Empower Your Manufacturing Sales Process with airSlate SignNow's Complex Sales CPQ for Manufacturing

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[Music] well hello and good afternoon to most of you uh and welcome uh webinar um the synergy and strategy and strength cpq solutions for manufacturing organizations my name is frank porco i'm the senior regional director here at ast and i will be acting as your host and mc for this afternoon's webinar before we get started i would like to just go over a couple of quick housekeeping items one you will be on mute throughout the entire presentation if you would like to ask a question you'll have an opportunity to post that question you'll notice there's a little area there where you can either submit in your in the chat box you can post your question there and then at the end we'll go ahead and read those questions and then ask members of our panel to respond um so and lastly i just wanted to point out also that you'll notice there's an area there called handouts which you are welcome to download uh just a little placemat about uh cpq and ast's uh capabilities in that space as well so feel free to uh take a look at that uh at the conclusion of our webinar and you can feel free to download that as well we are recording uh this session and it will be available on ast's website in a few days so i'm pleased to have with me this afternoon stan cherry who is the senior practice director of cpq and subscription management here at ast in addition we have manish cote who is the project manager for commercial technology and analytics at ingersoll rand and also with us today is arjun sagaram who is the cpq practice manager and architect here at ingersoll rand so before we move into uh our our presentation uh first thing i'd like to do is uh have you guys participate in a little poll so if you'll notice we're about to launch our first poll question and the question is what tools are you using to quote today what tools are you using to quote today if you guys would just take a minute to please uh indicate what you what you utilize in your organization uh and then we'll go ahead and close the uh close the poll in about 10 more seconds and then share that with everybody participating all right we'll go ahead and close that poll and it looks like a significant amount of you uh use a configurator within your erp systems as a means of of as a means of you know how you manage your quotes today manish and arjun manish you first what were you did you use that ingersoll ran prior to adopting oracle cpq cloud uh so we we were using uh i guess a multitude of tools we all we also we did have a configurator within our erp system uh that was accessed from one of our legacy applications uh we also had you know some excel-based calculators uh you know excel-based uh tools and then we also had one more legacy application that we inherited from one of our acquisitions uh so it was probably about four to five different uh tools that we used prior to our cpu journey and how would you manage the various quotes would you then just take all that information and kind of aggregate it or how did it work yeah i mean i mean the reporting was a challenge getting it all together uh you know was a challenge uh making sure that what we go out to market with with the standard template you know standard terms and conditions that was a problem so that was actually a couple of reasons why we decided to embark on this journey excellent arjun uh being in being in the cpq space and part of the practice lead at ingersoll rand uh what did you uh what did you notice part of the problem with using the configurator uh prior to cpq oracle cpq cloud yeah so to add a little bit more context to this um our current crm solution is cblcr so all the codes and all the sales order are captured in within the siebel crm our siebel crm is integrated with oracle configurator so the challenges is whenever you do a oracle configurator there is a latency issue okay because it's not it's a point-to-point integration when you come back uh the all the line items and we need to create in its current system that's a challenge which we faced you know and also the coding process uh i mean we heard from our multiple reps the coding processing people take almost like somewhere around like an hour to 40 45 minutes an hour you know just to create a simple code that was a little challenging and complex all right thank you so today during our webinar uh really it's it's meant to be a conversation with both manish and arjun about their journey to cp cpq oracle cpq cloud um some of the some of the things that they needed to think through as they were preparing for their journey some of the challenges that they had during the implementation and as well as some of the lessons learned uh from the implementation process so looking forward to uh engaging with you guys in this conversation and hopefully sharing some information with folks who are also contemplating a transition to oracle cpq cloud and uh what's what would be you know helping them think a little bit about the investment uh and what would be required of it um so if you would please uh manish we'll start with you tell us a little bit about uh your role in the organization as well as a little background on ingersoll rand yeah so ingersoll rand is is a diversified industrial manufacturer we essentially manufacture you know compressors blowers vacuums material handling equipment uh and up until yesterday we were also manufacturing uh uh light vehicles you know golf carts we just devastated that unit yesterday um but uh it's essentially a about a two and a half billion dollar organization you know about seven thousand employees uh throughout