Archive for the ‘CPQ Software’ Category

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How does CPQ work?

September 24, 2021

Configure Price Quote (CPQ) is the standard process of helping a customer go from approximate requirements to “ready to purchase” as efficiently as possible.

Earlier this year, Forrester stated that with the rise in omnichannel sales and proliferation or Everything as a Service (XaaS), the CPQ category is experiencing a renaissance. Forrester notes that customers use CPQ technologies to self-educate, and sales reps rely on CPQ to compress cycles and increase order value and margin growth.1

The configuration element shows users compatible products and respects the rules of the system. These validation rules could be counting slots or bays to ensure a product is a workable solution on delivery. channelcentral’s configurator includes elements of demand shaping and shows available local inventory.

A CPQ tool shows the actual buy price but also factors in local promotions and incentives. Allowing users to add margin is also very important. channelcentral helps to instigate promotional pricing through to assisting with rebate claims. 

Users can export a quote to Excel, Google Docs, CSV, custom XML, Email, HTML and co-brandable brochures. channelcentral supports a ‘buy now’ function placing the quote’s contents into a webstore shopping basket.

A CPQ tool increases sales and improves your customer experience.

1The Forrester Tech Tide™: Sales Technologies, Q1 2021, 15 Technologies That Underpin Sales, February 16th, 2021, Mary Shea, PhD, Principal Analyst, Caroline Robertson, Kate Leggett, Laura Ramos, Jennifer Zhang, Kara Hartig

Posted in Channel Business, channelcentral.net, configurator, CPQ, CPQ Software, eCommerce | Leave a Comment »

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Don’t settle for immature B2B eCommerce. Your customers won’t.

June 10, 2021

How mature is your B2B eCommerce? 

B2B buyers, especially over the last 12 months, want to self-serve at their convenience without waiting for quotations, product information, or complicated manual discounting. Forrester’s recent report concludes that being a B2B digital seller is about more than eCommerce – it is leveraging new business models for direct and channel selling and having a critical 360-degree view of the customer journey.1

Forrester concludes that B2B buyers defect to sites where the friction is lowest, search is easiest, and the selection is broadest and deepest. How can you provide the best webstore experience for your B2B customer when selling complex products, and maximize selling opportunities?

  • Make it relevant. Analyze your customer behavior and offer customers products and services that they want – consolidate your eCommerce and Configure Price Quote (CPQ) data sources to derive this information – quote and sales data can accurately drive future demand shaping.
  • Make the customer journey as simple as possible. Provide a webstore configuration experience that is user-friendly and intuitive – your CPQ should work with your webstore and can be achieved with industry-standard APIs, processing complex configuration rules overlaid with a simplified customer user interface.
  • Take the manual aspect out of complex discounting. Offer instant discounting via your sales enablement and CPQ with user prompts to optimize the buyer journey.
  • Leverage Product Management for recommendations. Allow your user to see similar products if a product they are viewing is out of stock. Additionally, suggestions should be made on other attach items ensuring they are compatible, competitively priced, in-stock and a manageable number of alternatives is displayed.
  • Ensure workflow is set up to your CRM. Route incomplete or abandoned transactions to your CRM to trigger a follow up on criteria-defined opportunities.

channelcentral CPQ services can help your webstore achieve all of the above. We can help your webstore mature to the buyer user experience your customer wants and expects.

1 Forrester, Gauge Your B2B E-Commerce Digital Maturity Assessment: The B2B E-Commerce Playbook by Joe Cicman with Allen Bonde, Brandon Shaik, Kara Wilson, and Madison Bakalar, January 8, 2021

Watch the video summary here:

Posted in Channel Business, CPQ, CPQ Software, Data Services, eCommerce, Product Management | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment »

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Channel Software Tech Stack 2021

May 19, 2021

Earlier this year, Jay McBain (Principal Analyst – Channels, Partnerships & Ecosystems – Forrester) published a Forrester blog post entitled: Channel Software Tech Stack for 2021. We are delighted to be recognised under three categories for what we consider to be our successful CPQ applications. The categories in which we have been recognized are described in Jay’s blog are as follows:

Channel learning and readiness – Supports partner development through the administration, tracking, and delivery of educational training courses and enablement resources, including learning management systems, accreditation and certification management, content management systems, partner portals, communities, and sales enablement.

