Challenges of digitalization
In the course of digitization, we are observing two worlds on the market:
- One world deals with standard products, standard processes, and thus with simple pricing, clear price and discount structures, and a classic sales organization.
- The other, much more complex world, on the other hand, deals with digital, configurable and increasingly complex products and projects.
Difficulties in pricing
Due to this increasing digitality, complexity and configurability of products and projects, companies and sales are finding it increasingly difficult to price their products and projects clearly. Increasing customer expectations regarding individuality and availability of products reinforce this effect, which means that companies urgently need to define standardized discounting and pricing processes to support sales in selling the demanding products and projects.
Configure Price Quote (CPQ) applications offer substantial help in this regard and enable more effective and efficient process support than would be possible using purely analog approaches.
CPQ solutions in response
To meet the challenges of the market and to generate competitive advantages, the introduction of a CPQ application is a first step to success. We support you in finding and implementing the right CPQ application for your company. The application supports you to automatically obtain optimal and resilient prices. To achieve this, the following factors are considered within a CPQ process:
1. Product-specific factors
- Relevant product properties
- Price logic based on key price-relevant product-specific factors and characteristics
- Creation of basic price lists at individual product level
2. Market factors: Region / Country
- Segmentation of countries by price level
- Grouping of countries into price regions
- Determination of markups or markdowns
3. Market factors: Customer
- Identification of distribution channels
- Customer segmentation according to pricing-relevant criteria
4. Order-related factors
- Sales volume
- Cargo
- Express surcharge
Advantages of automated pricing
If these value drivers can be deconstructed, a consistent target price system can be developed for sales. The often purely intuitive approach to pricing customer solutions is thus transformed into an automated process that ensures considerable efficiency and quality benefits. For example, the use of CPQ systems generates an average of two to three percent more margin for companies.
A powerful CPQ system is designed to…
- Control prices according to company goals,
- Make prices consistent and comprehensible, and
- Enable price controlling.
Simplified sales management
The transfer to a digital, ideally mobile solution enables flexible use by the sales teams. Updates are imported centrally and reach all field staff at the same time. This enables a timely and efficient response to the competitive situation, even in highly volatile markets.
Project experience with CPQ solutions
Whether you are interested in a CPQ solution from Salesforce or whether you want to implement your own solution, we will support you. We have successfully implemented both existing and our own solutions in various projects and helped companies achieve large margin potentials.
Use CPQ with Roll & Pastuch
Would you like to learn more, or do you need support in facing the process-related challenges and the information and data maintenance? Then contact us! We look forward to supporting you and helping you to make your sales and pricing processes more digital and efficient.
Kai Pastuch
Kai Pastuch is Managing Director of Prof. Roll & Pastuch – Management Consultants. Before joining as Managing Partner, he was Director at a leading international strategy and marketing consultancy. As a graduate in business informatics, he also manages our software company nueprice, which specializes in the pricing of spare parts with the product of the same name. Mr. Pastuch has extensive project management experience from numerous projects for large international companies and German medium-sized businesses in the areas of price management, marketing, sales and strategy. In addition to numerous publications in renowned journals and the publication of the reference books Praxishandbuch Preismanagement and Big Deal Management, he is a sought-after moderator and speaker on all aspects of sales and pricing. As a practice-oriented manager, he likes to get personally involved in our projects and contributes his broad experience in workshops and steerings.
