things you should keep in mind to. This can help you better understand and work around your integration for the time to come:

Building the Integration on your Own

While there is no going around the fact that you will have a lot of technical experts in your ranks that work in your operation, understand that ensuring a seamless integration is not as easy as it seems.

For a smoother project management and process, better connection, and growth in the right direction, it’s important to let your CPQ and ERP integration be handled only by integration experts.

Not Being Aware of the Rules Upfront

It’s important that despite automation, you are able to diversify the data beforehand the entire process in terms of the employed systems. Other than that, it’s also essential to understand the data sets and their integration and syncing abilities with, and around each other.

Conclusion

For the perfect use of technology and digital transformation, its’ important to bring in CPQ and ERP together to not just edge ahead of the competition, but also provide an experience to remember for the end users as well as sales reps.