Economic Uncertainty? The Value of Investing in CPQ During Times of Crisis

The role of CPQ During Times of Crisis

The past couple of months, we have noticed an increased amount of caution in business decisions. The current economic climate has left companies struggling with unprecedented challenges and uncertainties. Market volatility, reduced customer spending, and the prolonged downturn have created an atmosphere of caution and reluctance among enterprises.

Investing in digital transformation in times like these is often viewed as risky. Companies are forced to cut costs and to be more cautious when spending money and are therefore more hesitant to invest in new technologies. The focus will be on short-term small wins instead of long-term growth. However, in order to make room for long-term growth, companies need to realize that these economic challenges require strategic investments in digital transformation.

Investing in the right digital systems will allow companies to optimize operations, improve sales effectiveness, strengthen customer relationships, and gain competitive advantage. CPQ or Configure Price Quote is one of those digital solutions that can help businesses to drive sustainable growth and to emerge stronger when the economy stabilizes.

How can CPQ help companies in times of crises?

1. Optimizing operations

Manufacturers of complex products face numerous challenges in managing their product offerings, pricing structures, and quoting processes. Investing in CPQ allows them to optimize these critical aspects of their operations, by eliminating errors in a rule-based product configurator and minimizing back-and-forth interactions between sales teams, R&D, and production. This results in improved efficiency and reduced costs.

2. Improving sales effectiveness

In times of economic uncertainty, every sales opportunity counts. CPQ solutions provide sales teams with the tools and intelligence they need to close deals. CPQ guides sales reps, distributors, and end customers through the configuration process, ensuring accurate quotes and reducing the risk of errors. CPQ can also help sales teams to identify cross-selling and upselling opportunities. Investing in CPQ therefore results in increased sales effectiveness.

3. Strengthening customer relationships

During economic downturn, customer loyalty is often more fragile than ever. Building and nurturing strong customer relationships are essential for manufacturers to stay afloat. CPQ software can play a vital role in this: By delivering highly personalized quotes on time using CPQ, manufacturers create a sense of partnership, increasing customer satisfaction, and strengthening long-term relationships. CPQ also provides visual and interactive quotes, further improving customer experience and differentiating companies from their competitors.

4. Gaining competitive advantage

Investing in CPQ empowers businesses to stand out from their competition by offering improved customer experiences. On top of that, CPQ software gives insight in distributor analytics, customer preferences, and market trends. The solution allows manufacturers to finetune their product offerings and pricing strategies and to act on cross-selling and upselling opportunities. Manufacturers can therefore gain a significant competitive advantage using CPQ.

Start small, grow big

While manufacturers are often reluctant to invest in new technologies, implementing a CPQ solution proves to still be a wise choice for businesses as it helps them gain competitive advantage. If in times of crisis, there is not enough room to start an entire CPQ project, we highly recommend starting small. Start with implementing only your most important products in a configurator, so you can speed up your quoting process. In a next phase, you can always iterate the CPQ software, but you will already start reaping the benefits if you begin small.

In line with this approach, we have created a Seeing Is Believing project at Hive CPQ. A Seeing Is Believing is a small Configure Price Quote project that uses your best-selling products to build a first environment on Hive CPQ. It is set up by our Hive implementation team and can be maintained by the customer afterwards. The Seeing Is Believing creates a quick setup, allowing you to instantly get tangible results, all within a small, fixed budget. Moving forward, you will have the freedom to choose whether to expand the project to an entire Configure Price Quote solution, or to iterate in smaller phases.

That is how we allow manufacturers to reap the benefits of CPQ within a small budget in times of crisis. Interested in knowing more about our Seeing Is Believing approach? Check out this article.