Streamline Your Sales Process with Complex Sales CPQ for Technology Industry

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all right the time is now 1001 being respectful of everybody's calendar we're going to get started here on time good morning or good afternoon depending on where you are it's a fantastic day on the west coast of Canada where essential software is based essential software solutions is a 100% Canadian software reseller and professional consulting firm that's been doing business across Canada for over 40 years you may affectionately hear me call a refer to them as ESS my name is dan calif i've been involved in leading software implementations in the erp space for over 20 years i've had the privilege of working with over 60 different businesses to implement erp and i've also helped add value to countless others today i'm here to show you how enforce EPQ can help you simplify and expedite the sale of complex and configured items we'll look at several tools including 2d and 3d automated design a little housekeeping before we get going this is a presentation not a discussion so I ask that you hold your questions and applause till the end of the presentation when I'll unmute the microphones and open the floor to questions also feel free to use the webinar built-in features to raise your hand or ask questions as we go and I'll pick those up at the end before we jump right into the tool set I thought I'd let a few of our product users speak about how they have transformed their sales organizations with cpq as well as a testimonial Quaker a window and door manufacturer talks here about how cpq is driving continued and steady growth year after year sanika a manufacturer of pcs and servers talks about how their costs have been reduced by eliminating errors returns and rework and having a building a product distributor credits EPQ for differentiating themselves in the market by making them easier to do business with so let's make sure you're in the right meeting cpq helps discrete manufacturers like you design markets sell make and deliver configurable products or product examples of industries we work with include industrial equipment high-tech specialty vehicles building products construction and agricultural equipment boats and watercraft and even fashion all of these industries have companies that can and do leverage cpq let's start by unpacking each letter of the acronym infor cpq provides the ability to see configure more than just products but also to include systems of products in services P for price not just to the end customer but also to calculate cost margins discounts price adders to drive dynamic pricing models and Q for quote is not just about generating a document it also addresses the need for self or and to enable self-service quoting across all sales channels with a web-enabled tool that will help users efficiently manage both simple and complex quoting requirements we also expand the typical definition of QT PQ by adding F for fulfill automating the quote to order conversion process to drive manufacturing requirements right to the shop floor while also providing the exams it the exact same powerful configuration experience within your ERP to manage the order changes cpq addresses tough industry challenges with a complete solution at the center of the solution is the product configurator which allows you to make easy to select and quick configurable products the product configurator is surround by surrounded by a set of applications which provide advanced capabilities such as design automation which allows you to include auto-generated CAD files and drawings as part of your sales and manufacturing processes the sales portal which extends the power of the product configurator to your sales channels making them self-sufficient and able to offer a superior customer experience you know if you already have an ERP the configurator can simply be a button in your estimating window or sales order entry window but the sales portal puts it out there on the web so that distributors can acts and customers can access it and there's no limit to user count on the sales portal as well as document automation which enables you to assemble and deliver complete accurate personalized proposals in minutes all of these capabilities deliver considerable advantage rather value to your organization and that value is amplified when it's connected to your ERP system our cpq address is tough market challenges like flatter declining sales increasing costs and brand commoditization flatter declining sales that are often the result of industry demand making products harder to sell reps aren't that productive and long lead time for the introduction of new products we see increasing costs that are driven by order errors rework and scrap and a lot of duplication of efforts or entry and brand commoditization that results from being difficult to work with or only offering cookie cutter products not exactly what the customer wants virtually no one creates an entirely new product anymore nearly are all products constitute variations or enhancements or improvements on existing items you can't create a product with attributes that never existed before but you can create a new variation on the existing attribute to create something unique and compelling that's enough to make most customers feel invested in the outcome guided selling through product configuration and customization increases customer satisfaction and loyalty by fulfilling your customers desire for an utterly unique product or experience and allowing for customers to have an active role in the formation of complex products it also provides customers with complete knowledge of the available options and components for current and future orders cpq addresses tough industry challenges with the complete solution that provides robust capabilities I'm just going to highlight five here five a rather easy configuration of complex product multi-channel quoting and ordering dynamic images drawings and models which we're going to get to here in a sec compelling proposals and brand control and anytime anywhere access cpq makes it easy to select and configure complex products with powerful and visually appealing experience this is an example of how a gearbox manufacturer uses a variety of techniques to guide a user to the right product whether it be through images radio buttons drop-down boxes it ensures only valid options can be selected and can even be set up to include additional features options or accessories to