Channel marketplaces, financials, pricing, and inventory – Manages indirect-sales-related revenue and costs, determine the correct value of transactions, automates key financial reporting processes, and prevents errors in payment, commission, and rebates. It addresses pricing, inventory planning, gross-to-nets, discounts, compliance, tracking inventory levels, and price protection.

Channel ecosystem management – Manages the influence, transaction, and retention channels across the entire customer buying journey. It supports the recruitment, attribution, account and partner mapping, enablement, collaboration, technology/API integrations, and overall ecosystem management, covering all transacting/non-transacting and traditional/non-traditional partners.

Our key strengths are our depth of knowledge and expertise in the IT Channel, with the ability to take complex data sets and provide user-friendly CPQ tools and services, allowing sales personnel and buyers to generate accurate quotations quickly. As the B2B buyer increasingly wishes to self-serve, our CPQ tools and services support an improved customer experience for Partner webstore environments.

We fully appreciate the talent and expertise of all of the companies that appear in Jay McBain’s Channel Software Tech Stack 2021. It’s extremely rewarding to see so much work and support for Channel Businesses around the globe. Kudos to Jay and the team at Forrester for the work that goes into the Tech Stack each year.

Channel Software Tech Stack 2021

Watch the video summary here:

Posted in Channel Business, channelcentral.net, CPQ, CPQ Software, eCommerce, Marketplace, ROI, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a Comment »

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Building with the Right Blocks – Understanding the Best of Software Development Processes 

February 4, 2021

If you are a Vendor working with a Software as a Service (SaaS) provider, have you considered the best method to deliver new features or changes you want in your software? Your functionality requirements may be complicated and challenging, so your SaaS Development team must work well with you to ensure the best outcome.

There are many software development processes, and each software development team must adopt a practice that works well for themselves and their customer.

Two of the most common processes are Waterfall and Agile, but what are the differences?

Waterfall is a sequential process, with each stage following from the last, resulting in the entire project being delivered at the end, once all subsequent steps have completed. Forrester has reported that almost 60% of companies use Waterfall product development practices only or a blend of Waterfall and Agile practices. 1

Agile is an iterative approach with each iteration being self-encapsulated, allowing projects to be sub-divided into smaller projects each that can be delivered separately. Forrester has reported that the top metrics that Software Development teams focus on are quality-centric, followed by user stories completed.2

So, what are their benefits and restrictions to developing SaaS?


We use a combination of both methods. Why? 

By selecting specific parts of the Waterfall and Agile approaches, we can personalize how we work and be efficient for our customers. Using the Waterfall method’s front design concepts, our Development team can map the project’s requirements and measurements. Using the iterative approach from Agile allows more fluid customer input.  This hybrid strategy works exceptionally well with our customers – known upfront costs and design whilst enabling continuous deployment via the Agile processes. For us, it is easier to plan a project from start to finish and still allow deliverable chunks of work, rather than finishing a process without customer input or preference throughout the development.

We’re exceptionally proud of our ability to manage and combine our software development processes to deliver to and benefit customers. Find out more about our CPQ software: https://www.channelcentral.net/cpq.asp

1 https://go.forrester.com/blogs/waterfall-product-managers-can-be-agile/

2 Forrester Now: Prioritize The Agile Metrics That Really Matter, August 25th, 2020,  Diego Lo Giudice, Jeffrey Hammond

Posted in Channel Business, channelcentral.net, CPQ, CPQ Software, SaaS, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

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How does CPQ support the three stages of bundles for manufacturers?

