On our previous blog post, where we discussed salesforce CPQ and CPQ Alternatives, we touched on some functionality that the tool offers.

 

Salesforce makes a strong push to sell one of the newest products added to its product suite. What was ‘Steelbrick’ and ‘Steelbrick Billing’ and now ‘Salesforce CPQ’, this product incorporates both the CPQ product and the billing product, granting access to billing through a higher-level license. (The billing function of this tool is also spectacular, but for this post, we want to focus specifically on the quoting portion)This product is an incredibly powerful tool, and if you’ve already installed and configured it, you also have a fairly good understanding that what makes it powerful.

 

The ability to customize the product for complex product and pricing rules with the use of minimum or no code is really what helps the product shine.

 

From our conversations with individuals that are both users or prospects of salesforce CPQ, we’ve heard a lot of confusion on what exactly it does and how it could benefit their company.

 

CPQ has often been mistaken as a quoting tool. CPQ is far more than a tool for generating quotes and documents. Some questions to ask yourself before embarking on the CPQ journey are:

 

-Do you sell products that are dependent on the purchase of another product? -Do you have complex discounting rules? -Do you have tiered-, volume-, and usage-based pricing structures?

 

If your answer is yes to one or more of these questions, it is worth looking at the product to see if it meets your needs. Remember, that there is more than one way to approach the problem. Taking a look at the tool’s pricetag vs all of the functionality you will actually be using is where your decision should be made.

 

Remember – The output – the actual quote document at the end of the generation is not the meat of this application. Think of CPQ doing all of the heavy lifting of executing on your pre-defined business rules around pricing and volume. While CPQ does have its own quote configurator tool, you can also choose to leverage a third party tool while still using CPQ.

 

Still confused or looking for more information? Contact us!