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hi guys good morning afternoon um good  evening wherever you're joining from   uh welcome to our webinar we're just gonna  give it a couple more seconds to see if   uh others are gonna join and  then we'll get started quickly all right i think we can kick this off again for  those who've just joined welcome to our uh webinar   implementing cpq gotchas and best practices  before we start i'd like to go over a couple   of housekeeping messages uh you all be muted but  you have every opportunity to ask questions in the   qa box on your right side also this webinar will  be recorded and you'll receive a recording right   after the first of july here in the us so tuesday  the fifth um with that i'd like to introduce uh   bradley's haley and cloudwerx's rui and i'll hand  it over to haley to introduce herself hi everyone   thanks for joining and welcome i'm excited to  talk cpq implementation today i lead marketing   and revenue operations so the technologist side  of me is incredibly passionate about implementing   technology and software correctly to empower  users and so i think there's a lot to cover here   and excited to have rui join from cloudwerx rui i'll let you say hello cool thanks ellie   uh yeah great to be here i'm rui fonseca i head up  the revenue cloud practice within cloudwerx i've   been in kind of this this area already for quite  a few like seven eight years uh since my kind of   early days at stillbrick so yeah excited to share  a bit of kind of our experiences uh within this   domain and yeah good for the opportunity  awesome well to get started we're actually   going to start with a poll of the audience  that shannon's going to pull up for us here and while people answer i just want to   point out this webinar is geared towards people  that are you know earlier in their implementation   but don't worry there's plenty of good best  practice for those who may be for very long   um also some gotchas to look out for and  maybe how to get out of them if you've   already run into these things and these  issues so let's see as the polling comes in we seem to have a 50 50 split between planning on  implementing and already implemented um so that   is this we'll have something for everybody then okay so before we get into the actual software  discussion and implementation discussion   cpq is a major digital transformation for any  business that's adopting this this technology   and as such you're going to want to think about  your overall change management process because   the people and process part of change management  is often way more difficult than the technology   side of it which can be the easiest part rui  what tips do you have for driving engagement and   adoption of the solution long term so that we're  not just implementing technology that doesn't use   yeah um i guess it's it's always kind of that  triangle like people process and technology so i   think from experience it all depends on also like  the maturity level of the customer with regards to   salesforce if they're kind of just starting with  salesforce if they're already salesforce users   and that are just transitioning into cpq and  how kind of how their current selling processes   um so it's a question of discussing that with with  the customer understanding where they're kind of   well what's their situation and how can kind of  things can be put in place in order to make that   um kind of a bit easier because it's quite  it's quite a change um so I guess then   you can assess in terms of like what you need to  focus more if you need to focus more on kind of   on training um kind of you bring um at what point  you bring kind of super kind of super users into   the mix so that they kind of start getting  uh into kind of the the flow of things within   uh during the project life cycle and then when  it actually goes live um they are already kind of   fluent in the platform and all the functionality  being put in um but i guess always kind of the   main recommendation we we give is to kind of start  as simple as possible and in order also to kind   of get some value to the business as quickly  as possible so not bring all the kind of all   the complexity up front um and just kind  of adopted a bit of kind of a land and expand   type of approach uh which which typically  works much better in terms of kind of also   getting the adoption in and and people start using  the system um and being happy with basically with   uh with what they are using and also having  them involved in terms of providing feedback   and um providing suggestions in terms of how the  the the tool can evolve along the time as well   and that's going to be a theme throughout today  start simple and then add layers of complexity   or sophistication um the other thing before  you jump right into you know hands-on keyboard   building cpq that's important  to think through is the people that are   involved outside of those who would  be hands-on keyboard and building you need to really align the right resources up  front and i know when cloudworks partners with a   customer to implement cpq you typically involve an  executive stakeholder maybe some sales operations   enablement product experts um and then again those  end users that are ideal super users are also   great for testing can you expand a bit on kind of  what role each of these stakeholder groups play in   an implementation project yeah sure um so yeah  so from an executive sponsorship point of view   it's someone that kind of shares kind of the  vision and the expectations in order of what that   project is going to bring to the business and  which is pretty much pushing that agenda within   the customer itself and and kind of sponsoring  the whole um the whole initiative um from a   sales point of view of course because cbq is much  more on the sell side so having the involvement of   either sales operations in order to advise around  kind of processes and can provide all the um you   know all the inputs that um we would need in terms  of implementing