across the globe um and uh so i work in in our america's uh uh business unit uh which is the for industrial technology so you know we have three different business units industrial technologies energy and then uh uh speciality vehicles which again we devastate um so i work in the in our industry uh uh technology division for america's which is the biggest division and america is our biggest region in the world and my role is really serve as a technology leader from uh from the business side uh bringing these enabling tools uh front office middle office uh to bear to enable our you know sales and service personnel to be more efficient at what they do and make their jobs easier tell us a little bit about your distribution model yeah so it's uh it's a mix right now you know we go to market uh both uh through a direct channel where we have customer centers out there out uh in the region you know uh pretty much all over the country in the united states and then we also have uh distribution distribution channel uh we recently uh went through a merger where uh ingersoll rand which is really part of you know uh what is known as train now uh it divested out of train and merged with garner denver to form this new ingersoll and entity and uh ganda denver you know comes with a much higher distribution uh presence than ingrid solder and so so i would say we are about maybe about 60 to 70 percent uh indirect channel through distributors and about 30 40 uh direct channel arjun tell us a little bit about your role at ingersolver yeah so my role at ingersoll brand is i manage the cpq applications from a technical stand point of view so anything related to the technical architecture um it comes to me and then we design and i work with our partners people like ac and other vendors so for us to help and facilitate and make sure we implement in a right way with the best practices excellent um first question is for manish um tell us a little bit about why you chose to implement oracle cpu yeah so so like i said earlier right we we had a plethora of uh tools that we that our sales people used to code to our end customers and uh you know this was recognized as a challenge you know not neces not just because you know we wanted to have a standardized uh proposal out to the customers but we also had challenges with um uh you know leakage where there was not effective controls around discounting um we you know we felt that there was a lot of opportunity around cross-sell upsell that that was not being leveraged by the existing tools uh so about three years ago we decided that this was an area of opportunity that would really uh bring a lot of value to the business and we started evaluating uh different cpq tools uh i think we evaluated about four to five different tools and uh we chose uh oracle cpq uh primarily because of you know i guess two main reasons one was uh look at the complexity of our products again you know we have a wide variety of products legacy products you know we still have compressors that were running 50 60 years ago that's still out in the field uh so and a lot of newer products coming out so there's a lot of complexity we felt that oracle cpq which was essentially based on the big machines platform of the past uh was well suited to handle that complexity and then secondly uh you know we our backend system is uh erp is oracle and like arjun said you know we leveraged the oracle configurator and many other interfaces in terms of you know codes going back into oracle for for converting into orders price lookups and all that uh we felt that oracle cpq provided us a better path to integrate with the backend erp application um so that's why we landed on on this tool and arjun tell us a little bit about uh your role in the uh in the um in the implementation of oracle cpq cloud sure so when we started to when we decided to embark on the cpq journey so we evaluated many tools right i think the top two contenders were oracle cpq and after cpq and there are many advantages or after cpq for oracle cpq one is like money said right our pro our products are very complex our machines are very complex in nature right in order to do that um our vision the product needs to support the complex configuration first one right so when we compared after uh with oracle cpq right the biggest uh win was oracle cpq can handle the complex configuration in nature whereas app test cannot i mean access can do but to a certain extent but if you wanted to do build a complex machines it doesn't support our needs that's one and two um oracle cpk is a by default inbuilt um salesforce package managed package integration which which kind of simplifies our whole journey because we're a big salesforce shop here at ingersoll rand so that kind of a easy transition for us to go to into oracle cpq to salesforce and then three is the level of customization it gives us with the pricing strategies because our pricing is so complex okay so we have many different layers of pricing strategies for direct and as well as indirect people and also to build all those guard rails that gives us a full flexibility and then the least not but very important thing is customer facing documents right the proposal so it gives us a lot of flexibility in build uh to build a robust and very professional looking customer documents for us and then last like money said it's a seamless integration between because oracle cpq and oracle 119 r12 being an oracle product it uses a good integration platform for us to build excellent thank you uh before we move on to our next question we're going to put out our next poll question to our participants and attendees today that question is on average how long does it take your organization to generate