FAQS

Total Configurator is a Visual CPQ (Configure Price Quote) platform with a full visual configuration interface to enhance the sales to quote process. With a highly detailed, easy to use interface and powerful product configuration rules, Total Configurator can empower sales quotation processes with speed, accuracy and personalisation. The platform integrates with a wide range of industry standard CRM and ERP systems to ensure seamless data flow between departments.

Configure Price Quote systems are sales enablement and automation tools aimed at creating a visual guided selling experience for end users and sales agents of complex products and services.

Visual CPQ is beneficial for businesses in any industry where quote generation is a complex process. This includes industries where there are many options to choose from, such as the technology industry, or where the configuration of products or services is subject to specific compliance requirements, such as in regulated industries.

Visual CPQ can help businesses to:

• • Generate quotes quickly and accurately: Visual CPQ software can automate the quote generation process, which can save businesses time and money.
    
  • Capture all relevant information: Visual CPQ software can help businesses to capture all relevant information about a quote, such as the product or service being quoted, the options selected, and the pricing.
    
  • Ensure that all relevant departments are involved: Visual CPQ software can help businesses to ensure that all relevant departments are involved in the quote generation process, such as sales, marketing, and engineering.
    
  • Improve accuracy: Visual CPQ software can help businesses to improve the accuracy of their quotes by automating the process and ensuring that all relevant information is captured.
    
  • Increase sales: Visual CPQ can help businesses to increase sales by making it easier for them to generate and close quotes.
    
  • Improve customer satisfaction: Visual CPQ can help businesses to improve customer satisfaction by providing them with a more accurate and efficient quote generation process.
    
  • Reduce costs: Visual CPQ can help businesses to reduce costs by automating the quote generation process and eliminating the need for manual data entry.
    
    

A CRM system is used to track sales and marketing engagement activities of customers but in most cases the data captured lacks granularity as would be embedded within a complex sales transaction. Visual CPQ platforms can be used without a CRM system but typically they will complement a CRM system by allowing complex user quote data to be captured and tracked against a customer, creating a data enriched profile.

A Visual CPQ system can route complex sales process outputs directly to operational systems or to key stakeholder departments through data integration or simple sharing (automated emails etc)

CPQ and CRM systems work to enhance one another with greater insights into customer behaviour and how they interact with an organisation’s goods and services.

An ERP system is designed to give a granular understanding of the financial, stock and resourcing implications of the business activities within an organisation. An ERP system should be integrated with a CPQ platform where the sales transactions and quoting processes are highly specific, guided and granular in nature.

An ERP system will need to generate both sales and purchase orders and monitor stock levels on the back of a completed or prospective purchase. Such a purchase or order will frequently have complex detail embedded within it (such as component parts for an accessory) which will need to be known in order to fully understand and complete the sale or order. A CPQ provides the handling and integration of this essential granular data for an organisation’s ERP system requirements.

An eCommerce system enables an end-user customer to purchase good and services online using a credit card or a variety of payment gateway services. eCommerce platforms typically handle simple sales transactions requiring minimal option configuration. They handle the payment process and reporting of completed transactions back to an organisation’s financial systems but are not designed to provide a deep dive into the options, selections and modules embedded within the quote or order.

A CPQ enhances an eCommerce platform by enabling more complex, specific and guided sales transactions by end customers and ensuring that all stages of the quote process are passed back to the customer’s ERP and financial platforms.

In addition, a CPQ can add additional capabilities like business rules for a quote which limit or disable the included options (such as accessories suitable only for a specific model or product line) to ensure that quotes are fully deliverable/viable as well as highly accurate.

Any organisation providing a good or service that requires granular customer personalisation, or uses sales processes subject to highly specific guidance and rules, or those organisations seeking to improve accuracy and efficiency in their sales-to-quote processes should consider the implementation of a CPQ system. In addition any organisation seeking to reduce manual data entry steps in their sales processes or ERP management will also benefit from efficiencies when they implement a Visual CPQ system to automate and handle previously manual, slow and potentially error-prone steps when handling or completing a sales transaction.

A CPQ is designed specifically for streamlining the sales quote process and will enable rapid and accurate sales quotations to be generated for customers through visual product configuration, automated bill of materials (BOM) and automatic quote generation and sending through to sales staff for followup and processing. All these automation and interface improvements ensure that quotes can be anywhere up to 10 times faster than manual methods.

A sales quotation process with manual steps involved is much more likely to be subject to errors or omissions which can affect the accuracy of generated quotes. A CPQ helps to improve and increase quote accuracy by eliminating and automating manual steps and regulating data input and capture via system rules to ensure configurations by customers or sales agents are appropriate, deliverable and accurate.

Sales quotations with errors due to manual or unregulated data handling can greatly reduce or adversely affect customer satisfaction both in terms of expectations and reputational confidence. In addition, quotes with errors affect other departments of the organisation, causing both organisational stressors and efficiency drains which can easily affect other departments performance and further contribute to impacts on customers.

Tightly regulating and guiding the sales quoting process to include price optimisation, bulk pricing or cross selling rules can serve to increase the revenue from each customer by increased , highly relevant and tailored offerings.

In addition, increased accuracy, and accelerated sales cycle will lead to greater customer satisfaction and to (faster) repeat sales, add-on or complementary sales and the opportunity of referrals from these customers.

Total Configurator can be used for any product or service that is modular or options based where the selection of modules can result in multiple product permutations or where the product is subject to important guided selling or business rules (such as perhaps compliance, legal or engineering considerations) In addition any products with variable pricing structures will also benefit greatly from a Total Configurator implementation.

Simply by following a few simple steps and processes, it is straightforward to get your products uploaded and setup in Total Configurator. Once that’s done your customers and sales agents will find it even easier to select and configure your products saving you time and money.

We will provide you with a branded instance of Total Configurator which will be available online via a weblink, button or similar. Once clicked, your instance of Total Configurator will be available to your customers, fully populated with all the products, variations and options you’ve added.