it correctly and aligning to the   um to the business needs and and requirements and  then enablement in order to help that training and   adoption and and all that um and holding after go  live and it's also critical um product experts for   sure because um like products and pricing are the  core of any cpq implementation so you pretty much   need to bring those um SMEs into the um into the  project so we know and we can understand clearly   how that commercial offering is defined and and  how can we expose that from a cpq point of view   and of course it uh and um as a typical owner then  of the of the platform itself um in providing that   will provide then also the um continuous um  care around the around the solution um and and   of course end users because they will be the the  final um the final people that will be using it   on a daily basis so definitely you need to bring  them early on um so that we can get all feedback   required but also and to do help in terms of  testing and can be can become the advocates of the   tool um and that that will just make things easier  from uh from a go live and roll off point of view   and i know it's tempting to kind of jump straight  into okay i need sales experts who know the sales   process and i need product experts to know the  product and you know we'll deal with id and then   testing when it comes to but i think a lot of cpq  projects get delayed when it's unclear who can   have a final answer to a question or know where  to go and i think having that executive sponsor   is so critical um because they are often the ones  that can kind of break through all the clutter and   get answers that are needed so that you can keep  the project moving when it comes to the actual   team who will be implementing um the the actual  configuration of cpq you know a cpu admin   typically within it but maybe also sits within  sales operations depending on kind of the   hierarchy of the particular company um what  are some of the best practices skill sets that   a customer is going to want to make sure that they  have when they're going through implementation   yeah so i guess our recommendation is  always to have someone that would already be   you know ideally be trained in in this in  cpq up front uh that can kind of be a part   of the whole engagement and can follow up in  terms of everything that is being put together   um so which will make much easier for for for  things in the future um in because i think one of   the main differences of cbq is its configuration  as we'll kind of touch on a bit later is a bit   different than the normal kind of sales force  approach um so it's all very kind of data driven   um so i guess here kind of the knowledge  of how kind of cpq would um is is set up   and is configured or the whole data the whole  object model that supports cpq is definitely   uh critical in order to because  cpq is one of those tools after really you're still there i i am i wasn't  sure if you lost me or if i lost you   i'm afraid you might have been free oh no  well hopefully he can join us um back here   shortly we will do our best to continue on in  the meantime um as ruiz said this is you know   a very complex product that is implemented  a little bit differently than you know your   sales cloud or service cloud implementations  there are cpq certifications that you can   earn from salesforce and that's always helpful  and i think because of this amount of knowledge   that you need to have to implement cpq a lot of  customers engage a a consulting partner to help   with that initial implementation and kind of the  training as they go so that they can take over   you know and maintain it longer term particularly  if they don't have someone you know already on   the team that knows how to manage cpq or has  done it before um so with that we have another   poll shannon if you can t that up for us um just  curious how many people whether you are already   implemented or considering implementing um or just  starting how many used a partner or considered it so it's looking like we're pretty split again well nope yes yes it's taking the lead quickly  here um i think we can probably close this one   yeah yeah two-thirds used a partner are planning  on using a partner and a third have not um   rui have you been able to join us back  there you are just in time um no no wi-fi the life of the digital webinars um so  our poll informed us that of the audience   two-thirds are planning on using a partner or  did use a partner in their implementation and   the third did it on their own um so i will turn  it over to you on this one what for those who   may be around the fence or haven't decided who  to go with what what's important to consider   when evaluating implementation partners yeah  yeah i think it falls down under kind of these   three kind of main areas uh of course capability  is key as well so that we kind of there's   a partner involved that are like either kind of  revenue cloud accredited that have kind of good   credentials and success stories behind kind of  implementing um kind of a cpq solution so that's   definitely core but i guess also it's definitely  key in terms of that alignment with the customer   itself so from a cultural fit point of view um  so that um kind of there will be you know almost   like kind of speaking the same kind of the same  language in in in pretty much aligned in terms of   kind of the way to kind of manage and so that  they'll pretty much get along along the way um   and um so that that could be kind of a joint  exercise because uh in in an initiative like this   one you want um kind of everyone kind of aligned  to the to the to the end goal into the final   objective and with with an initiative like this  kind of customer in partner will go kind of hand   in hand in order to to achieve that so which kind  of leads into that adaptability side of things as   well so each customer has its own needs some of  them just totally rely on the partner to deliver   things end to end others already have some  capability internally