December 24, 2020

Last year Forrester reported on B2B pricing and promotion solutions and their application of advanced analytics to help companies manage and optimize pricing throughout the product lifecycle. The same report recommends advanced manufacturers exploit new digital capabilities and channels to bundle high-quality physical objects and services to deliver unique value to each customer.1  

We understand that manufacturers like bundles: it improves margin, drives up the Average Unit Price (AUP) and aids marketing (selling solutions versus a bunch of parts).

Configure Price Quote (CPQ) can enable bundles if it can handle all three stages of the process of delivering them:

Stage 1 – Bundle Creation

Deciding which products to group should be simple; it is not. Limiting the portfolio will reduce attractiveness, increasing flexibility increases the complexity for transactional partners (e.g., distribution).

Whether you describe this as Big Data or Artificial Intelligence: if you have quote/sales data that is fresh, relevant and dynamic, it can be leveraged to ensure market-appropriate products. Your CPQ application should be able to do this and provide a vehicle to create starter kits, which users should customize. Critically it must track product lifecycle status and, ideally, local inventory.

Historically, without CPQ, eCommerce has relied on virtual part numbers to manage bundles. This approach is problematic. A rule that says ten systems can have ten options and ten services creates 1000 virtual parts. Most of which will never be used.

Stage 2 – Bundle Customer Experience (CX)

Where the tyre meets the tarmac, a user will only choose a bundle route if the experience is flawless: Read the rest of this entry ?

Posted in channelcentral.net, configurator, CPQ, CPQ Software, Quote Software, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

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Channel Partner Experience – The New Trifurcation Channel Model

October 19, 2020

Earlier this year, Forrester’s Jay McBain included in his channel trends analysis, a newly evolved channel model – Trifurcation.  This model identifies three key streams to the channel, influencing different buyers at different stages in their buying journey: 

Influencer channel: affinity partners, referral agents, affiliates, advocates and ambassadors with potential to influence a buyer during their pre-purchase research. With more B2B buyers expecting a customer experience (CX) similar to that of a B2C buyer, Forrester found that 68% buyers are spending their buying journey digitally before speaking to a salesperson and 71% reaching vendor selection after a digital-only journey.1 Influencers have just that effect; the potential to recommend a product or service through social media, even if they’d never be directly linked to a sale. 

Transaction channel: in which the buyer operates, and sales take place.  Configure Price Quote (CPQ) supports eCommerce and facilitates ‘as-a-Service‘ in this stream. There are additional opportunities in this traditional part of the channel.  McBain believes that tweaking channel data management, automation, insights, onboarding, incentives, co-selling, and co-marketing will determine winners and losers here.’1 

Retention channel: consultants, integrators, adjacent ISVs, accountants and digital agencies. This stream has increasing relevance, as vendors move towards ‘as-a-Service’ models, working with customers to ensure adoption, integration with existing tech and processes.  The customer needs to experience integrated communications from the vendor and partners with the same mutually beneficial consistent messages. More than 80% of these (potential) partners will show up before or after the sale, and channel leaders need to break the transactional channel model.1 

There is an opportunity for vendors to support influencer and retention channels.  As part of that ecosystem, we recognise the value that CPQ offers in enhancing the CX, whilst facilitating as-a-Service in the IT channel for Manufacturers, Distributors and Resellers, and influencing their new complementary channels.

1 What I See Coming For The Channel In 2020 blog post by Jay McBain, Principal Analyst, Channel Partnerships & Alliances, Forrester, JAN 7 2020 

Watch the summary video here:

Posted in Attach Pattern Web Service, channelcentral.net, CPQ, CPQ Software, eCommerce, Quote Software, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

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Product Lifecycle Management – The Hidden Gem in CPQ

October 8, 2020

Few Configure Price Quote (CPQ) vendors offer Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). Our customers love that we do. So, what is it, and why is it a service that many CPQ vendors choose not to offer? 

A recent ForresterNow article cites the importance of Manufacturers investing in Product content for more lift in all Channels – strengthening relationships with Distributors and increasing product sell-though.1 

CPQ Systems don’t work without data; in this context, product data. New products are launched, old products are retired and superseded. That’s the Product Lifecycle. Feeding a CPQ System with data from large Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP) Systems can be problematic.  

channelcentral has solved this by working with Manufacturers to receive complex product data and embellish it to support the customer CPQ experience.   

