Brian Contratto
Principal Consultant
“In 2019, every company is a professional services company.”
The statement above is an exaggeration, but it’s close to what I’ve been telling many of Plative’s Salesforce CPQ customers in recent years. What I mean is that it is rare in a cloud boosted tech economy that companies are only selling hardware or software. Professional implementation services, service contracts, or entitlement-based warranties are increasingly part of the full package. Many of the out-of-the-box principles that undergird Salesforce Sales Cloud don’t account for the full complexity required by a sales organization and may require Salesforce CPQ.
CPQ demolishes these principles with the introduction of a custom product-centric data model that accounts for many of the complexities of today’s sales organizations for whom the rules above don’t quite work.
Like the term “sales force” itself, “CPQ” is not a novel concept invented by Salesforce, but rather a general acronym that refers to the process of Configuring, Pricing, and Quoting for sales. Thus, Salesforce CPQ is one particular cloud-based application that addresses these functional areas. Salesforce CPQ was born when Salesforce acquired Steelbrick in late 2015, which was an already popular force.com-built application, competing with Apttus (force.com) and non-Salesforce CPQ apps.
In addition to Configuring, Pricing, and Quoting, CPQ includes under its broader umbrella functionality related to Order Management, Contracts/Subscription Management, Sales Renewals, and Billing.
Still have questions? Set up a call with a Plative CPQ Expert today!
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