an accurate quote on average how long does it take your organization to generate an accurate quote so we'll just ask you guys to uh please uh submit your answer here we'll uh we'll collect some responses and probably close it within the next 10 or 15 seconds or so all right so it looks like uh let's go ahead and share our responses here so it looks like uh more than about half of you it takes a little better than five business days to generate uh an accurate quote uh and uh a quarter of you two to three days in a quarter of you within a day um arjun can you tell us a little bit about uh what challenges if any you had uh with prior to oracle cbq uh cloud's implementation uh your ability to to generate a quote uh for your customers are you talking about our ingersollvan current coding process or yeah yeah just your your experience prior to oracle cpq cloud yeah so from my experience a lot of clients which i worked in the past they have some kind of a crm system right i think predominantly siebel siebel is being one of the leader in the past so a lot of customers used to use siebel configurator inbuilt pricing and then the symbol quotation tool simply simply is being very robust tool but the coding process was not that intuitive when i say intuitive right they can it has to be on the infra internet and then you cannot go on the internet and then as we are moving towards the mobile right seabed is not mobile friendly enough for us to support uh on the go for the customers to create a coach so that's that's the big drawback uh with that that's what i saw in the majority of our clients you know and the configurator was not that great uh in siebel to enhance or to support the complex products in nature okay thank you next question uh is for manish uh other than product management what what groups were involved in the success of the cpq implementation at ingersoll rand oh yeah i mean i think this was uh as you can imagine this is a a big huge team effort i mean product management was definitely involved but uh you know all the way starting from you know we had marketing involved we had the sales organization heavily involved we had the finance team involved you know legal was a big part of this making sure our terms and conditions uh were appropriate uh it was a big part obviously helping us with the implementation um so i would say pretty much uh you know and engineering too right so so i really cannot think of any any group that was not involved to be honest um getting getting this together bring this together and then arjun uh tell us a little bit about how you were able to kind of work with these various disparate lines of business to kind of get to the desired end state yeah sure so when we started this project we had many workshops okay to understand the business requirements and what is the business pain points in the current system okay and then we mapped all those pain points and the requirements how we can use out-of-the-box capabilities from cpq and what needs to be customized in terms of a uh meeting that business requirements for uh in cpq and then once we have lined up and once we all agreed um in on the requirements uh we worked with our vendor which is ac um and then we collaborated with the ac and then we our team was very lean so when i say lean right we have a good on-site team good offshore team we have a good collaboration between both onsite and offshore team and the tasks were clearly laid out and everything has been assigned we have a daily meetings and checkpoints and weekly meetings with business to showcase the application and everything to make sure it's coming ing to the business expectations manish getting back to your point it seemed like basically had just about every line of business within ingersoll rand participate um in the actual implementation process uh can you just speak a little bit to um how much of a difference did that make in in having uh in the implementation process and did you find that it made for a better end result yeah i mean it most definitely did and and uh i mean there were some missteps along the way where you know we you know i guess failed to include some partners and we actually had to go back and and uh uh you know uh engage with them uh so i wouldn't say it was uh all smooth and everything was you know um you know perfectly but um you know it was very you know impactful to to have uh all these partners engaged you know it made for a slow start uh but uh we were on a sturdy footing once we had the core design developed and uh you know i think that contributed a lot to the success of our deployment okay thank you next question uh manish we'll start with you um how has your business approved after the implementation of oracle cpq cloud uh so like i said i mean there were two when we looked at you know when we first and this is this pro project right there was uh obviously a uh end user ease of uh use in mind you know we wanted to have our sales people uh have a easy to let their at their hands and they can quickly put together a professional code uh so you know that was one angle but there were also key business uh elements or business case that was put put together uh to go with that and i guess you know there are like five or six uh key areas that we wanted to improve but two of our big ones was uh this whole idea of stemming price leakage where in the past we had loser controls if you will in terms of salesperson going out and giving discounts uh perhaps not having uh checks and balances within the system itself where they are alerted to uh what kind of margin erosion that that's causing so so that was one area and then second was you know uh you know again i've done a complexity of products you know