When you have hundreds or thousands of leads to respond to in a single day, errors happen and you get overwhelmed. Right from sending the right quote to the right prospect to delivering the product or service, it’s a long process involving many phases. Every phase needs some attention, customization, and zero errors to make the quoting process a success. And this adds to a positive buyer experience and delighted buyer.
Here where Quote-to-cash comes handy.
What is Quote-to-Cash
Quote-to-cash (or QTC or Q2C) integrates and automates various business processes in the sales cycle. Business processes include product/service configuration, quote creation, pricing, contracting, ordering QTC helps businesses to complete all these processes in a predictable and faster manner compared to traditional methods. Our QTC process involves:
- Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ): We identify and recommend the combination of goods and services for the customer. Then we offer discounts and promotions to fix a rate. We also create quotations, get it approved, and send it to the customer.
- Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM): It includes contract creation, contract negotiation, and contract execution covering the whole contract lifecycle. Once you send the quotation, you create a contract including various terms and conditions. In the negotiation phase, you change the terms and clauses based on customer discussions. After finalizing the contract, it gets approved and signed as a final deal.
- Order-to-Cash: Once you receive the order, it gets processed and delivered. Delivering the right product to the customer at the right time is crucial. Only an integrated and visible system like QTC helps you to carry out all these activities without any hassle.
- Billing Management: In this phase, you calculate the final charge and send invoices to the customers. Accurate billing determines cash flow and revenue recognition for your business. Hence, QTC offers simple and accurate billing.
Why does Quote-to-Cash matter?
Quote-to-cash streamlines your sales cycle. It offers a centralized platform where you can collect, process, and update customer data in real-time. It empowers the sales team to engage with customers with more efficiency. Additionally, QTC reduces errors and enhances reporting capabilities.
According to a PWC study, if you optimize your Q2C process, it can reduce the sales cycle time by 30-60%, increase ROI by 10-15%, and reduce the order processing cycle time by 20-40%.
We at CommerceCX, understand the power of the Q2C process and have been working with various customers to make their buying experience delightful. Our team of Q2C experts is instrumental in offering customized Q2C solutions with an accelerator framework for healthcare, finance, insurance, etc. Bound by experience and expertise, we have helped businesses with complex product and service portfolios and dynamic pricing structure.
Top ten effective ways to get most of Quote-to-Cash
When you adapt QTC technology, your business gets five key benefits. It enhances customer experience, internal operations, sales operations, revenue, and legal alignment. With expertise in Salesforce platform application including Salesforce CPQ, Billing and Apttus technology tools, we suggest the below ten ways to enhance your buyer persona with QTC solutions:
#1 Create an ideal configuration of products and service
The complexity of products and services is increasing in modern business. Hence, identifying the right combination of the same and recommending to the customer is crucial to win the deal. QTC automatically recommends such combinations to your sales reps. It can enhance sales by 20%.
#2 Apply for discounts and promotions while pricing
Identifying the right price for your customers is important. Finding the right discount, incentives, and promotion can win you customers. Deal analysis based on prior Quotes helps you find the best deal without cutting into margins. And also uncovers the pricing strategy to help the reps carry out the same faster.
#3 Quick and error-free quoting
Quoting is one of the most crucial cogs in the sales cycle. Fast and error-free Quoting often creates your first impression on the customers. A well configured CPQ system empowers you to create quick, personalized, and error-free quotes. It helps to create a delightful customer experience and win deals faster.
#4 Create a contract with the right built-in clauses,
A right contract management tool combined with a CPQ tool can help create built-in clauses that can be used by sales representatives to provide alternative language for terms and conditions requested by a prospect without going back to Contracts or Legal to get approvals. This Contract negotiation process carries a lot of uncertainties in the deal cycle possibly delaying the contract by anywhere from 4-14 days can potentially be eliminated. The contract form affects the revenue stream of your business. Hence these clauses must be precise and detailed. Quote-to-cash enables you to create detailed and error-free contract forms to ensure security.
#5 Make contract negotiation easy
Contract negotiation begins once you highlight the contract terms and clauses. This is a continuously changing document. And sometimes it is hard to trace all the changes for more visibility. However, QTC automatically provides this information to make the negotiation process easy and faster.
#6 Execute contract with e-signature tool
After signing the contract between both parties, the deal gets final. Efficient contract execution drives faster deal acceleration. To help you with this, QTC enables an e-signature tool which drastically decreases the time spent that we need to finalize the contract. It also gives complete visibility of present roadblock.
#7 Fulfill the orders with 360-degree visibility
Delivering the right order to the right client on time is essential for successful order fulfillment. When you deal with many customers at the same time, it becomes difficult to bring 100% efficiency to the process. But a well-built QTC provides 360-degree visibility of orders and order fulfillment to customers. It also communicates pricing and contracting terms along with agreed-upon quotes to the necessary parties.
#8 Ensure accurate billing
Accurate billing brings success by determining cash flow, revenue recognition, forecasting. The strong Quote-to-cash process provides accurate billing within acceptable timelines that captures everything in the quote. This also ensures proper handoffs from sales operations to the finance dept. This enables the finance to review accounts receivables accurately which is the lifeblood for cashflow operations.
#9 Recognize revenue correctly
After receiving payment, recognizing the revenue correctly matters a lot. When Q2C makes all the important details of the contracting terms like pricing, delivery schedule, net payment term, etc. to the finance team, your organization can rightly recognize the revenue by posting to the correct GL entries both for receivables and liabilities and appropriately recognize revenue as order fulfillment occurs..
#10 Renew contract faster
When you have repeat customers, it’s essential to stay updated with contracts. Q2C helps you to identify the expiring contracts and cross-sell and upsell customers on a single integrated Force.com platform. It also gives important insights into contracts and quotes.
Boost your buyer experience
In this blog, we have discussed what is Q2C and why it is important to automate your sales cycle. At CommerceCX, we offer customized Q2C solutions with an accelerator framework that ensures predictable revenue by improving your buyer experience. We also provide hassle-free mobile implementation using our accelerators built to address specific Salesforce CPQ, billing and Apttus Products
Get in touch with us to enhance your buyer persona with intelligent Q2C solutions.
About CommerceCX: CommerceCX is a global consulting, design, and development firm. We provide organizations with the solutions and services that support the transformation of a commerce ecosystem. We specialize in CRM, Quote-to-Cash, Lead to Cash, and have strong expertise in Salesforce, Apttus, and Microsoft Technologies. Leveraging our solutions, organizations can connect technology, data, and insights to unify and enhance the buying, selling, and service experience that powers the commerce ecosystem.