Here are some of the key aspects of this service: 

  1. When products are launched at New Product Introduction (NPI), the PLM Team ensures that products are released on the date to a Service Level Agreement (SLA). 
  2. Before NPI is a confidentiality breach. 
  3. After NPI is potentially damaging to the new product’s adoption. 
  4. The product’s attributes and compatibility/configuration rules are interpreted and modelled. 
  5. When products ‘sunset’ they are only switched OFF for businesses that have exhausted their supply. They remain visible for those with stock. 

Dealing with Product Managers at Manufacturers, it was evident that NPI was important, but sunset was critical. Why? Legacy stock is VERY costly to clear, and you could justify an entire CPQ System on this point alone. Keeping obsolete products on sale where they are available is profitable – sometimes obsolete products are in greater demand than new ones. 

Including PLM solves major headaches for Manufacturers who want to drive CPQ into Channel eCommerce. It’s a hidden gem. 

1 Forrester Research, Inc., FORRESTERNOW, ‘Distributors Bear the Burden When Manufacturers Skimp on Product Content’, July 12th 2020, Joe Cicman, Nick Barber, Allen Bonde 

Watch the summary video here:

Posted in CPQ, CPQ Software, Data Services, Product Management, Quote Software, ROI, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

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How can CPQ applications best drive eCommerce and sales enablement for the IT Channel?

June 25, 2020

A Configure Price Quote (CPQ) vendor with a vertical market focus, can understand quickly and precisely what you need. channelcentral operates exclusively in the heart of the IT Channel.

Good CPQ should improve the customer experience (CX) while lowering the cost of sales. Your sales staff and customers need to quote quickly, accurately, with compatible options and your latest prices. Forrester reveals that the reduced sales rep time on admin and lower-value tasks accounts for 65% of the total revenue benefit resulting from sales enablement modernization.1 Free up your staff to build more meaningful customer relationships and work on higher-value deals.

CPQ can improve customer engagement and the experience sellers create with buyers. Linking your webstore to your CPQ application gives your customers a seamless and more meaningful buying experience.

CPQ applications can leverage inventory and influence demand shaping. Optimizing configurations for in-stock products, using top-recommended options, auto-add, finders and product associations.

CPQ can create measurability – where there is an expectation of meeting or exceeding sales targets. Our CPQ applications easily accommodate sales promotions and SPIFs to incentivize sales.

Enable customers to self-serve and access anywhere.  More than ever B2B buyers are expecting to self-serve.  Infact, 67% of buyers prefer to avoid interacting with sales as a primary source of information.2  Our CPQ applications can be used from wherever a user is working from.

When a customer needs to have contact with sales, provide your sellers with technology, content, and insights that make them relevant and effective in front of buyers. 84% of buyers want sales staff to understand their industries, business and products.3

Technology should be designed around sales processes. Let our IT Channel CPQ drive your sales and eCommerce.

1 Forrester’s Q2 2019 Global Sales Enablement ROI Survey. See the Forrester report “Building The Business Case For A Modern Sales Enablement Toolset”, November 6, 2019

2 “Now Tech: Sales Enablement Automation, Q2 2020, Forrester Research, Inc.

3 Forrester Consulting’s Q3 2019 Global Marketing Content Credibility Study. See the Forrester report “Credible Empathetic Content Wins Over Elusive B2B Buyers”, April 30, 2020

Watch the video summary here:

Posted in CPQ, CPQ Software, Marketing, Quote Software, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

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Don’t waste time on a poor CPQ User Experience

May 18, 2020

The configure element of Configure Price Quote (CPQ) consists of combining parts available to create a product that will operate.  The more complex the component combinations can be for a product, the more highly configurable it is. 

There are several approaches to configuration which affect the User Experience (UX) in a CPQ application.  Each has its benefits for different types of users; however, being performant is critical to the application’s success.

