Configure, price, quote (CPQ) systems can transform your manufacturing workflow. They automate many of the most labor-intensive engineer-to-order tasks, boosting both process efficiency (the effort required to achieve a business objective) and production efficiency (the maximum quantity of units you can produce without impacting quality.)
This article breaks down CPQ systems, how they work, and how they can help you increase efficiency and profitability across your modern manufacturing business.
What is a Configure Price Quote CPQ System?
CPQ systems are software solutions that help manufacturers quickly and easily price and generate quotes for any given product configuration. They automate the process so your sales reps can provide buyers with a price in real-time—no need to keep customers waiting and risk a competitor swooping in.
Modern CPQ vendors, however, have added feature sets that make their software far more powerful than traditional CPQ tools. Solutions like KBMax CPQ take configuration, pricing, and quoting to a whole new level, as explained below:
Visual Configuration
Selecting a product configuration is the first step in your buyer’s journey. This is your opportunity to differentiate yourself and make an excellent first impression. A CPQ system with a visual product configurator lets customers interact with 3D renderings of your products, which helps streamline product selection and improve customer experience.
Visual configuration distinguishes you from competitors that rely on lengthy product descriptions over immersive visuals. Salespeople can spend less time explaining products to existing customers and more time seeking out new business. And it reduces purchase anxiety (customers gain a complete understanding of your products and how they operate) which increases the deal size and win rate.
Dynamic Pricing
The CPQ pricing process is automated, thus eliminating the risk of human error. Sales reps can accurately price configurations in real-time, making it easy for buyers to decide whether they’re interested in your product based on their budget.
Today’s buyers–used to smooth B2C experiences–don’t want to wait days for a price. The best CPQs provide instant feedback and gratification. Not only this, but they can adjust prices in line with a range of internal and external factors–from fluctuating costs to competitors’ promotions. Sales reps don’t have to waste time on manual calculations that can lead to embarrassing, costly mistakes.
Instant Quotes
Sales reps spend only about a third of their time selling. A lot of their time goes into getting price approvals and creating quotes. CPQs automate quote generation, speeding up the sales cycle, boosting productivity, and getting more deals done in less time.
How CPQ Systems Drive Process and Production Efficiency
CPQs automate multiple processes in your workflow, improving customer experience while accelerating sales, engineering, and production efficiency.
Below are the CPQ capabilities that have the most significant impact.
1. Capturing Visual Configuration Data from Sales Reps and Self-Serve Buyers
Modern CPQ systems offer a built-in visual configurator that enables sales reps or buyers to generate 3D renderings of potential product configurations. Users can drag and drop to change colors, dimensions, parts, materials, and features–anything’s possible.
Visual configurators digitally capture configuration requirements and pricing information, relaying it automatically to relevant departments. They provide an immersive experience and boost efficiency by funneling accurate data to the right people at the right time.
2. Automating Critical Engineer-to-Order Processes
Once buyers select and confirm their configuration, the CPQ auto-generates all the documentation required for production, streamlining your internal processes.
CPQ generates documentation like CAD drawings, CNC cut sheets, and BOMs, removing engineering bottlenecks and speeding up lead times. It also updates relevant information in your other core back-end systems like your CRM and ERP, keeping teams and projects in sync.
3. Eliminating Errors With No-Code
To configure and price products effectively, CPQ needs “rules”– little chunks of code that determine how users can assemble products and how different options affect costs. These rules are built using a rules engine, which is essentially the CPQ’s brain.
The problem is that building rules in CPQ isn’t always easy. It can be incredibly complicated, requiring a high degree of coding skill. The best modern CPQs, however, have no-code rules engines. They have a drag-and-drop interface enabling general business users to create and maintain rules for the most complex products.
The easier it is to maintain rules, the fewer errors, rework, and defective manufacturing you experience, which boosts efficiency organization-wide.
4. Integrating With Your Ecommerce Website
Modern CPQs can integrate with your ecommerce website, giving customers access to your visual configurator. This integration lets buyers configure products independently and–depending on your requirements–place an immediate order.
But what if the buyer makes a mistake? Or selects an unviable design? Don’t worry–the rules engine ensures this won’t happen. It only permits buyers to move forward with configurations it determines are viable.
Integrating CPQ into your website makes showing configurations to buyers or buying committees much easier. You can reach a global audience for whom arranging an in-person product demo would take a lot of work.
As a result, you’ll make the selling process more efficient, enabling sales reps to focus on strategic parts of the process. You can sell faster with self-serve and give buyers more independence, which is essential in a world where virtually 100% of buyers want to self-manage their buying experience.
5. Living In The Cloud
Manufacturers weighing up their configure price quote CPQ options have a choice: implement an on-prem (on-premise) or cloud-based solution. On-premise software is stored on your in-house server, giving you total control over management and data security, which, for some companies, is non-negotiable.
For most companies, however, a cloud-based solution (one that you effectively “rent” from a vendor and access in your browser) is a wiser choice. Here’s why:
Become Fully Efficient and Future-Ready With CPQ
When you implement a CPQ system, you establish yourself as a digital leader in your industry that cares about buyers and wants to provide a best-in-class customer experience. Buyers appreciate the option to self-serve and the speed and accuracy with which your business operates.
But configure price cpq doesn’t just transform the front end of your sales process. Today’s leading CPQs automate the entire end-to-end engineer-to-order process from sales through engineering and production. Thus you can serve more customers faster with lower costs to your business.