How to generate documents with CPQ

When selling complex products, it is crucial to provide your customers with accurate and comprehensive information. To make an informed decision and to successfully implement the product, customers rely on detailed documentation in the form of price quotes, technical sheets, data sheets, order summaries, and calculation sheets. Creating and managing these documents can however be time-consuming and error-prone. This is where CPQ software steps in.

CPQ or Configure Price Quote software can help sales reps or customers in automatically generating documents. Why would users use CPQ for this?

• Saving time. CPQ will automatically create accurate documents, eliminating manual work.
• Reducing errors. By reducing manual work to a bare minimum, costly mistakes can be avoided.
• Improved customer experiences. Don’t make your customers wait, improve their satisfaction by instantly providing them with the right documents.

Producing a quote with CPQ is the most well-known type of document generation in the software. Without CPQ, creating a quote for a configured product can take up to three days. This is due to the fact that the sales representative in question has to confirm the validity of the configuration and has to manually calculate the price, while adding all this and more product information in one document. With CPQ, it takes a user only five minutes.

The software compiles all configured components, pricing, and pertinent information to generate a precise quote for the customer. In order to guarantee accuracy, product data, rules, and configurations must be able to interact with each other.

To seamlessly create a comprehensive quote, CPQ needs to be integrated with CRM and ERP. Connecting these systems ensures that all product and customer data will be complete and up-to-date. However, both CRM and ERP also have quote generation modules. So which software will be used by sales representatives to create quotes?

This is dependent on a customer’s use case, and the kind of products they offer. At Hive, we have customers who exclusively make their quotes within Hive CPQ or their ERP/CRM system and we also have companies who opt for both. Ultimately, the choice is up to you whether you’d like to generate quotes within CPQ software or not.

Generating a quote in Hive CPQ

Quotes generated in Hive CPQ include:

• Accurate product configurations, based on the customer’s needs
• Detailed pricing breakdown, specified for each component
• A 3D-model of the configured product
• Customer information from the CRM
• Product information from the ERP

With Hive CPQ, you get full freedom over your quote template. Add your own branding, choose what kind of information you’d like to include, attach 3D images of the configured product, add marketing texts or icons… Create stunning documents that will increase your conversion rates.

Enable your distributors to create their own quotes with Hive CPQ. By giving them a login to our platform, they can configure products and generate quotes without the help of a sales rep. The documents are guaranteed to be error-free. Additionally, distributors can customize the template to add their own logos and brand colors for the end customer.

Find an example of a quote generated using Hive CPQ below.

When buying configurable products, customer typically require technical sheets. This document includes technical specifications and other important product data that will help customers, for example in the installation of the product or in the performance of calculations. It is crucial to have accurate information in a technical sheet. Any mistakes, no matter how small, can have a big impact and can therefore be very costly.

Therefore, it is beneficial to have technical sheets automatically generated by CPQ software. The system will draw technical specifications from various sources, ensuring the data is up-to-date and consistent across all documentation. It also allows you to create tailored documents based on the configuration that’s been made. Whether it’s specifying dimensions, materials, or performance metrics, CPQ ensures that customers receive relevant information.

Generating technical sheets in Hive CPQ

The intricate nature of complex products often makes it hard for people to understand all the different components, leading to difficulties in their correct implementation. That’s why Hive CPQ offers visual explanations in technical sheets. These documents will for example come with cross-sections of 3D models, and will explicitly indicate measurements or dimensions of the different parts.

Besides price quotes and technical sheets, CPQ can also help in generating other documents, such as order summaries, calculation sheets or warranty documents. Leveraging CPQ to automate these processes ensures consistency and accuracy in the documentation, providing transparency in pricing and product configurations.

While the documents are instantly created, they can still be customized to meet specific customer needs or preferences. This flexibility allows businesses to tailor their communications. These benefits make CPQ software a beneficial tool for document generation for manufacturers of complex products.

Leveraging CPQ for document generation not only eliminates error-prone, manual work, but it also enhances customer experience and improves operational efficiency. This article explored the way CPQ software can create price quotes, technical sheets, order summaries, and more. Scale your sales process by automating document generation through CPQ. Get started now!