Free flow, including accordian

A user can add any option or part to a quotation or basket. Errors are permitted, e.g. overpopulation, but the system generates warnings alerting the user that the errors need to be corrected. Many of channelcentral’s CPQ applications use this approach.

Free flow is ideal for regular users that have some knowledge of the products and options, or technical information is readily available.

Always correct

The configuration system constrains options so that anything that a user adds is functional.  As a user adds more options, the remaining choices are restricted further. Some of channelcentral’s light eCommerce customers adopt this approach, using boost! and APWS.

Always correct is ideal if a user is infrequent or has limited knowledge of products, to simplify the process of selecting parts.

Pre-Qualification

The user is asked a set of questions up-front, and the configuration system limits options and therefore, complexity based on the responses.

Pre-Qualification is ideal if a user has no real knowledge of products and options available but does know clearly, the solution they require in purchasing a product.

Forrester has recently announced a top trend for 2020 will be an increase in ‘self-service for end-to-end customer journey‘, including customer-facing CPQ solutions for B2B buyers. 1  channelcentral designs all its CPQ and eCommerce applications with users in mind, so that users can self-serve. 

Is a poorly designed performant User Interface equally bad to ‘egg-timer time’?  Present the user with a form that takes one second to load but 30 minutes to complete is worse than something that takes a few seconds to load on each click but only takes 10 minutes to complete.

Our CPQ applications have not only complexity, but also a lot of dynamic data (notably price/stock), that enables them to generate complex configurations.   So, we are refactoring (altering the code architecture) to make them as performant as possible for the best possible UX. By optimizing the architecture and the UX design, the future releases of our CPQ applications will enjoy the best of both worlds.

1 Top CRM Trends for 2020, Forrester blog by Kate Leggett, Vice President, Principal Analyst, 11 February 2020

Watch the video summary here:

Posted in Attach Pattern Web Service, configurator, CPQ, CPQ Software, Data Services, Quote Software | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

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Impact of Covid-19

April 30, 2020

Everybody at channelcentral recognizes the human tragedy created by the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. Life will never be the same; it seems. We’ve been very fortunate so far to have only one staff member testing positive for the virus, and that person is recovering, albeit with challenges.

Many of our customers and suppliers have responded to the economic conditions by furloughing staff, moving to home working and gearing their services to support the current (extraordinary) needs of people consuming IT.

Frank Sohn, a Configure Price Quote (CPQ) specialist at MGI Research LLC, has commented in a recent blog, on data that G2 has shared showing a surge of interest in sales tools over recent weeks, including CPQ tools.1 These tools offer the digital transformation of sales processes, essential for selling remotely and driving eCommerce – both critical factors for many businesses at present.

We had no real expectation of the impact of Covid-19 on the CPQ services we offer, and it’s been interesting:

1. Utilization has been lower but not ‘super low’. Even allowing for countries with strong lockdowns in place, and also being high users of our applications (UK, US, Spain, Italy, France as examples), people are still quoting tech products.
2. The disruption to the global supply chain has meant that:
a. Orders that would usually be executed directly from the factory, now, understandably, have much longer lead-times.
b. Vendors who also offer products for sale from Distributor Inventory have seen more interest.
3. Companies with robust eCommerce offerings have fared better than those without.
4. Very large companies tend to view investments over a much longer timeframe, so although the disruption seems like a long time, it’s hopefully going to be one or two quarters. Hopefully.

That’s not to say that the market is buoyant: it isn’t. We expect that once the virus infection levels start to recede, we’ll see a spike in demand for technology as businesses re-start projects. It’s highly likely that some companies may re-engineer, maybe to enhance their online customer experience (CX) or put renewed focus on local inventory.

Everyone, please stay safe.

1 https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/configure-price-quote-software-support-recovery-from-covid-19-sohn/?trackingId=yChUGNFrSZOpEHUI4f%2FcvQ%3D%3D

Watch the video summary here:

Posted in Channel Business, channelcentral.net, CPQ, CPQ Software, eCommerce, Quote Software, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

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