Why You Might Need a Third-Party CPQ Integration

[KBMax]

Configure, price, quote (CPQ) software enables companies to provide quotes faster for products that are configurable. Traditionally, CPQs were primarily a front-end solution that helped customers place an order and get a quote. Modern solutions, though, integrate with other technologies and SaaS that your business uses, driving the entire engineer-to-order process.

CPQ integration enables seamless data exchange between ERP, CRM, CAD, and other systems to ensure speed and accuracy. It helps you centralize data from all your systems and provides access to all the data you need to make bold data-driven decisions. No more data silos or manually recreating data—the integration takes care of it.

Read on to find out everything you need to know about CPQ integration:

What is CPQ?

CPQ (configure, price, quote) is software that streamlines the process of configuring a product to match the customer’s needs, pricing it, and generating a quote.

It eliminates the need to spend time manually assessing configurations, calculating costs, and preparing quotes. Your sales team could use this time for more productive tasks, given that sales teams, on average, spend only about 34% of their time selling.

End customers can leverage CPQ to configure products and get quotes without the involvement of a sales rep. But, it’s also a valuable tool for sales reps. Sales reps can use CPQ to get automated up-sell and cross-sell recommendations and increase the average order value. In fact, companies that use CPQ increase their average deal size by 105%.

Use CPQ Integration to Have Your Systems Work in Tandem

A CPQ integration can help address challenges beyond your sales department and makes the entire engineer-to-order process frictionless.

For instance, when you integrate CPQ with your ERP, it will pull information on things like inventory, customer history, and bills of material in real-time as the customer configures the product. If a part required for a product is out-of-stock, the CPQ will flag this on the front end.

You can integrate modern CPQs with several types of software, including ERP, CRM, and CAD. Each of these will feed appropriate data to the CPQ or pull data from it once integrated, offering your customers an enriching experience and helping you streamline processes.

Choose a Robust CPQ Integration (CPQ for SAP Example)

Integrating CPQ can massively augment the performance of your existing systems, increasing ROI.

For instance, if you want a CPQ for SAP, you have the option of paying for SAP CPQ or integrating a third-party CPQ (which can be done with just a few clicks). SAP CPQ helps customers configure products, generate prices, and streamline quote creation, but it lacks advanced functionality.

SAP CPQ fully integrates with all SAP solutions and third-party CRM platforms. At first, it looks like an obvious choice if you use SAP. However, SAP’s core competency is ERP. They build resource management systems. If you choose SAP CPQ, you will miss out on the features below.

• 3D visual configuration, AR, and VR that gives clients an immersive buying experience.

• An out-of-the-box front-end solution that allows customers to configure products themselves.

• The ability to auto-generate CAD drawings and BOMs based on a product configuration.

• The ability to create advanced product rules that ensure ease of configuration for customers and profitability for manufacturers.

• An easy-to-use solution that can be maintained in-house with a no-code programing language.

You can find these features relatively easily when you use a third-party integration. In the next section, we explore them in more detail.

What You Should Look for in a Third-Party Configure Price Quote CPQ Integration

A robust CPQ can help manufacturers utilize the rest of their tech stack more efficiently. Selecting the right CPQ is also important to deliver great customer experiences. Your CPQ integration will be able to follow through on your expectations only when it has the proper feature set.

So, what features should you look for when selecting a CPQ integration?

3D Visual Configuration

Giving your customers a visual rendering is key to ensuring they’re configuring products to match their needs. When they can’t visualize a product, there’s guesswork involved, which can often spell bad news down the road.

A CPQ that offers 3D visual configuration will let your customers view the product in real-time as they configure it. The best CPQ solutions also offer immersive visuals through augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR).

Embed CPQ into Your E-commerce Website

It makes sense to give your buyers what they want as quickly and efficiently as possible. 94% of B2B buyers want to research products online before they make a decision. And 71% of them want to research and purchase on their own, without interacting with a sales rep.

You meet these expectations by embedding a CPQ into your e-commerce website. When a customer visits your website, they’ll be able to use the CPQ integration to visualize configurations and understand their viability by themselves.

No-Code Rules Engine

A rules engine ensures that the product configuration a customer selects is optimized for customer satisfaction and profit maximization (win-win). Best-in-class CPQ solutions allow you to set these rules without a line of code. You can use a drag-and-drop interface to create rules without a developer’s help. Maintaining rules in-house keeps you agile–you can launch and experiment with new products and options without dealing with third parties.

Auto-Generated CAD Drawings

Design automation connects your buyer to the shop floor. A modern CPQ solution will capture the configuration from the buyer and automatically generate technical documentation, including CAD drawings, CNC cut sheets, and product renderings. Automating designs can empower you to deliver the product faster, improve lead times, and minimize room for human error.

Benefits of CPQ integration

Once you’ve implemented a state-of-the-art CPQ integration, you’ll realize several benefits such as:

Error-free manufacturing: Miscommunication is a real possibility when a buyer verbally explains their requirements to a sales rep. However, there’s little room for error when buyers can visualize a product in 3D and CPQ auto-generates CAD drawings and other technical documentation.

Easy access to client data: CPQ data is stored centrally and accessible by all departments that need it. The quote typically has information that all departments, from finance to legal, require. Instead of asking for information, they can find everything they need in one place.

Cost savings: CPQ saves money by automating and streamlining processes, minimizing human error, and reducing acquisition costs through e-commerce.

Better buying experience: Your customers should have the ability to visualize their preferred configuration so they can get an idea of what exactly they’ll get. By offering immersive visuals, you’ll allow them to communicate their desired configuration more effectively and reduce refunds and chargebacks from unhappy customers.

Final Thoughts: Why You Need Third-Party CPQ Integration

While there are multiple CPQ solutions out there, you should select one that offers best-in-class features and integrates with all major software you use.

Ideally, you should avoid using built-in CPQ integrations because they typically have limited functionality. A third-party integration can give your customers a lot more power. They can also make your internal processes considerably more efficient.