typically when a sales person generates a code there are a bunch of other options that they can upsell and cross-sell they can sell a care contract they can sell you know system components a dryer they were not getting prompted in the past uh to do that so it didn't come naturally uh so i think these two things were kind of poor to the capabilities that were deployed you know in terms of deploying approval workflows in terms of deploying system checks and balances uh you know putting together the rules to implement crossfill upsell and we've been tracking these uh you know we've been live for almost a year now a little less than a year and we've been tracking these metrics uh over time and and really seen a strong improvement in our in our margins uh you know both due to both these right the the cross sellers has increased our average order value uh and then the discount reduction has has increased our uh you know price uh uh realization and uh you know higher margins so so i would say those those two areas stand out for me as being benefits of what we've done so arjun we're uh if i recall correctly we we started this uh we started this project and and about midway through uh the uh the global pandemic kind of hit right so uh can can you talk a little bit about some of the challenges you faced just implementing a project of this scale uh during cobit yeah this is yes definitely because of the panoramic this was very challenging because generally we like to have our team face to face and have these design discussions and then go over multiple iterations of design and make sure and we have a multiple reviews with oracle to make sure we are following the best practices and everything so all these things are done we are on site and then offshore team collaboration we had a multiple meetings daily in the morning and then in the afternoon with onsite team and afternoon with the morning calls with offshore to make sure we are all working as a one team towards one goal to deliver the best vpq solution for our customers okay um it was challenging but we overcome through this very good understanding working relationship between onsite and offshore teams and also along with business excellent arjun we're going to stay with you for the next question uh what feature of cpq have you found to be the most beneficial to your organization uh there are a bunch of them uh the one being a seamless integration with salesforce via manage package a lot of our customer information is passed over from opportunity built to shift information into account it just eases our sales have not to re-enter again in cpq or again a builder integration between salesforce and cpq that's one big advantage and number two is like money said right the pricing was the biggest impact for us because uh we we do a lot of discounts our pricing strategies are complex we do we do have a distributor right we have a direct and indirect indirect is nothing more distributed we have a different strategies and different pricing models for both of them okay and our discounts work differently for each one of the group and our guardrails also works differently for each one of them okay that's a big win for us and then the last one is the proposal documents which is huge win for us because our reps can directly send from cpq the professional looking proposal documents directly from auto b-side and they can even receive the documents assigned documents into cpq from your perspective what did you find to be the most beneficial uh attribute of cp in terms of impact to your organization um i mean those are probably the table stakes for the for any cbp application but obviously this is new for for us uh in the space i mean the key thing was uh the whole price you know making the pricing complexity uh easier to manage and also the approval workflows and the loas the fact that you know we could have different levels of approvals for different products and have an automated email approval uh or you know a tablet-based approval that an approver can provide real-time um that was key for us um you know just the fact that we could put together a professional uh court uh proposal uh with the right signage you know both for our distributors as far as for a single rant with the right legal terms uh contracts uh and all that um you know putting it all together was also quite useful for sales people because in the past they used to have this multitude of templates that they had to work with and and kind of work around and make make it look look good and proper they don't have to worry about all that they just have to focus on on you know getting the the best quote out there excellent stan i'm going to ask you to weigh in a little bit you obviously have been affiliated with a number of cpq implementations so would you care to share your thoughts on on what you observed as both part of the implementation at ingersoll rand and and other implementations that you've been involved in sure i think one of the things that's um is critical to understand is it's the same tool that's being used by the internal users as well as when it gets fully rolled out to the distributor network as well using the same set of rules using the same understanding of costs availability you know those types of things are all critical i think it's important to understand that um that it's all the same tools you don't have to have you know dual maintenance or triple maintenance of the same information so not only for ingersoll ram for the customers that's been a huge uh benefit with oracle cpq all right thank you let's move on next question uh arjun we're going to stay with you post implementation how easy uh has oracle cpq cloud been to support uh i won't say it is easy