and want the partner   to come in and help them with uh align with  their own team in order to deliver that so   i think that flexibility that kind of on the  partner side as well in order to align all of that   in terms of what the customer wants to achieve and  how they want to achieve it it's definitely key so   that you can kind of hit the ground running from  from day one yeah i would i would agree there's   you know a lot of practices and varying levels of  expertise when it comes to revenue clouds so these   are all good things to consider in the decision if  you do decide to go with an implementation partner okay let's get into the core domains of cpq the  nuts and bolts of how this product works for you   so we'll go into each of these in more detail in  a minute i think to set the stage it's important   to understand cpq is developed iteratively on  the left we have the fundamental cpq domains   these are things that are essential for every  single implementation and it's important that   you do them in this specific order to be the  most successful and to have the less rework   on the right are the secondary domains and these  will apply for some people all of them but not   for everyone in particular and when you get  to this stage you can start to do this in any   order that you would prefer and even in parallel  there's less dependencies on the secondary domains really a full implementation might take  you know several months six months but   that's no reason you can't start  delivering some of the functionality   to your sales reps and have them start  using within the first month or two   can you explain more about how customers can see  faster time to value for their cpq implementation   yeah i think kind of touched a little bit earlier  on that i think that kind of land and expand   approach is always the one that kind of helps  kind of bringing value as early as possible to the   business so it's it's almost like an mvp kind of  a approach where like up front you identify when   talking with the customer kind of identify all the  kind of all the pain points that you need to solve   all the requirements that we want to implement  but then you kind of prior do a prioritization   exercise in order to okay how what is actually  needed for day one that we want to ensure um that   is there or for the business to start leveraging  um but also align in terms of how can we kind of   get that value early on so it's it's typically  a kind of it's that prioritization exercise in   terms of defining the um the implementation  project in kind of into different phases   and and keep it as as simple as possible uh  up front so you can you can just start hitting   and hit the ground running and have kind of  sales users um using the the solution as early   as possible and but which will already kind of  solve a good a good bunch of their pain points uh   up front um and then they basically  can realize value uh kind of earlier um   in india just start taking the benefits uh  as quickly as possible yeah and it's really   really following an agile development methodology  when you take a step back and think about it   within salesforce and within cpq in particular um  it's you know this complex iterative development   process there's always room for errors and bugs  once you've released some functionality to users   you don't want to kind of sour them on cpq as a  solution for them by you know breaking it early   on um so testing's super important salesforce  best practice for development in general but   specifically especially for cpq says you know  start development in building functionality and   independent kind of development environments  where you're not competing with others work   you know test in an immigration environment  maybe do some uat in a separate environment   and then you release to production um rui why why  is it so important that you really do consider   adopting this best practice for for  development for cpq yeah i think   like having this this this type of approach like  a normal kind of devops type approach to things um   of course it's a best practice from any salesforce  implementation with cpq even i think it gets even   more important because we are talking about kind  of the data element the data configuration side   element of things um and because for example  like cpq doesn't provide anything that will   allow like kind of versioning or testing things  uh up front so you need kind of all this structure   in place to make sure that you're not changing  anything in production already that you that   may impact the user so you want to make sure that  all those changes are properly going through this   um kind of through this process and and managed  as like any any other development life cycle   uh from from an implementation point of view so  that's definitely critical in terms of um kind of   making sure that this uh any cpq implementation  is also aligned to this type of approach   um because you'd any anything that you could  incorrectly push to push the production can   definitely impact um with regards to  things like products and pricing and   even down the line of selling something  incorrectly to a customer that you shouldn't   you shouldn't sell for example um so it's all  preventing uh errors and in managing in ensuring   everything is correct from uh from the start so so  yeah in order to kind of minimize and mitigate all   of those all of those risks it's definitely  key to have something like this in place   yeah at the end of the day this is your company's  revenue engine um so there's a very low tolerance   for mistakes definitely you do not want to have  to you know go to a customer and say i'm sorry   we quoted you the wrong price we're not able to  honor that or on the flip side be told you know we   have to honor this and we're going to lose money  on this this customer that's never something you   want to be responsible for because you pushed a  change and it wasn't fully tested which leads us   to the second thing and you've kind of alluded  to this before