As businesses adapt to new challenges, more are adopting Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) solutions. These tools help sales teams create accurate and detailed quotes for customers efficiently.
There's a wide range of CPQ solutions available from various software providers. For those using Salesforce, you might already be familiar with its CPQ solution, which integrates well with the platform to improve sales processes.
CPQ systems are like any other system. The better the data they process, the better you will benefit from your system. Your CPQ system will work best with accurate and reliable product data. CPQ needs accurate product information to work optimally.
However, product-related data is often stored in a company's Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. To feed their CPQ application with all relevant data, companies need to get this information from the ERP system. And data integration is the key here.
WHAT IS CPQ AND HOW DO YOU BENEFIT?
Selling remains a critical function across most organisations, with industries facing intense competition and sales teams operating under significant pressure. Sales professionals worldwide are tasked with capitalising on every possible opportunity, requiring them to identify and act upon chances for cross-selling and upselling quickly.
To effectively meet customer demands, sales teams need immediate access to comprehensive product and pricing information. Armed with this knowledge, they are positioned to swiftly determine the most competitive pricing, ensuring a prompt and accurate response to customer inquiries.
This is why many companies support their sales reps with "guided selling" tools, also known as CPQ. A CPQ software (Configure, Price, Quote) is a sales tool for companies to quickly and accurately generate quotes for orders. CPQ applications are also known as quote-to-cash (QTC) solutions because they cover the entire quote-to-cash process.
By implementing Salesforce CPQ, sales cycles and processes become more effective and competitive. It improves the sales quoting process and allows organisations to price their product and services accurately. As a result, they increase the win rate and deal size.
These CPQ applications need customer, product and pricing information. Therefore, they work in tandem with other data sources, such as CRM and ERP solutions.
SALESFORCE CPQ INTEGRATION
Salesforce offers a CPQ solution as a part of their offering. Salesforce CPQ is hosted within the Salesforce Sales Cloud platform. By using Salesforce CPQ, sales teams are given the ability to configure products matching their customers' needs and requirements.
They can then apply pricing and various discounts before sending quotes or proposals to their clients.
This automation considerably improves business processes. The optimization is especially strong with Salesforce CPQ as it is fully integrated with Salesforce CRM. This means that the QTC process can be done from within Salesforce.
What happens if you do not store all product and pricing information in Salesforce?
What if you store it in your ERP solution instead?
You need to get this data from your ERP into Salesforce in order to feed your CPQ application.
It can easily be done with a simple data integration solution such as Rapidi. By getting the product and pricing information from your ERP into CPQ, you will get even larger benefits.
HOW TO INTEGRATE SALESFORCE CPQ WITH YOUR ERP
How should you build their data process flow of product and pricing information between Salesforce and their ERP system?
Most of the time, CPQ - ERP integration is built around the following principles:
- Product master data is most often created and maintained in the ERP system. This is because there is additional data in the ERP system needed to make the correct postings.
- Product price is also typically maintained in the ERP system with the discount structure on items or customers. Sometimes it can be both on items and customers.
- When Salesforce CPQ and your ERP are integrated, products are automatically synchronized between the ERP Salesforce. If you are using Rapidi as your data integration tool, the discount groups in the ERP are converted automatically by the data integration to price books in Salesforce (CRM).
- The basic product and pricing information is sourcing the logic you have configured in Salesforce CPQ. This means that you are guided in Salesforce through selecting the right products. You can optimize your commercial pricing to set up the discount and pricing rules you want to apply.
Your processes might require a different setup, which is also possible with Rapidi.
Salesforce CPQ can easily be integrated with ERP solutions such as Microsoft Dynamics (365 Business Central, Finance, Finance & Operations, Sales, Customer Engagement, NAV, AX, GP). Data integration platforms like Rapidi require no programming.
With Rapidi, this entire data synchronisation process can be set up and automated with best practice integration templates as the starting point. It can also be done in real-time. It is fast, robust, flexible, and secure.
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