but we had some challenges when we went go live um but we again right we overcome those challenges with the help of our hypercare team which is asd and with oracle support when we went live we had a huge performance issue okay and that performance issue has been mitigated by oracle helping us and asd facilitating and working with all of us with oracle uh we uh after that i think our support is kind of a slow down we we see enhancements and a lot of bugs coming up we are it's not uh over a period of time it became a little little bit easy to maintain but the first two the first month was a little bit bumpy right for us manish do you uh can you share a little bit about uh your experiences post go live in terms of how easy the solution was to support yeah i mean i guess i'm on the other side of the fence in origin sits in i.t and he gets to see all the dirty insights but for me just looking from outside and i mean we definitely put a lot of pressure and impetus on our i.t partners to help support this and you know initially it was bumpy um but over time you know uh with the right team in place uh i i think it's it's gotten where you know we are quickly able to resolve issues and and deploy them and one of one of the things that we struggled with in the past uh with our civil implementation was just getting any changes implemented in production that required almost an act of congress uh with uh with cpq and cloud-based uh technology you know uh it's it's a quick fix you know once the team has identified uh you know obviously we do some testing and then uh it can be deployed much quicker than than what we've seen in the past so that that has been uh a good impact for us can you talk a little bit about some of the change management that you uh planned for and executed as part of that you know preparedness for let's go live yeah i mean that that's one key you know focus area was on focus area for us um and it was compounded by the fact that you know with covet you know it was not you know ideally you know we would parachute a team down to our uh customer center and kind of train them and bring them up to speed and you know nominate a champion who would then support going forward so we had a whole strategy laid out like that you know with covered obviously we couldn't do all of that so most of our sessions or all of our sessions were remote we conducted you know multiple rounds of training recurring trainings you know uh just getting the field used to it um i think you know it was um it was not quick and you know we we made a conscious decision early on uh you know not to cut off the users from their existing tools um and forced them to into cpq we wanted this to be a pull from the field uh so we took a softer approach which took a little longer to drive adoption but uh you know i think it was the right decision uh where people started you know getting used to it and liking it more and more and and then starting gravitating towards it uh so as of now you know probably about 80 90 percent of our users are considered active users in cpq and we have uh you know much most of our orders are now flowing through cpq and not for legacy applications so it's it's a it's been a big transition it took a while but we're in good shape now excellent excellent manish we're going to stay with you for our next question um what advice would you give to any organization who's currently considering investment in oracle cpq cloud yeah so i guess a lot a lot of learnings here but i would probably uh talk about a few that that stood out uh you know don't underestimate this this initiative it's it's not straightforward uh again each come each organization will have their own challenges to deal with uh but uh this is uh initiative that pretty much every uh uh or you know business unit within the organization so uh keep that in mind this is a customer facing document that you're producing so there's a lot of legalities and and uh you know marketing branding involved uh so make sure you understand that uh so so really i would say the first and foremost is to make sure uh you identify all your stakeholders and get them on board uh you know don't underestimate uh how long it will take to to you know get this built out and and you know change management uh to get it deployed is not going to be easy uh make sure you select a a right vendor not you know all vendors have the uh the oracle cpq product itself you know well it's easy to use in the back end it's quite complex to to set up and and uh you know make it work so getting the right vendor to partner with who has the right skill sets and and uh you know can bring strong resources to bear uh is important and you know finally you know start by figuring out what is what is it that you're wanting out of this right i mean and again that's probably common knowledge everywhere but but if you start by saying these are my business case elements that i really want to focus on that will help you uh stay you know and keep those that are not star uh you can sure that you know whatever requirements you you uh put up are considered in light of your business case and you're always you know staying focused on what is it that you want at the end of the day excellent thank you arjun uh same question what would uh what what is some of the advice that what advice would you give to organizations who are currently uh evaluating or considering an investment in oracle cpq cloud yeah so each and every implementation is unique and each and every company business process is unique right i think first we need to understand their own business processes based on the business processes they need to identify the key components of cpq right so c is configuring right a lot of these