upsell the customer cpq provides a manufacturer branded self-service selling portal to empower all of your sales channels including inside sales outside sales regional managers dealers distributors manufacturer reps whoever with the ability to configure price quote and order products at the end of this presentation I'm going to show you some real-life examples of public web pages that use our configurator to help them sell and promote their products cpq has powerful visualization capabilities to support the selling and manufacturing experience whether it's static look-alike images like the bikes automated real-time rendered images like you see with the boat or dynamic 2d drawing or assembled 3d CAD models as you see with the door in the pump these capabilities can be used to provide visual confirmation of what the user is selected in addition to being used downstream in the manufacturing process cpq can automatically assemble a variety of documents the user needs to form a complete accurate proposal on a case-by-case basis the user can select whether they want to include things like cover letters spec sheets warranty information terms and conditions or whatever else and again I'm going to demonstrate all this in a few moments here whether you're working at your desk on the road or side by side with a customer cpq sales portal is accessible anywhere anytime literally on any device all right so let's jump into the software which is what we all came here to see so as you can see I'm accessing this through a typical web browser I'm just going to log in here there goes that woke up so what we're looking at here is the CPQ sales portal this is where a distributor or a sales agent would log in to create new quotes and proposals as well as customer details project details status enquiries on impress in process orders and you can really configure this for what you want people to see for today's session we're going to work in quotes that's where the value of CP Q is best demonstrated and here we can see insert on current and past quotes by entering your filters in the header here and searching there's nothing groundbreaking about this we've all seen these this type of grid before you know it shouldn't let me just go here and we'll create a new quote at the top we have some typical information that we can fill in like who the customer is and from here there are several options we can do a look-up on an item I like to use the product catalog because it demonstrates the variety and function of products that can go on here so it starts to feel like a buying experience right now whether we're looking at different products or types of products or product lines you break this up how you want to see it for today's example I'm going to go into equipment and I'm going to choose the cyclone here and I have a quantity of one so I'm just going to hit configure and this is where the configurator will what will come up and we start our collaborative buying experience okay so the cyclone is one of our most complex demo models it does both 3d and 2d rendering but what we see here is the ability to pick some various options so I can enter my value I can look it up to see what the different options are but as I do these different things it's actually changing the cutting information over here so what I'm demonstrating is how as I pick the different options of the product we're actually changing the cut sheet that's going to go to the shop floor as well as all the other drawings behind it but also later both our 2d CAD drawings and three-dimensional representation of what we're building so again different ways we can go through and pick our options but at the end of the day these are the options that are available we can't pick an invalid option also yes to the air ramp I will go with the 6-inch diameter I might put this to three you see as I hover over it it tells us it gives me more information I can also go over here and see that by hovering over the blue values as I scroll down there's different things I have to enter I'll just quickly enter some some values so that we can get to the good stuff excuse me the other thing I wanted to show before we actually do that over here is that behind the scenes the configurator can do all sorts of complex calculations so in order to render all these dynamic drawings and with all these circumference 'iz and diameters and curves there are some complex calculations going on behind the scenes we don't typically show this to a customer but I wanted to show it in the demo so that you can see that these in real time are being readjusted based on the values that I put in here okay so as we go through here we can see the options we can then look and see a summary of what we've purchased again we're looking at all of the calculations here but I can go ahead and finish this particular line item it shows up you know it shouldn't be a surprise everyone involved in the persuasion business knows that nobody argues with their own data successful sales professionals know the power of fine tuning a proposal to make it to make a client feel like it's their own idea a sense of ownership creates commitment unfortunately it isn't practical to apply the IKEA model to every industry you can't really ask a customer to configure his own medical device or construct to his or her own heating or cooling system but you can do the next best thing by offering your prospects configuration and customisation options during the quoting process in an age where customers expect to be able to make their own choices a company that can gracefully offer customers a range of options and features as part of the sales process can gain a major competitive advantage so it takes a few minutes because this is so complex for the system in the background that's worrying away to produce all those drawings that are required to send to the shop floor with the traveler once it goes over to the ERP so it usually takes about 2 minutes it's going to render out I think 6 2d models and one 3d while it goes through there I should also mention that at many different levels we have the ability to adjust price or change options we also have full revision control so if we were to send this quote out and the customer said hey you know I love that cyclone but could you just make this one change and you want to track and compare those changes we can create a new version just by clicking this button it will create a version 2 that we can then change version 1 remains in the system that we can then compare to let's