6 Ways Integrating CPQ and SAP Systems Boosts Business Productivity

Integrating your configure, price, quote solution with SAP can streamline your operation and ensure sales quotes are configured quickly and accurately.

Although configure, price, quote (CPQ) software has been around for decades, recent innovations in CPQ capabilities have made this an essential tool for simplifying the sales quote process regardless of the CRM you use. When CPQ software works in combination with SAP, it smooths out the sales process by capturing and using the most accurate and up-to-date data for the order.

What Is CPQ?

Configure, price quote (CPQ) describes the software used to help sellers provide quotes for complex and configurable products. It is essentially a sales tool to help companies generate quick and accurate quotes for goods and services that match all pricing rules and stock availability. Standalone CPQ solutions are available, but they are often part the integrated CRM system, such as the Salesforce CPQ & Billing module.

Your CPQ works with your ERP and accounting systems to set up templates that generate quotes by following preprogrammed sets of rules to help automate the process, reduce errors, and provide accurate pricing.

They can be configured to take customizations, optional features, restrictions, quantities, discounts, and information about that customer into account, so your salespeople just have to fill out the transaction info, not remember years of rules and exceptions. The CPQ template also defines the terms and conditions, provides in-depth descriptions of the features, and locks in any assumptions about the sale.

6 Benefits of seamless CPQ-SAP integration

Obviously, the sticking point in any CPQ solution is how difficult it is to get up-to-date information from your ERP into the quote templates. That’s where real-time integration between your CPQ and SAP become crucial. Here are six ways true integration will make your sales team and entire operation more productive.

1. Faster quote generation

Most products in B2B industries are complex and have a lot of options. Selecting one option can eliminate two others, which makes generating quotes a nightmare for sales reps who must remember all the exceptions, customizations, and combinations. That makes the quote hard to assemble quickly.

With CPQ software, all these option sets can be pre-programmed into templates that allow your salespeople to work through the process quickly and provide immediate, accurate quotes for your customers.

Generate quotes of 10,000 lines or more in seconds with automated approval and exception workflows. This not only generates the quote faster but also helps your sales team be more productive.

2. Accelerate the quote-to-order process

Because all the heavy lifting is done on the back-end within the CPQ and SAP software, the products and services your company offers can be configured beforehand, making it possible to calculate the necessary variables for the sale automatically.

It doesn’t matter how complex the configuration, how large the order is, or what order dependencies are involved, a sales representative can provide an interested customer with the exact quote within minutes. The same process could take hours, or sometimes days, before integrated CPQ solutions.

By centralizing and automating pricing within the CPQ software, you also reduce the number of supply chain issues that occur during the sales process. Inventory and supply levels can be monitored carefully and trigger automatic re-ordering when a stock is depleted.

3. Eliminate order errors

A CPQ integrated with SAP can identify and flag errors in the order early during the quote-generation process before the customer even has a chance to see the quote. According to Salesforce, their CPQ system reduces the number of quotes with configuration errors by 35% and the number of quotes with pricing errors by 38%.

A CPQ-SAP integrated system can also provide guard rails to protect the margins of every opportunity with the targeted product, customer, and channel price controls. This system also prevents discounting with rules-driven eligibility and margin-protection features to assure compliance with all company guidelines and regulations.

4. Improve sales team productivity

Sales reps spend just 39% of their time actually selling. Research shows that 19% of their time is spent searching for information and assembling it for a quote, and another 14% on internal communication and collaboration.

Imagine how much more effective your sales team would be if they could reduce time spent putting together quotes and have all the information right in front of them. For example, Paychex, a payroll and HR solutions company, using a CPQ system reduced the ramp-up time for new sales reps by 30%.

CPQ integration allows you to establish intelligent sales processes that help your sales team work smarter and improve sales opportunities, increase cross- and up-selling, and maximize sales opportunities in general. A solid CPQ integration with SAP reduces the length of sales cycles, optimizes pricing, protects margins, and allows your sales team to focus less on administration issues and more on taking care of the customer through superior service.

5. Simplify the approval process

Because approvals can be established in the system, an SAP-integrated CPQ can figure out which orders require what approval and from who, which cuts down on the quote-to-order timeframe. By setting up approval guidelines within the CPQ, you free up sales management from routine approvals and focus on the challenging ones instead. For example, Mitsubishi Electric reduced its approval time by 95% by implementing a CPQ solution with its SAP backend.

6. Improve operational efficiency

Not only does integrating your CPQ system with SAP speed up the quote process, the quote to sale cycle, and the approval process, but it also increases the productivity of your sales and support staff. The efficiencies gained by these enhancements to your sales and support processes also frees up managers to deal only with unique problems encountered in the sales cycle and allows them to focus on managing their teams.

Learn more about enosix’s SAP CPQ Solutions

CPQ software has tremendous benefits when it is fully integrated with your SAP installation and provides an excellent return on investment (ROI).

To learn more about how enosix’s SAP-CPQ integration solutions can revolutionize your sales organization and turn it into a lean, revenue-generation machine, give us a call at (844) 436-6749 or request a demo today.