Switching to Hive CPQ? Easier than you think

What’s the state of your sales organisation today? According to Renko Steenbeek from CPQ servicepartner ConfigureWise, most companies fall into one of five levels of sales process maturity:

• Level 1 – Fragmented: Quotes are created manually, through emails and calls between the customer, engineering and production. It’s slow, error-prone and only manageable for experienced salespeople.

• Level 2 – Foundational: You’re simplifying your sales process and standardising your product offering, but you’re still missing real efficiency and automation.

• Level 3 – Smart: You’ve adopted a full-fledged CPQ solution, with one central source of truth and automatic margin and pricing calculations.

• Level 4 – Omni-channel: You involve dealers in your sales process through a user-friendly configurator that works across multiple channels. Think website, webshop and dealer portal.

• Level 5 – NextGen: Your entire flow – from quote to production to invoicing – runs automatically. You manage the process, not the individual requests.

Why this matters? Because switching CPQ systems doesn’t mean starting from scratch. Everything you’ve built – your systems, processes and experience – you can take with you. Hive CPQ builds on top of that, allowing you to create value faster with your new setup.

Your current CPQ system holds a wealth of valuable knowledge you’ve built up over the years, from product data to configuration logic, rules and documentation. But for many companies, it’s a bit of a black box: the information is there, but hard to access or reuse.

The good news? With a large language model (LLM) like Claude or ChatGPT, you can open up that information. You can export data from your CPQ and use an LLM to transform it into human-readable text or structured tables. For example, you might translate JavaScript configuration logic into clear documentation, or the other way around: turn product sheets or text files into code you can upload straight into your CPQ. Just test and validate, and you’re good to go – faster than you’d expect.

One of the biggest bottlenecks when switching CPQ’s? Data creation, like for example the input and formatting of product information. Our own Configuration Engineer, Dries Mahieu, shared some practical tips he gives to customers and partners:

• You already have more data than you think. Whether it’s spreadsheets, brochures or manuals – use an LLM to turn them into structured product data.

• Use generative AI to quickly create new data. From tweaking product images to generating icons or product descriptions – it may not be perfect, but it’s a great way to get your first configurator version up and running.

• If the knowledge lives in people’s heads, ask them about it. Let your colleagues simply explain what they know, record it and use a tool like ChatGPT to summarize.

The highlight of the event? The launch of our brand-new Hive AI: a tool that helps you build your configurator just by chatting with it.

You simply describe what you want your configurator to look like, which variables and product properties you need, and Hive AI helps you build it, step by step. You can also ask it how Hive CPQ works, get advice to improve your setup, and use voice chat. That’s how we make switching to Hive CPQ a real no-brainer.