CPQ Vendor Checklists: What You Need to Know Before You Buy

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Do you know how long it typically takes to get a quotation out the door? How much do quoting errors cost your company?

If your company’s products and/or services involve a lot of options or variations, you probably know the answer to these questions: too long, and a lot! Configure-price-quote (CPQ) technology is one of the options you have at your disposal, but is it the right option for your company?

11 Questions to Help You Decide if You Need a CPQ Solution

Are you are currently experiencing:

  • Difficulty in producing sales quotes that meet customer expectations
  • Difficulty in configuring the exact product specifications cited
  • Excessive field fixes
  • Missed delivery schedules
  • Slow revenue growth or low profitability
  • Long lead times to build and deliver a proposal

Would you like to:

If you checked one or more of these, an advanced configurator could definitely help you reach your goals. But before you buy, here’s what you need to ask a prospective CPQ vendor.

15 Questions to Ask a Prospective CPQ Vendor

  1. Do you support various manufacturing and distribution styles (such as ATO, CTO and ETO)?
  2. Is your solution both a manufacturing and sales fulfillment configurator?
  3. Does it provide guidance for product selection, configuration, cross-selling/upselling and other forms of customer dialogue?
  4. Can your solution be fully integrated with my CRM and ERP systems—as well as with my existing proposal and contract management processes?
  5. Does your solution support a visual configuration model to help validate the selection?
  6. Can your offering address configuration and rules beyond product configuration?
  7. How extensive are your pricing capabilities?
  8. What about reporting and analytics?
  9. Do you offer content management and document generation administration capabilities as part of your solution?
  10. How scalable is your system?
  11. Do you offer multilingual and multicurrency support?
  12. Do you have the capacity to service enterprises across varying geographies?
  13. Does your solution run on mobile devices?
  14. Can I have a choice of deployment either from the cloud or on-premise, or does your solution dictate my deployment?
  15. Is there a way this can be centrally managed across my entire enterprise (all applications, devices, channels, roles and locations)?

When evaluating business solutions and vendors, whether it is CPQ, CRM, ERP or anything else, it’s important to ask the right questions and get all the answers. What’s right for one company may not be right for yours. Do your homework; know your options; and develop an understanding of what you really need to accomplish your goals.

 

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