cpq when you're implementing cpq   you really need to invest in deployment automation  to move your changes to production and you've   mentioned configuration data and how cpq's  developed a little differently than other things   in salesforce can you explain more about the  unique challenges of release management for cpq   yeah so again it's configuration data  so pretty much what the majority of   the cpq configuration is done on with data in  regular objects within uh within salesforce and   in the only kind of out-of-the-box way  for this to kind of be promoted or um   go through all that release management  process is um like through um data loader or x   and excel sheets where you need to manage  almost like an object by object um in   in in that way so you need something in place  that allows you to kind of move these kind of data   structures properly ing um kind of ing  to this um to this development um kind of life   cycle um that ensures that all of that is moved  correctly and accurately across across the board   for each of the each of the environments and and  that's pretty much where kind of properly comes in   and helps on on on kind of with with those  challenges and and provides that kind of   accuracy in terms of managing that those releases  correctly yeah that's definitely how we started   working together with cloudworks is helping  your implementation team automate some of these   these things that would normally be handled  by change sets but within cpq is not so   all right into the meat and potatoes um the the  core domains of of cpq the first and biggest most   important is your product catalog um there's gonna  be two big themes throughout all these domains but   it's especially important with product catalog  the first is this is your opportunity to rethink   everything about how you're currently quoting  and selling customers you are investing in cpq   to digitally transform your business you are not  just trying to rebuild the pricing spreadsheet   that your sales reps have been sharing around  the sales for um on the other side of things   you want to keep cpq the the core build of  it inside the box so to say um because these   things build on each other the more you push  your product catalog to do something unnatural   that it wasn't designed to do in the system to fit  every edge case the harder it's going to be to do   every single following domain and implement those  so as we've said many times before start simple   um you don't want to build up and amass a bunch  of debt from over kind of customization early   on um i think one reason rui that people are  tempted to go this route is because they're   concerned about integrations downstream  particularly erp systems um you have   much more experience with integrations than  i do do customers really need to design their   cpq to match their erp or another system  they're trying to integrate to uh no idea because typically like the view from on  products from erp it's more kind of from   a kind of a backend kind of back end view  and and on cpt you want that view to be more   a commercial a commercial view um so i ideally  like in in every and every engagement typically   you go through a kind of a good product kind of  rationalization exercise up front so that you can   definitely kind of this design and  structure your kind of product model   in a way that will fit into the way that the  customers is selling um and and that may not   be totally aligned with uh how kind of that vision  is on the erp side uh so then it's it's it's more   like a that's where kind of integration for  example comes in in order to help kind of   solve um solve those problems um but yeah  ideally you're not like you shouldn't be   um and having that restriction in terms of  how you're going how you're going about your   product model exercise constrained in terms  of the way that erp is looking at products the next domain is product bundles um this  is once you figure out what's actually a pro   like truly a product um uniquely a product and  not just a variation on a product that's where   bundles can come in um you can use these to assign  different attributes like colors um for example   what other tips do you have  for designing product bundles um yeah like product bundles is  so definitely they can reflect how   customers also kind of typically bundle uh  products together but not only like within   within cpq you typically leverage bundles  as well in order to drive like the business   rules and business logic that you want to to  implement so that's definitely useful in order to   make sure that you're like whatever the user is  configuring is accurate and and also like what   that configuration element is also making their  lives easier because through the rules you can   automatically kind of do things like not showing  uh options that they shouldn't be selling in that   specific situation based on attributes based  on compatibility with other products etc so   the bundling capability can can definitely help on  driving that much in a much easier way from a user   experience point of view um so that's definitely  kind of bundling is definitely a key feature   um that you that that typically we can we can  leverage in order to kind of deliver those those   requirements in those specific business rules that  customers want to achieve these are definitely   more powerful than just like packages  that you would offer to a customer   um i think it's also important to be aware this  is how your sales team will be presented with   their options for selling value and selling  a whole solution so you don't want to throw   the entire kitchen sink into a bundle you  want to limit it to what they truly need   to help them sell more effectively all right our  third domain is pricing strategy this sets the   starting price of your products the price that  you're going to suggest to sales is the first   price um but it also can help you when we get to  the next domain which is approvals um and we'll   talk about that in a minute when we get there  how