Manufacturing CPQ software allows companies to automate product configuration, pricing, and quoting processes. It also helps them capture customer data to improve the buying experience and personalize sales strategies.
The solution may feature space for different rule paths, separation of sales and manufacturing bills of materials (BOMs), visual renderings, and more.
Product Configuration
Product configuration is one of the core functions of CPQ software. It offers customers and sales reps a visual, guided selection of features, parts, or options that can be added to the base product to create a customized solution. This streamlined process reduces back-and-forth between the customer and the sales team, leading to faster, more accurate quotes that are less prone to manual errors.
In addition, CPQ allows manufacturers to set up a rules-based configuration model that simplifies complex products and provides insights into optional or recommended features. This allows sales teams to offer competitive discounts and pricing structures without sacrificing margins. CPQ can also be integrated with contract management and eSignature, providing a seamless customer experience from quote to order.
CPQ is a vital tool for high-tech manufacturing, where product complexity is often rising. This is because the configurable software can provide a range of value-add services for the business, including a faster and more reliable product configuration process, a standardized pricing structure, and more efficient sales and training processes. This is achieved through a centralized, collaborative design workflow, advanced approval management, and a more intelligent solver technology that can handle overlapping product rules, complex BOMs, and nested bundles with multiple attribution layers. Moreover, it can offer advanced, customized guided selling experiences, 3D visualization, and smarter price optimization.
Pricing
While every CPQ vendor claims to have the best software on the market, it’s essential to filter out the marketing talk and focus on the features that will help your manufacturing business. The right technology stack will allow your sales team to create accurate quotes and sell more products.
One of the most essential features for manufacturers is a product configurator that supports complex and intricate constructions. A CPQ solution with advanced configurator capabilities will be able to leverage attributes, rules, restrictions, dynamic pricing, and visual renderings in support of custom configurations. This will make it easy for sales teams to ensure that any order placed with them can be built within the constraints of inventory and physics.
Other essential CPQ software for manufacturing features include an advanced quoting engine and a rules-based pricing engine. With these tools, sales reps can avoid misquoting prices that eat into margins using real-time calculations based on product pricing rules. This will improve quoting accuracy and speed up the sales process.
Finally, a CPQ solution that includes 2D and 3D visualizations will allow your sales teams to show customers what their custom products will look like before they finalize the purchase. This will give the customer a more satisfying experience and increase their confidence in your company. This, in turn, will boost sales and lead to more satisfied repeat customers.
Order Management
CPQ software provides sales teams with a more streamlined ordering process that ensures quotes consider manufacturing limitations. This helps eliminate errors and delays that can impact the customer experience. It lets your team keep pace with buyers’ increasing speed, efficiency, and quality expectations.
For instance, if you’re selling customized technology to a particular customer, you must ensure that whatever is built can be constructed within the boundaries of inventory and physics. CPQ features like space for overlapping product rules, reduced SKU proliferation, separate sales and manufacturing bills of materials, visual renderings, flexible guided selling interfaces, and more are essential for your success in this field.
Finally, a good CPQ solution for manufacturing will auto-generate sales drawings, CAD files, BOMs, and other documents to support your operations once the order is won. This reduces manual processing, saving you and your team valuable time.
With a CPQ system automatically managing product configuration and pricing details, you can free up your team to focus on what matters most: growing your business with qualified leads and customers happy to work with you. Whether you’re selling robots, material processing equipment, or some other unique manufacturing specialty, the right CPQ software can give your team a significant competitive advantage with a superior customer buying journey that drives up win rates and satisfaction.
Integrations
With so much riding on the quoting process, manufacturers can’t afford to let delays happen. Each day a quote isn’t produced is another day your customers could turn to the competition. CPQ software accelerates the sales cycle by automating the quoting and ordering processes. It also ensures the quotes are accurate and compliant, which reduces risk and boosts win rates.
Advanced CPQ solutions provide an enhanced customer experience that supports the modern buyer’s speed, efficiency, and quality expectations. By connecting siloed internal systems for a unified sales process, CPQ allows manufacturers to eliminate manual errors and simplify product configurations with visually guided selling and 3D visualization capabilities.
Manufacturers must keep a pulse on their business, but relying on spreadsheets isn’t a sustainable way to manage the sales and quoting process. CPQ solutions with AI can improve quote-to-order (Q2O) processes by streamlining the configuration, pricing, and quotation processes while reducing error rates. This leads to a faster and smoother Q2O cycle that boosts the bottom line.
CPQ with AI helps manufacturers increase their revenue and profitability by reducing cross-selling, upselling, and the sales cycle length. Moreover, the solution offers improved customer engagement by providing real-time inventory reflection, wholesaling bundles, and dynamic rules to provide discounts, free add-ons, or complimentary products when specific criteria are met.