companies they're using legacy erp configurator right so we need to make sure what's the plan to bring this erp configurator and retire and make sure if you're returning all the right ingredients are there to put it into cpq and we need to make sure we align with both the erp system and then the front-end system okay and then same thing with the p part also right pricing pricing strategy is currently all the these prices and everything is done all maintained in erp we need to have a com a consistent plan how to migrate this and make a one master within the the cpq will be the master for pricing and all prices all the strategies all the modeling pricing modeling is all done in cpq that those kind of a key decision need to be maintained and then coming to the quotation part this is where all your customer guard rails and everything get all the buy-ins from the legal different stakeholders what kind of a goddess you want to put in place and then and then the proposal document right so better to keep all these things light because you're presenting it to a customer as you keep more information it's going to slow the performance down too excellent thank you before we move to our next question uh we're going to open up the polls one more time for our attendees so the next poll question is how confident are you in in your sales forecast um how confident are you in your sales forecast so we'll leave the polls open uh for a another 10 seconds or so and then we'll go ahead and close them out all right we'll go ahead and close it out and uh and share it uh so it looks like uh 10 of you are not confident at all uh the vast majority of you are somewhat confident uh and it looks like uh about almost a third of you are very confident so um manish can you talk a little bit about sales forecast uh prior to the oracle cpq implementation how confident were you uh in in your sales forecasting your numbers uh pre versus post uh cpq implementation uh so i would say we probably fall in the somewhat confident category here and i mean i guess you know we had a bunch of spreadsheets floating around essentially with the forecast information uh especially with our indirect channel um that was the way we could get information from our distributors as to what's in the pipeline uh from our direct channel you know you know we implemented salesforce and uh added to cpq um before cpq we just had salesforce and then we used to you know have at least the opportunity information uh with with without that actual code in it with db2 now you know we are actually we have integrated that in and we get the codes in entire this opportunity which makes them which makes the forecast much more accurate than they were before thank you all right so uh nick we're gonna turn it over to stan cherry uh who is going to do just a little wrap up and summary from uh our our presentation uh today with our panel perfect thanks frank um i think some of the keys that uh want to make sure one takes away with them today this is a an old uh quote that you see the kind of marketing tagline for the big machines product but it was a sell more sell faster sell anywhere and with the different types of customers that we have the opportunity to work with we have all different types of products right we've just heard from ingersoll brand about their compression compressor products dryers all the accessories that go along with it some very complex items right we have companies that sell insurance we have companies that sell services they have companies that sell very complex electronic measurement equipment um regardless of what you sell and and how you sell it oracle cpq definitely help you by being able to sell it sell faster and sell anywhere the next thing to want to think about is that oracle cpq also supports not only business to business transactions but also business to consumer transactions including the ability to have self-service we have a couple customers but we have a portal on the front end of cpq that allow them to sell and even do transactions with credit cards um to to sell their products using cpq so don't think this is just something that has to be for you know large items has to be for purchase orders or you know direct billing and those types of things there are various ways we can make cpq work for you the next one to talk about is and you heard manish talk about it uh he called about the care agreement uh that's like a warranty or extended warranty or a service plan cpq is one of the few tools out there that can quote and configure the product as well as the the um correct associated service plan warranty or subscription that goes right along in one single quote for a single transaction from a quote and it is the ability to work on that recurring building as well so if that's something that you're looking into or something that you do today realize that cpq can do that for you and then the last one uh that i want to leave you with is the ability to update and take advantage of the working with the supply chain so um in your erp system the ability to see inventory that's available to see lead times to see you know last purchase price paid those types of things are all critical information that we like to take advantage of in oracle cpq to help the customer propose and put the right items in front of the customer with the realistic lead time without needing to pick up the phone and call someone or send an email or otherwise the systems talk to each other to get the answers thank you stan all right so uh we're gonna open it up for uh some questions uh some questions have been coming in uh throughout uh the uh the panel discussion uh with uh manish and arjun and so uh i'm gonna go ahead and just start uh asking