see if we have our content yet there it is so this is where we can now see all of the the documents or drawings oh looks like I already did this that were created from that particular configuration that I did all of these are available to look at let's take a look at the 3d I'll just drop it in my may demo folder and again it's going to replace the one that's there and here again we can see my configured product from every angle inside or side that we want to see it we can zoom in if we want to take a closer look but this is exactly what I ordered this reduces errors this gives the customer of the prospect that sense of ownership all right so by employing product-focused CPU software the sales rep for this cyclone for example can guide a customer through all the options step by step explain the value of each option the customer can make the product choices that suits his/her own or introd his or her own interests as the customer chooses their options one after another other sense of investment in the product will increase this demonstrates how the system can take your inputs and apply complex calculation and create the entire product so let's create another product a little bit different but valuable known the same so I'm just going to find the Aussie window here which is the item that we want to configure and we're going to have a completely different look and feel to this experience this just speaks to the flexibility of the software so in this particular case we might be looking for a particular manufacturers product that we're looking to order so this is Southern Star we have the ability to pick the different types of windows so again I'm not selling a window so I'm not going to talk about the different features but this allows you to go through and select all the various options and the product series that's required you know and then we get the different product style so again visual representation of how these items are supposed to go together window panels yes we want window panels what panel type do we want we want the ventilated ones and again the drawing is being rendered in real time here on the right hand side various entries that we can put in here whether we're doing actual or rough opening these are important options in this particular industry but let's continue down this particular path here we have colors and finishes so for exterior color you can see that we're employing it another way to interact with the system I'll go with the black exterior color and make exterior all exterior colors the same so it automatically picked these values based on that selection had I selected know I would have manually picked these on the interior I'll go with the lacquer finish and I'll make these the same as well so it automatically populate those difference lowest light is from the floor again this is important for this particular product what glaze type do we want we want the double the deck or glazing none is the only option in this particular case and we'll continue to go through the process but at every stage we're getting visual feedback to the buyer or selling agent to make sure that we're doing the right thing I'm going to show manufacturing details because this is really important when we talk about integrating with an ERP I'm not showing an ERP here today and we integrate with many but when you do a configuration and we continue to walk through this what we're putting out to the ERP system is routing information so what are the operations and runtimes that need to go into this so this particular window needs to go have the materials picked we need to cut the top and bottom rails we need to do the insulated glazing seal and then it goes through packaging and the runtimes bill of material information also gets passed so you know what are the materials that we're using what are the sizes all of that information is calculated in the CPQ and then sent to the ERP to automatically create the work order on the shop floor but back to the buying experience here we can see all of our options if we see an option that didn't quite look right we can go back and simply click on that and it will take us back to that exact spot in the process so we can make a change but once we're ready we can go ahead and finish this particular item all right my third and final configuration model I'm going to demonstrate is an example process of how a company might deal with exception handling for really special one-of-a-kind requests this is how we might go about it so when the configuration won't handle something what do you do so I'm going to go through and I'm going to take an auger and it's going to find the options here and we're going to go configure and I'm going to start configuring this particular auger for my customer slower than usual I'm not quite sure what's going on in the background so what auger type I'm going to use my rock auger and I'm going to pick my options using the intuitive interface that comes with cpq okay I want that particular bullet tooth and I want to make a special request because they allow those I want some black pearl paint on this and I want to send an email for approval to engineering to make sure we can do this and what is going to cost just by clicking that button it tells me that my request is being sent to engineering for approval and I'll be notified of any changes to configuration and pricing right away so that's all I would have to do with the sales wrap now to simulate this properly what I'm going to do here is I'm going to log off I'm going to log in as Wendy Wendy's in engineering and although I'm not showing it Wendy would have received either a task or an email alert telling her that this particular quote required her attention she would have logged into the CPQ or the ERP went and found that order the particular options for the auger and what we'll see here is that Wendy has some available options that the sales reps don't is the engineer so here we can see the internal customer service engineering tab on after I do some investigation all might decide that this is worth about 1,500 bucks I'm going to approve this I'm going to have to we need to and I might have the part for it part for it here so I could add it to the bill of material but essentially I've marked this is complete I've approved it this can now carry on so I'll finish this the price populates over here this quote is now ready for the sales rep or distributor to present to the client or prospect the sales rep would have gotten an email or a task alerting them to