Everybody is talking about it, we all know it, and we all think about it – 2020 was hard! Unfortunately, 2021 started pretty much the same. Covid-19 is still here, and social distancing is still here.

However, this doesn’t mean we can’t improve and accelerate our business (and even minimize face-to-face contact) with the help of different tools. The tool we are going to talk about here is zipCPQ.

CPQ (which stands for Configure, Price, Quote) software is a powerful tool that helps companies quickly produce accurate and highly configured quotes for their customers. Not only that this tool helps you speed up the sales process, but it also enables you to minimize errors. This is often not a standalone software but rather an extension to CRM and ERP programs.

If you have come to the point where your product offering has grown, you’re most likely to use CPQ software. When your company offers a broad range of products or services, managing product pricing can be (and probably will be) challenging. External factors, such as exclusive deals from your competition, are just another difficulty when defining your own pricing.

 

According to Forbes Magazine, by using a CPQ tool in your business, you could: 

  • Improve Accuracy of Quotes by more than 75%
  • Cut down Quotation Time by orders of magnitude
  • Help increase Sales Productivity by up to 33%
  • Shorten Sales Cycles to half of what it took before
  • Raise Customer Satisfaction dramatically
  • Secure higher Hit Rates by 30%
  • Reduce Risk by 20 – 25%

 

Let’s take a deeper look at the zipCPQ tool. 

As we said, CPQ stands for Configure, Price, and Quote, and it is a Cloud-based application designed to help companies that sell configurable products. Zip, on the other hand, stands for “fast”.

ZipCPQ helps you define every possible configuration, price, discount, and scenario and reduces the time it takes to create an accurate quote from hours to minutes.

Our tool can help make the sales cycle faster, make the pricing data more accurate, and upsell and bundle the products more frequently. The company will also be able to prepare the orders faster, which will save time, and more sales will be made.

CPQ is also a key part of a successful global multi-channel selling strategy. The reason for that is because it grants the company full control over what partners, groups, or channels can access certain pricing or product information. With role-based access, discount locks, and portals, you can manage the revenue share, exclusive discounts, or pricing and shipping fees.

ZipCPQ is a safety net that will ensure that the sales team will only sell by the latest approved pricing and discounting rules and that approvals (when they are necessary) can be given quickly without holding up any deals. Also, let’s not forget the most important benefit of this tool: the proven increase in revenues and a decrease in costs.

CONFIGURE

To create a successful company, you must be able to deal with the ongoing fluctuations of a rapidly changing business world.

But how to cope with the growing customer need for individuality? An up-to-date product configuration can bring your company a great competitive advantage by making your clients satisfied and your business successful.

The configuration tool allows your customers to list the exact specifications they are looking for in a product, which saves an enormous amount of effort for your sales and engineering departments. When a customer submits an RFQ, they become an immediate lead, asking to be contacted back; this allows your sales team to concentrate on those customers that know what they are looking for.

At the same time, the customer is pleased because the quoted time got cut from weeks to minutes. This is an example of how an online self-service process can free your experts to take care of more critical issues rather than lose time while helping customers choose configuration options.

Also, the outgoing products can be arranged according to particular customer orders. The products can then be analyzed and cross-referenced, preventing material loss and keeping the database free from any unnecessary items. This can bring a terrific advantage to your business – streamlining business operations and making customers happy at the same time.

ZipCPQ configurator comes with built-in indexing for advanced search capabilities within the specific product family and over multiple product families.

JavaScript-based rules provide lightning-fast performance and instant changes in the Configurator. Selection options can be standard pull-downs, pull-downs with images, checkboxes, etc.

The zipCPQ Configurator system architecture makes implementation quick and easy. It can be embedded as an iframe, implemented as a client-based script, or implemented as an eCatalog with full catalog navigation, product family pages, and part number pages.

 

PRICE

The Pricing module enables the backend user to add the base price for each part number. Depending on the pricing complexity, this can be done either by creating pricing rules, adding pricing tables, or combining both approaches.

The pricing module can be connected to enterprise systems and pull the prices from ERP, PIM, etc.

 

QUOTE

Once configured in the zipCPQ Configurator and when the Quote is requested, a configured product with configuration data is sent to the Quote Management System.

In the Quote Management Module, the Sales team can see the quotes generated through the Configurator and track their status.

Discounting rules can be applied to different customer types, such as distributors, OEM customers, one-time customers, etc.

The Quote is shown as an HTML document/template where the Sales Person can add/change the discounts and automatically create the Quote ready to be sent to the customer.

 

What can you expect from zipCPQ?

  • Lower risk
  • Faster sales cycle
  • Improved cross-channel visibility and management
  • Better customer service
  • Business growth/expansion

 

Let’s take a look at some of the functionalities of zipCPQ:

CONFIGURE:

  1. BUILT-IN INDEXING
  2. RULES-BASED CONFIGURATOR:
  • Create a new rule
  • Update existing rules
  • Delete existing rules
  • Get a list of all rules
  • Define variable type
  • Define related options (values)
  • Write a configurator logic
  • Define variables dependencies
  • Get a configurator preview
  • Define Part Number structure

 

PRICE

  1. BASE PRICE FOR EACH PART NUMBER
  • SKU Based Pricing
    • Import PPIF file
    • Import Excel file
  • Pricing based on rules
    • Prices based on selected variables
    • Pricing based on a defined ranges
  • Custom Pricing
    • Combination of the Excel-based Pricing and Pricing rules
  1. CONNECTED TO ENTERPRISE SYSTEMS – ERP, PIM, ETC.

 

QUOTE

  1. REQUEST FOR QUOTE
  2. DEFINE RULES TO SEND A QUOTE AUTOMATICALLY TO THE CUSTOMER
  • Total Quote Price
  • Total Quote Quantity
  • Quote Item Quantity
  • Quote Item Price
  • Quote Item Subtotal Price

 

If you want to learn more about this tool, and want to upgrade your business in 2021, drop us a message, we are happy to help.