should people approach the pricing domain uh i think it's one of those that uh also start  simple and then kind of work from there um i   guess um the the pricing capabilities allow  enough to to bring a lot of kind of logic   in into it that you you can kind of make things  um easier from a from a user point of view that   you you can control things like um either like  how the how the pricing gets applied if it's   just kind of a static scenario if  it's a more kind of dynamic type of   way of calculating the pricing which would  facilitate that from a from a user point of view   but also when we think about discounting for  example you can already bring kind of a lot of   rules in place that you can control and you can  already start providing a bit of governance there   um that then is kind of replicated  across across the organization   and kind of making sure that everyone who's using  the tool is pretty much kind of pricing the same   way through the same rules and there's quite a  lot of kind of consistency in governance there excellent so that is our first three  the fundamental cpq domain so quick   reminder from here we're going to go  into the secondary domains these can   be done in any order and in parallel  and some of them may not apply to you   um it should be pretty apparent when we get  to those that don't apply so approvals the   the great thing about if you've really taken  the time to go through the first three domains   and simplify your business processes you've got  a huge head start on the approval process um   so as you mentioned discounting is something  you can control within the pricing strategy   um so a lot of the pricing strategy can make  approvals that were necessary before you had   cpq kind of redundant or completely unnecessary  can you give us some other examples of where that   could apply um yeah like approvals will definitely  kind of bring that governance element right so um   in in depending on organizations there's uh kind  of some various kind of simple approaches which   is pretty much based on kind of what's the amount  of discount that is being provided uh to to the   customer or a much more elaborate approval process  so there you kind of have the options of um kind   of either leveraging standard approvals which is  pretty much the standard salesforce process uh   from a from an approvals perspective or you could  if you have uh if you're leveraging cpq plus um it   comes with an advanced approvals module which kind  of allows for more uh kind of complex scenarios   that um either you have very many kind of streams  in parallel approving a specific deal that you can   that you need to kind of take into consideration  uh not and usually it's like goes beyond the sales   organization itself um and it could go to for  example like legal food to product management etc   um so this provides that kind of level of  automation that you can bring into the picture   um but also i think that's this is another  another area that um yeah you can bring this all   this control um but also like when you're starting  with something it's brand new as cbq if you don't   if you don't had like a a real kind of an  an implemented approval process in place   it's also an area that you you should  kind of start small and start simple   um just necessary to provide that additional  governance capability and then build up from that   uh because we've seen some some cases where um  adoption was highly impacted in terms of uh from   because of very complex approval uh cases which  led to some kind of frustration from from users so success in terms of adoption  is always kind of obtained with   a bit more kind of flexibility initially  and then kind of start building from there   yeah your you're implementing cpq to allow your  sellers to quote faster and close business faster   you don't want to slow them down with unnecessary  approvals and it's good to remind you know that   the broader stakeholder group cpq won't allow  incorrect product configuration if you're setting   things up it won't won't allow them to go around  the rules so a lot of those kind of double check   the quote before it goes out and that may be  needed to happen prior don't need to happen now   my final fun tip for for this domain is don't  underestimate the kind of psychological effect   that approvals can have and using that to your  advantage um within the quote line editor you can   actually display messages or even images to show  reps the level of approval that that particular   quote configuration will need um and depending  on how arduous that will be for them they may   you know try to sell more align to the way  you want them to be selling so that's always   something you can leverage as well all right  quote templates as a marketer this is probably my   my favorite domain this is you know my chance  of the marketing function to rein in those ugly   quotes that our sales reps are sending  out sometimes um and this is also one of   the domains that people have the most opinions  about so my personal advice on that matter is   design is subjective um you know i i have to have  this discussion a lot as a marketer you may not   like this color but it might be the best thing  for this objective we're trying to achieve so um   keep the the cooks in the kitchen to a minimum  if you can and try to separate the decisions of   what needs to be included on the quote in terms of  the information that the customer actually needs   separate from you know how do we want this  to like be laid out what font do we want   to use what what color if you can keep those  decisions separate it should be a bit easier   to get that final approval for the quote  document that you're going to be sending   um other tips that you have rui for  for navigating quote template design   yeah as you mentioned it's all about like thinking  about the customer experience like what what will   be their kind of reaction in terms of getting  that document uh from um from the organization   and so that in that it will be kind of the  document will