the fact that this particular quote had been approved so I'll log off here again I'll log back in is Daniel only my grandma calls me Daniel so here's my quote I have everything I need I have my pricing and now we can evaluate and do the final prep before we send this to the customer now there's a few things we can do we can adjust the line price as a sales rep depending on again configuration and security you can control this or turn it right off but I wanted to show a lot of the flexibility here so there might be a manufacturer's discount that they pass on and we might want to charge a discount to the end user so they can see that and that will follow through into the sales order we can also do header level adjustments so we can do discount by percent off of list or a multiplier we can do pricing by markup or margin there's very there's near unlimited amount of ways you can set this up and configure it to be pricing the way you do your pricing for your business once we've got the pricing that we want we're basically ready to send this off for quote or for presentation rather so let's look at document automation I have my quote I have my items I've got the price that I want and I'm going to prepare the document here's where I can now configure the elements of my proposal I can choose a format standard logo will go with work it's beautiful I can include my cover page intro terms Orrantia et cetera I can do a line summary with option details and I'll just carry on from there so not only does it speed up the creation of the document what you also create is some real brand control if you're working with a hundred different distributors that are quoting and selling your products you know you don't want them all to be working off of different spreadsheets you want your brand to be consistent worldwide or as far around the globe as you do reach so what this does as we take a look at this is allow you to really really just drop this in here do that so here's my work is beautiful proposal as I scroll through this let me just zoom out a bit so it looks a little bit better we can see that it's auto filled my contact and company name it's put in my cover letter we've got the items that we ordered the dust collector the window and the auger followed by my terms and conditions and my warranty info so everything that I asked for is there that's brought this proposal is ready to send we can also do that right from the system here if we wanted to but we don't have any email integration setup here so this is essentially ready to go now you're probably thinking okay what I've seen here is all well and good it looks incredible but we need to hire a team of programmers to input and manage all the variations and all the flexibility that you just talked about we don't have an appetite for that and I'm going to disagree and say not so and to show you I'm going to break the one of the golden rules of a software demo and that's don't open the hood it's too complicated you'll lose people let's take a look because when you look at the back end of cpq this is the design studio for the configure price quote and what we can see here is we're looking at a window is how it's very intuitive and flows like a flow chart each one of these represents a rule or condition so a particular condition exists and then we can see all the details over here at the side so my base price is based on the window type and dimensions and all of these details are carried forth over here so with a robust and powerful tool set including all of the manufacturing rules and integration 2d and 3d tools you build these models for your products excuse me someone that understands AutoCAD or SolidWorks picks this program up really quickly it's very intuitive for them they use all the sorts the same sorts of logic that they would use to build up a drawing in their in their traditional environment ok so that's what I wanted to show on the backend design studio for today let me just jump back here and we'll go back to the slide deck all right so cpq enables you to design markets sell make and deliver your configurable manufactured products it helps you address tough market challenges such as declining sales and brand commoditization we do this with a complete solution that provides robust capabilities through an intuitive user interface all of this drives real value for your company by increasing your sales reducing your costs and differentiating your brand cpq is going to increase your sales because you're quoting in minutes not days and that drives more quotes for your business when you consistently cross-sell and upsell it results in larger orders faster and new product introductions allow you to grow market share because the design studio is so flexible and easy to work with and complete personalized proposals lead to better win rates and better brand can brand control you're going to speed up your sales cycle every day every marketing guru talks about engagement in the customer journey but you can't forget the journey must end with a sale while customer engagement can contribute to a successful customer journey the kind of engagement that that matters is the kind that increases the speed and probability of the sale cpq technology provides an essential fork in the road for the customer journey an exit ramp as it were from engagement to conversion it's the point at which you've clearly moved the customer from the marketing phase into the sales process in many cases cpq can help turn a prospect into a customer more quickly by offering an immediate concrete and compelling view of what the customer wants to buy and that's what you want to sell you'll have less friction the quoting process requires you to gather information from multiple sources calculating prices and quantities with options and parts and considering multiple details if you have it if you have to handle that process manually there's no way to avoid delays but when you use an automated process quoting requires less work and happens faster you'll be more responsive to buyers or customers ing to a recent report by Forrester emotion was the number one factor in customer loyalty across 17 of the 18 industries that were studied by allowing greater customer involvement in the configuration process with the CPQ system that gives quick visual feedback and a wide choice of options you engender a sense of ownership by the prospect that tends to lead to a faster sale and long term customer loyalty you'll have faster more accurate quotes the fact is nobody enjoys the drudgery