Configure Price Quote (CPQ) Strategies
CPQ has historically evolved as a technology capability that can help companies scale up complex sales and enable mass customization. Advances in sales automation, the addition of visualization to the quoting process, and the injection of AI/ML into price calculation and optimization have dramatically transformed the trajectory of CPQ adoption.
Between 2020 and 2024, we expect seven key themes to drive the evolution of the CPQ market. Each of the themes describes an area that is essential to CPQ acceptance, and all of them need to develop in concert if growth in CPQ adoption is to materialize.
Central among these themes is the focus on leveraging CPQ for strategic business differentiation, i.e., how businesses can measure the efficacy of CPQ adoption in terms of concrete business outcomes including (but not limited to) growth in sales, reduction in discounts, shorter sales cycles, and higher sales productivity.
Reflecting the research themes, we have outlined ten key issues that will define our research coverage of CPQ.
1. How will CPQ capabilities drive strategic differentiation for business? What business trends will drive market adoption of CPQ?
The need for personalization and customization of all sorts of products and services is the key driver of CPQ market adoption.
End customers demand that everyday items like shoes, pizza, and clothes can be personalized. They expect that businesses know them and that they can buy these products and services without instructions on their phones, tablets, and websites at any time.
These end customers also work in businesses where they buy and/or sell products and services. Their expectation is now that they can easily personalize and customize products and services for their business as well. Personalization and customization have to be available for every sales channel—meaning for sales teams, channel partners, and on a company e-commerce website.
As noted above, CPQ, along with other AMP (Agile Monetization Platform (AMP) disciplines such as Agile Billing and Contact Lifecycle Management, is uniquely positioned among modern enterprise software functions to drive true strategic business differentiation. This is manifested through the ability to mass customize complex offerings, dramatically reduce time-to-quote, present digital and visual rather than paper-oriented quotes, and offer uniquely optimized and dynamically priced solutions.
In our research coverage, we continuously explore innovative CPQ approaches, novel practices, and metrics while tracking the linkage to measurable business outcomes.
See the attached report for the detailed description of CPQ Key Issues.