some of the questions and then manish or arjun or stan for that matter uh just feel free to indicate which of you would like to take the question and we'll uh we'll try and do our best here to answer them so first question that came in do you integrate oral cpq with back end oracle erp and or did you integrate all of your quote master data oracle cpq cloud yes we did integrated oracle cpq with uh with our erp r11i r11a and we did not migrated any uh legacy siebel crm data into cpq so all the master data that is required for cpq like for example items priceless materials costing all these are residing in erp system all those are pulled into erp system and then stored in our cpq system all right thank you uh next question that came in how many users do you have on cpq to 450 uh direct team users and then for indirect team you know we're still rolling it out but at the end of when you're done with it we'll probably have about 300 more from our indirect side okay uh next question that came in how big is your biggest quote on oracle cpq how many line items yeah it it depends and i think it depends on uh agent to agent so so far what we have seen is a little over 200 lines on the code so there are our current system can handle more than that but so far i have seen is a little over 200 200 line items so i would say just add a little bit to that argent right so um you like other companies right have bundles as well and so bundles can actually have many more line items underneath that the erp system will explode out but from a sales perspective that number can be rather small but yeah 200 line pretty common um yeah we don't use the bundles yeah we don't use the bundles at our wrinkles and all our products we have a bunch of different products one of the standalone items and items and then one is a configurable product right the configurable products are all you have parent and child we are not currently maintaining the bill of material in cpq this all comes from the ebs so we just create we take it from ebs and we just create paid parent and child for other items are standalone and items ccns no parent and child it's just one item okay and like i said we do sell a lot of services you know care agreement and then rentals and all those things those all those are all configured within cpq and then we just created as a parent and child yeah not more than three four line items the majority ones are the configurable models which we add in cpq i think each model has roughly 30 lines in cpq got it all right next question uh how do you get costing in the oracle cpq is it done manually or via a process so currently the costing comes from oracle erp for us based on the costing we calculate our margins all the logic is done in cpq so the cost income for every material we have a cost in oracle erp so the cost comes based on the cost we do all the margin calculation and cpq like i said our pricing model is really complex we just get the basic information from erp the costing information all the margin calculation discounting the price margins are all done within the cpq got it uh this next question i think you've touched on but uh just in case uh maybe people have joined late talk a little bit about uh which uh which crm system you integrate to and as is oracle cpq cloud fully integrated to it yeah so currently our oracle crm is fully integrated with salesforce via manage package we start our sales user starts our journey from salesforce they log into salesforce they capture all the leads and accounts contacts whatnot information and then they start go to the opportunity from opportunity we create a coding process so we launch within sales versus an iframe oracle cpq but in terms of integration currently our oracle system is really complex we have 25 different integrations uh connected to from oracle cpq just to give a handful of them it's one uh with oracle leveling for the seamless order integration and two we do send all the care agreements and then the codes which goes to siebel crm through interface and we do have adobe adobe integration real-time audio of integration and we do have a google api integration and we do have a tax calculation those are just to mention the top ones but there are 20 20 plus different integrations in cpq excellent stan i'm going to direct this next question to you and then manish and arjun can feel free to chime in after but the question was does oracle cpq have a pricing engine that recommends a market price and if so how sure so um the answer is yes that's the the key of of the p portion of cpq is the pricing engine the pricing engine runs based on uh the order of operations in which we tell it to run but specifically how does it know what price is the right price there's some functionality that's new to oracle cbq that used to you used to have to buy separately but now is available as part of oracle cpq that uses segments and micro segments of customers based on the data it's part of the um machine learning and ai that you get as part of the subscription that takes into account the sales that you've done and the quotes that you've done and the results of those quotes wins and losses etc and looks for those associations of putting customers into segments so that's a very quick way of saying that they answer the question but um it can recommend a price based on a single attribute or on multiple attributes whether they are something that we've actually configured or something that you want to have driven by the machine learning algorithms that are available okay great thank you manish this next question is for you how long did it take to fully implement and deploy cpq uh i would say probably from end to end uh it took us almost about 18 months and uh