of preparing RFP responses but a quick complete response to an RFP improves your odds of getting the business with cpq you can make RFP response is systematic by drawing all the drawing on all the elements of previous RFP responses that you've already saved in your cpq system cpq will keep your sales reps focused on selling people who master the art and science of selling a far more valuable ways to spend their time than doing paperwork preparing a quote it can cost between 75 to 90 K to replace a telesales employee and up to 300,000 to replace people in top sales positions by streamlining the process of pricing and quoting you free up their time to do what they do best and improve your odds of retaining Andres re and improve your odds of retaining top talent and it's going to differentiate your brand you'll be providing fast easy to use tools to make it easier to do business with you you're going to be offering a superior buying experience resulting in increased customer loyalty you'll be shortening the quote to delivery lead times by just having quicker turnaround on these quotes and you can also have more product options available to support your efforts in meeting your increasing set of customer demands by having them quickly added via configurator Aberdeen an independent research firm has compiled information across thousands of companies to publish these numbers comparing companies that use cpq solutions to those who don't understanding that the sales race is often a race one by inches and not miles these numbers are fairly significant so why should you buy in for cpq well here's the five reasons that I think are most important it's simply the best product on the market it's one solution for all your needs not only in cpq but potentially also in erp although we connect with many ERPs when you work with an N for ERP it's a single solution built on a single platform it works with all of your systems so it can also integrate to external systems as I alluded to you've got the expertise you can count on with infor as well as us at ESS and we're focused on customer go lives so let about that a little bit more like I said we have the best product in the market it's fast easy complete modern and provides a great user experience it's fast because it facilitates rapid configurations modifications and changes even on the shop floor after it's gone through quoting it's complete because it models all of your product knowledge and it's a great user experience because all the information you need is in one place cpq provides one solution that meets all of your organization needs whether it's engineering marketing sales our manufacturing for engineering I showed you can get 2d and 3d design automation based on standard templates and it can help you automate your special exception handling from marketing you get a consistent product presentation delivered to multiple sales channels for sales you get fast and easy quotes with personalized proposals and manufacturing will get accurate Bills of materials routings and the shop orders they need cpq is designed to work with your systems whether it's ERP CRM or CAD we also have an extensive list of ERP integrations over and above infor ERP including Microsoft the X and Epicor and Microsoft Dynamics CRM here's a complete list of all of our standard integrations we don't need to dwell on this but I just want to brag so the combination of essential software or ESS and and infor it really delivers the right mix of experience that you can count on there are some companies who have software and technology expertise but lack a deep understanding of your industry or local challenges and there are other companies of the software and industry expertise but lack the infrastructure and scale to deliver complete enterprise solutions as a team we deliver all three we understand the discrete menu the discrete manufacturing industry how software can be used to enhance your business and how to apply today's technologies to build it here are a couple of companies who have implemented cpq so why do business with infor well they're the third largest and fastest-growing enterprise software company in the world they have invested over 2 billion in products in the last three years and what that means to people like you and me is the rapid adoption of new technology and solutions like I just showed you they have a global presence with over 70 thousand customers and 194 contract countries and they have micro vertical solutions and industry expertise that you need to be successful and our applications are built for the enterprise the internet and social business why talk to essential software well we have a 40-year history of providing manufacturing software implementation and customization services to companies across Canada we have a team of 14 I believe with credentials include CGA and affix accreditation we have BCIT instructors on staff who teach manufacturing and distribution concepts at our local institutions we have over 80 successful implementations with a proven project management and implementation methodology that reduces the risk of any project like this we've excuse me we've done it a few times it's not our first rodeo and we help you achieve what you're looking for but don't just take my word for it come meet our people or we'll come meet you see a more in-depth demonstration and talk to our customers one of our sales were absolutely reaching out to you within the next 48 hours to get your feedback on what you saw here today and also just discuss what the next steps are for you in your evaluation of infor cpq well that's the end of my presentation today I hope I was able to show you a glimpse of how this solution might help your business increase sales reduce costs differentiate your blant brand and really sell complex products more quickly and more effectively again one of our sales reps will be contacting you shortly I'm just going to check here and see if we have any custom or any raised hands or questions I don't see any I'm just going to unmute all let's see if I can do that okay well I'm not quite sure how to unmute all so if anybody does have any questions please raise your hand using the the tool the GoToWebinar tool that's likely open on your right hand side of your screen okay so no questions no hands raise I'm going to give it ten more seconds and then I'm going to thank you for your time and sign off okay no hands or questions alright folks thank you for your time today I hope you enjoyed the presentation have a great day