contain clearly what they are   actually kind of buying how much it will cost  all the kind of terms and conditions that they're   agreeing to um but like so it needs to be like  consistent clear but also not overly complex so   um which will then kind of be much much easier  for for customers to understand um things like   language is typically uh for organizations  who sell to a lot of different geographies   is definitely something that should be kind of  considered and and then you can leverage um kind   of capabilities like the dynamic dynamic kind of  templates where you can manage content dynamically   based on a specific uh series of criteria  and data points uh that can help in terms of   building those and generating those documents uh  in in a much efficient way which will be kind of   um a very good from a customer uh  customer experience perspective all right hot topic in cpq is guided selling  this is a feature that will pop up a kind of a   flow almost for for users to go through i know  many many people actually recommend not using   the feature and using other features within  cpq to create that guided selling experience   for your reps without having them locked into  that that flow what's your take on that really it it usually depends on the catalog itself um  so if if it's a very extensive catalog definitely   something that could be uh could be useful uh  depends on the proficiency of the sales team   as well in terms of knowing what their their own  catalog and how did they how did can they find uh   the products that they need to match what the  customer requires um so it's it's almost like   a case by case in terms of how considering kind  of the the the user like what the customer wants   to achieve in how to deliver that um so we know  always know that guided selling that capability is   there we can we can leverage um but as you said  there's other ways of managing that the way to   kind of get to the products that you need so  it's yeah it's it's it's a case-by-case scenario   that you can typically determine do we really  need it uh it will it it's all about how the   user experience would be uh so if it will improve  the user experience and it will make life easier   for who's using the tool definitely uh if if  just if it's just bringing like if it's just a   a step which is not very valuable for  them yeah maybe maybe not using it so   i think considering your sales  process here is important too   guided selling is really great if you're building  a quote kind of in real time with the customer   um because it can it's it's formatted as kind  of a question prompt so you can be having that   conversation as you're building the quote with  the customer but if your sales process relies   on a lot of discovery well in advance of needing  a quote you're collecting all that information   and ideally your reps are storing that on you know  the account the opportunity and the quote record   and that information can be  actually used to dynamically   automate what the product selection uh  the rep sees when they actually go to   configure that quote so it's maybe you  know redundant or unnecessary there and   encourages better data capture earlier on in your  sales sales process which i'm always a fan of   all right renewals and approvals sorry that  should say amendments my proofreading failed me   renewals and amendments um are one of those things  that's really great for recurring businesses   where you know this is where sales for cpq  from a cpq product perspective really stands   out obviously not applicable to businesses that  are not selling recurring products or services   um and as you go through the earlier domains  your product catalog you'll probably have   figured out how what products can renew what  need would potentially need to be amended   um the big question here is how will you  manage renewals and amendments um on the   when it relates to quotes and opportunities  and what do customers need to consider rui yeah it's it's definitely a key um in in one of  the kind of big functionalities that cpq provides   especially if you're selling on a recurring on a  recurring model um like amendments are critical   to manage in-flight changes when customer  is already within within a specific contract   and renewals in order to continue the customer  um kind of continue to keep the customer   um so it's definitely areas that need that are key  to be considered because the way you're handling a   new sale may not be the same way that you handle  an amendment also an in-flight change to uh   to an existing contract and in the same with  uh with renewal so it's definitely key to get   um to get a good understanding in  terms of how kind of all those two um   the how those processes are managed from a from a  business point of view that you can kind of bring   into the into the configuration into the logic  in order to to manage that uh appropriately so   um for with renewals for example like when  uh because renewals impact definitely impact   forecasts the business forecasts so how do when do  you create them uh when do you trigger kind of the   opportunity the renewal opportunity creation so  that you can already start looking into how that   will impact your uh your business forecast and  how and and basically when should sales reps start   working on them in order to start negotiating  with with their own customers in terms of how how   are they going to to keep that customer um kind of  loyal in into the into the organization um so yeah   this these two scenarios are critical and are  kind of an essential part to any successful uh   implementation um and again especially with an  organization that will sell on a recurring basis   yeah but being one of those those types of  business businesses um and we rely on cpq   of course it is super powerful to be able to  have my forecast for you know next year next   quarter whatever it is and have those renewals  um and amendments just automatically factor in so   i know not only what am i bringing in from a new  business side but what