i would say the first six months were really uh more about socializing getting uh buying from all the stakeholders you know socializing the business case uh you know we started off with a global product in mind so we we had workshops targeting our uh you know global uh team teammates to make sure it it worked overall so i would say six months of that and then about 12 months give or take to actually design develop implement the software and then about uh three to four months to uh you know deploy it right so we went through a uh you know deliberate cycle of deploying it to one area first and as a pilot and then deploying it the rest um i mean i guess we were caught by two major surprises along the way um one was obviously the coward that had right halfway point between uh uh you know development and the second big uh area of uh which was a bigger appeal for us was that uh you know the the ingersoll rand merger happened you know probably ha you know right on the same time covered which is on march and uh as a part of that there was a lot of organizational upheaval and we actually had to um you know uh we're working with a different vendor different system integration vendor uh and we realized that they were not allowed to work with us anymore because of some uh compliance issues uh with the new york so midway through the project uh you know we we had to kind of swap vendors out you know essentially while the project was in full swing we had to bring in asd at that time to kind of help us complete that uh which is something i would advise folks not to do i mean not not get ast but not swap vendors in the within the project you know if you don't if you have that choice uh that was uh and i would say probably added about three months to our overall timeline uh in terms of implementation so just to be clear if you had the swap vendors you would have brought asd in again right yes great uh next question uh i think i'm gonna ask stan uh address but then if if arjun and and manish have some additional thoughts would certainly welcome it um customize a product and then how does the system auto price and auto cost the product and cpq i think stan you touched a little bit on it uh in that last question but if you want to take this next one that would be great yeah this is really kind of this could be a long conversation but um there's a couple ways you could have the user put in these pre-configured id numbers right or smart part numbers um as as one way to start and then make configuration choices from there or they can search for a configured item a previously configured item um or they can copy it from another quote there are several different ways to do that or we have what's called guided selling and that where they go through and answer questions and basically it distills down big large lists into small lists of of what's available what's possible and then based on the items that are selected then the pricing engine will run and and produce the the uh what we call the system price and then any costs that are available whether it's replacement cost actual cost any kind of costs we can bring in from erp uh to show what that cost would be to identify what what that margin will be and does it get target margin oh there's a whole lot they can go up but a really high level that's how it can happen all right uh next question where where do you create the sales order and invoice so maneesh i guess for you guys i mean you can walk us through that if you want yeah in our case we uh you know again create the code in cpq and then uh push it down into our oracle 11i application which is where the actual order and then the final invoice to the customer gets generated all right um arjun this next question is for you how many full-time resources do you have managing oracle cpq cloud um yeah currently two including me we have one of your research one developer all right i think that wraps up all of the questions we'll be happy to address any additional questions um if not i just wanted to take the opportunity to um first of all thank uh our panelists arjun sagaram and manish coat i mean obviously uh you know customers of of ast and and and certainly uh it's been a joy to kind of work with you on this implementation but i really appreciate you taking some time just to um share with you share with everybody your story um about your journey through oracle cpq cloud um so just a quick thank you once again to to both manish and arjun for for your time and and for um your willingness to share your story and then also stan just wanted to thank you as well for for joining us uh today as well and sharing your insights as it relates to uh implementation and oracle cpq um so you might be asking you know what can you do next um and and quite frankly it's uh pretty simple um you're welcome to schedule a complimentary discovery session with us uh about your your next steps in your uh oracle cpq cloud journey uh we're happy to meet with you and and do a free discovery session with you to at least give you some things to think about or consider as you're contemplating this move um with that we're going to launch our very last uh poll question and uh that is you know how many uh are of you are interested in scheduling a complimentary discovery session uh with our experts here so uh feel free to uh fill that out and um and if there is an interest uh we certainly will be happy to get back in touch with you and uh follow up with you for sure uh with that so uh with that i just wanted to once again thank our panelists uh manish uh and arjun and stan cherry and i wish all of you a a wonderful rest of your afternoon and thanks once again for your time and participating in in our webinar today [Music] you