When it comes to dealing with complicated and lengthy quotes, what better way than using a Configure price quote software. The software tool is designed to handle the complex quoting process and helps to improve sales productivity. A feature-rich CPQ tool will ensure a faster sales cycle, minimize errors and save hours of work. Ensure that your quoting software has the following ‘out-of-the-box’ capabilities to maximize your ROI.

Integration

Ability to seamlessly integrate with other software applications is an important feature that you must consider when choosing a CPQ software. You don’t want your sales team to use different systems throughout the sales cycle. The integration will enable you to centralize information into one system, thereby making it easier to access and share key data. So ensure that your CPQ tool has the capability to integrate with a wide range of software systems including CRM, ERP E-commerce, etc.

Customization

The customization feature available in CPQ tools can be your company’s greatest strength. Large customers often have complex quoting requirements. Your CPQ software for small business should allow to configure and customize the product as per your requirements. You should also provide them different options to configure a product on the store itself. All in all, to meet each and every customer’s quoting needs, it is imperative that the software tool has a robust customization feature.

Guided Selling Feature

Configuring a complex product is never easy unless you have excellent knowledge about a product catalog. There is a high probability that you will end up including incompatible components while configuring a complex product. Incompatible components in the quote can lead to serious configuration issues.

To avoid incompatible components from being selected, it is important that the software has a ‘Guided selling’ feature. This feature makes it easy to fulfill some of the most complex quoting requirements. The feature asks a series of questions to understand the exact customer requirements and accordingly suggests a product that best suits their needs. The feature essentially guides you in creating a product with the right configuration.

Guided selling feature ensures that the components of the product configuration are compatible. You can view only those components that work together or are compatible with each other.

Automated Pricing

Accuracy is the first casualty when using manual methods for creating complex quotes. With too many variables involved in quoting complex configuration, it often results in pricing errors. With CPQ, customers are assured of receiving quotes with complete accuracy. Automated pricing function applies pricing rules automatically and other offers (such as discounts) tailored according to each client.

Approval Workflow

There are times when a quote sent to your customer does not meet the required criteria. For instance, your sales rep may unknowingly apply incorrect margin while quoting a product. Quoting errors related to margin can lead to loss of business revenue. To prevent such serious errors, the Best CPQ software you choose will have approval workflow engine, which ensures that margin criteria is met before it is sent to the customer. The CPQ tool you choose should give you the flexibility to setup parallel or serial stages in the approval process.

Author's Bio: 

Arnaldo Emerson
Source: http://www.varstreetinc.com/ VARStreet Inc 67 South Bedford Street, Burlington