am i expecting to renew and   where am i expecting to grow those customers the  last domain is order management and like renewals   and amendments this isn't going to apply to  everyone this is really for customers who either   physically fulfill products or need to provision  products in some way once they've been sold   it's super powerful um what do customers need  to think about when it comes to using orders yeah so orders are like the the next  step to a finalized sale right so as as   you mentioned earlier is when like a customer  actually needs to fulfill or provision those   products to the customer so are definitely  key to kind of initiate those processes as   well so for example like typically when we  have an engagement where you need to hand   over kind of that finalized sale to um kind of  a provisioning system or a fulfillment platform   that's order is typically the the handover  point uh for through integration to those   uh to those systems so it's it's where you're  actually kind of tracking your bookings against uh   on the on the things that that were sold um and  then you can also use them to manage things like   um kind of a line adjusting start dates of um  of subscriptions or start dates of um kind of   the fulfillment in the delivery of those products  to the to the customer so definitely key from an   end-to-end uh process um and and it needs to be  kind of it's a key element if if we are thinking   in terms of integrating then kind of sales force  with other external systems in order to um to   trigger like fulfillment provision provisioning  and even billing uh as well yeah this is kind   of the main integration point for salesforce  billing if you do decide to add that on to your   eq implementation all right that brings us to our  last question topic what comes after the initial   implementation you know at some point you're going  to go live and you'll have worked your way through   the applicable eight core domains of cpq and  you're you'll be in kind of maintenance mode um so   knowing that cpq is this living breathing software  application the more prepared you are to manage it   long term i think the better you'll be some tips  from from bradley when we think about applying   kind of best practices for agile development  and devops solutions this is your pricing engine   um this is where you're keeping pretty critical  pricing data um so data governance is incredibly   important to think through in terms of how do  you move data between these environments who has   access to do that how do you keep that data secure  if you have strict compliance regulations this is   super super important so that you can track  the changes to your pricing information and   track back how did you go from one  price to another price for a customer   the second kind of tip or best practice  is in addition to deployment automation   you can actually integrate cpq to a source  control and do source driven development   probably offers an integration to several major  git repositories to configure this for you   um and that allows you to just accelerate that  innovation and accelerate the pace at which   you can change and update and maintain cpq  while being you know adding another layer of   kind of risk mitigation which is always great  um given the impact that some of these mistakes   could have to your you know your sales team and  your customers and then the final is um you know   regression testing so when you're going through  an implementation you're having sign-offs you're   checking you know we've delivered this feature is  it built you know that unit test is it built to   spec you can actually turn those into regression  tests cases with probably to make sure that as   you're continuing to update things you're not  introducing changes that maybe broke something   that was working before because you don't want  your sales people or your customers worst case   scenario to find this so kind of think that like  a smoke alarm for bad quotes or bad contracts   um really what else do people need to consider  when they make this transition from you know   implementation initially to you know post go live  state yeah it's it's definitely key to think about   how you're going to kind of take care of uh take  care of the of your kind of cbq solution um like   going live is just the first step of that  of that process um and as you mentioned   it's this is a tool that delivers kind of  business uh outcomes and and it's totally reliant   on kind of products pricing and all the kind  of the business rules that you that you're   putting around governing your sales process so and  those are all things that will continue changing   along the way so you need to have an either a  team structure in place um either internally or   through a partner depending on like whatever  scenario um but in the tools in place to help uh   manage that um so so that's definitely um  definitely key that you have that clear   ownership from a business and from a team  point of view who is responsible for either   maintaining and then but then also all those  considerations around testing and making sure that   like we are not kind of bringing any issues or or  errors into the into the live system uh but then   you also have like the tools that help supporting  that um so so yeah definitely that's that's key   awesome so we do have some time left for  questions i will pause on our last slide here   um give people a chance to enter any questions  that you have in the question or raise your   hand and we can take you off of mute we  do have a couple of you know next steps if   you are struggling either with implementation  um or with kind of the release management side   of you know making an implementation be successful  rui i'll let you go first um if you want to give   more context around what what a scoping call  entails um and what a customer would potentially   get out of that yeah so i think discovery  is definitely something critical for for an   implementation for a cpq implementation and that's  like that scoping call is also it's always what   we what we want to achieve within that scoping  call that's always what we want to achieve is to   understand better like what's the what's the  use case or the car the main pain points that   customer wants to address and and already start  understanding a bit more in terms of product   model and pricing and all these domains that we  that we touched on a little bit um so that we can   provide what will be kind of our recommended  approach to uh for the customer to address that   um and and to provide kind of a clear uh a clear  initial view in terms of what would a typical   cpq implementation entail and then pretty much  kind of go from there so i think our always our   aim is to make sure that we estimate  things properly and correctly up front and   which then make the whole implementation cycle  much much easier and definitely successful   and on the proudly side if you are interested  in seeing how we can help you um both set up   the development environments where you're going to  be working with keep them in sync with production   automate some of those deployments like as  easily as you would with change sets but for   that specific cpq configuration data we we would  be more than happy to give you a personalized demo   there's a link where you can sign up for it or  just respond to the follow-up email that we we   send out for for either cloudworks or for broadly  we will pass along the information um shannon have   we had any questions come in oh hi i'm back hello  again hello uh there is one uh joe who's asking   uh or saying we're considering cpq because it is  point-to-click and it's easy for admin to manage   would there still be a developer  necessary to manage any releases yeah so that's a great question no really  if you don't mind i'll start and then   if you have additional ideas um what what  is necessary for deploying cpq is a strong   knowledge of your object model um or a deployment  tool like bradley and that's where i think we have   um some capability so that you can keep  it without having to have somebody like   very technically um aware of cpq and the different  object relationships the order of operations in   which you have to upload um upsert those records  how to you know do that in a way that doesn't   create duplicates because you don't want multiple  duplicates of you know critical things like price   rules and product rules and discount schedules um  so that is kind of where where proudly got started   um was to solve that because you know we don't  think you should need a developer an architect   to be able to do this successfully you should  be able to do it through a point-and-click ui   that we provide um rui i don't know if you  have any additional thoughts on this topic   yeah like it's typical like develop for the  majority of the um changes that uh that could   be done don't don't actually need a developer um  just because of the nature how cpq configuration   uh happens of course for example like uh we see  sometimes uh customers um giving the ability for   example to the business in order to pro to  do changes around products and pricing uh   information which are typically the ones that uh  kind of change more often and don't have like any   impact in terms of the whole kind of business  rules and the whole um process um so those are   safer safer to be to be adjusted um but even with   doing some configuration changes uh on on things  that could like for example like adjusting an an   approval criteria or adjusting a specific product  rule that's delivering some some type of logic um   as you said hey it's a question of having  that kind of functional knowledge and that   data model understanding around cpq and then  like leveraging the tool like probably that   you can that you can safely then make sure that  what you're deploying into into production is   like it's it's valid and it's not causing any um  any issues or any errors to to what's in place   um i think shannon i saw someone raise their  hand i don't know if you caught who that was yes   it was and she actually posted the question um a  brandi who asks if broccoli only migrates data or   does it also migrate metadata she is familiar  with using capado essentials for this purpose   but interested in what broadly has to offer no  we offer both um there's maybe 10 very specific   more obscure metadata types  that we don't currently support   um but it's you know really edge case stuff so you  can absolutely use proudly to migrate both data   and metadata you can solve your  release challenges across the board definitely yes you know you've seen it you know  like we're like we we use probably in any of   our um kind of revenue cloud engagements and even  beyond that um so so yeah like that can definitely   um like we're heavy users of uh of broadly  and and for and for a long time so can   definitely vouch for kind of the capabilities  there yeah and on that point it we're not limited   to just cpq data either if there's  you know test data that you want to   make sure that you're always including in a  sandbox for development we got you there to   other other applications field service is a  big one that's got a lot of configuration data   financialforce has a ton of it velocity so we can  support you across your entire salesforce text app any other questions out there shannon uh  not that i can see no all right we'll give   it a minute if you're if you'd prefer not to  type it out you can always raise your hand and well really i want to thank you again for joining  us today for this webinar and sharing all your   your very detailed expertise um i hope everybody  has learned something about implementing cpq and   is feeling confident and empowered with the  best practices we were able to share today   to implement this and go live and maintain  it long term successfully for your business   yeah thanks kelly thanks jen it was a really  good session um so yeah all right thank you   everybody for attending um we'll go ahead and  you want to close this out here yes all right