As a business owner or technology leader, you know that complex quoting and sales processes can create bottlenecks that impact your revenue. A configure, price, quote (CPQ) solution like NetSuite CPQ aims to eliminate those roadblocks. But is it the right choice for your business?
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about NetSuite CPQ, including:
– Key features and capabilities
– Main benefits for your sales team
– How it streamlines the entire quoting lifecycle
– Expert recommendations based on your unique business needs
– Comparisons with alternatives like Salesforce CPQ
By the end of this guide, you’ll understand if NetSuite CPQ is the best fit for your tech stack and sales objectives.
The Growing Importance of CPQ Software
CPQ software is becoming essential for businesses with complex products or services that require custom quotes. IDC predicts that the CPQ market will grow at a 10.8% CAGR to reach nearly $1.9 billion by 2025.
Some key drivers behind that growth include:
– Accelerating shift to usage-based, recurring revenue models
– Rising demand for personalized, complex quotes
– Need for greater quoting speed and accuracy
– Integration with existing CRM and ERP systems
As your offerings become more configurable and subscription-based, manual quoting processes get increasingly chaotic. Sales reps struggle to create accurate quotes in a timely manner, leading to errors, lost deals, and frustrated customers.
A CPQ system eliminates the headaches by automating guidance, rules, and approvals during every step of the quoting process. The right solution can help your business:
– Shorten sales cycles with faster, more accurate quotes
– Reduce errors and improve compliance with guided selling
– Provide visibility into quote performance and bottlenecks
– Deliver personalized pricing and proposals
With those key benefits in mind, let’s take a deeper look at NetSuite CPQ.
Top Benefits for Your Business
Here are some of the biggest potential benefits you can expect after implementing NetSuite CPQ:
Shortened Sales Cycles
Guided selling, automated approvals, and fast quote generation compress sales cycles by over 20% for many businesses. That directly translates to hitting revenue goals sooner.
Increased Conversion Rates
Higher win rates come from fast, accurate, and professional quotes that perfectly fit customer needs. CPQ also enables finer pricing control.
Reduced Errors
Validation rules, required fields, and defined approval chains cut down configuration errors and improve compliance.
Higher Margins
Optimized pricing guidance results in quotes with ideal price points – not too high to lose the deal but not leaving money on the table either.
Improved Rep Efficiency
With guidance for every step of quoting, new and existing reps create quotes faster and more confidently.
Enhanced Customer Experience
Personalized product recommendations and pricing make customers feel uniquely catered to.
Top Features and Tools
Now that we’ve covered the key benefits, let’s do a deeper dive into the top features and tools that set NetSuite CPQ apart:
Guided Selling
The guided selling engine is the core of NetSuite CPQ. Intuitive questionnaires help reps ask the right discovery questions. Product compatibility rules then recommend options that fit customers’ needs. Advanced constraint-based configuration also ensures only valid components get added to quotes.
Approval Workflows
CPQ lets you build automated approval chains based on margins, deal size, customer type, or other criteria. Approvers can review quotes online with clear visibility into discount levels. That prevents unapproved discounts that hurt profits.
Subscription Management
For companies with recurring revenue models, NetSuite CPQ supports complex subscription pricing and billing terms. You can easily generate renewal quotes with additional upsell offers. Amendments and subscriptions changes also become simple.
Mobile Accessibility
The CPQ mobile app enables reps to build quotes and manage approvals on-the-go. With offline access too, remote teams can keep selling even without internet. That flexibility is essential in modern sales environments.
Pricing Control and Guidance
List prices, volume discounts, and customer-specific pricing – NetSuite CPQ centralizes all the complex pricing rules. Reps then get guided recommendations during quoting to optimize deal profitability.
Reporting and Analytics
A holistic view of quoting performance comes from 30+ out-of-the-box reports. Sales ops can track key metrics like cycle times, discounts, win rates, bookings, and more. Granular data reveals bottlenecks.
3rd Party Integrations
As part of the NetSuite platform, CPQ seamlessly integrates with NetSuite ERP and CRM. But it also easily embeds into non-NetSuite environments like Salesforce via APIs. That flexibility ensures CPQ aligns with your tech stack.
The combination of these features enables a single system to manage the entire quoting process from opportunity to close. And with a natively unified platform, all customer data, product details, pricing, and approvals live in a single version of truth.
Comparing Leading Options: NetSuite, Salesforce, and Oracle
When evaluating the top CPQ contenders, NetSuite CPQ strikes the optimal balance across ease of use, flexibility, and integration.
Salesforce CPQ offers robust capabilities but often requires heavy customization to achieve desired functionality. The platform poses a steep learning curve for admins and reps alike. Licenses, ongoing maintenance, and add-ons also make Salesforce an expensive CPQ route over the long term.
Oracle CPQ provides sophisticated configuration capabilities but the complex interface overwhelms casual business users. Like Salesforce, substantial integration efforts become necessary to embed Oracle CPQ into surrounding CRM and ERP systems.
In contrast, NetSuite CPQ focuses on intuitive guided selling designed for sales reps rather than engineers. It comes pre-integrated with NetSuite ERP and CRM, creating a unified platform that eliminates costly data synchronization efforts. Rapid deployment timelines also accelerate time-to-productivity versus multi-month Oracle CPQ implementations.
For scaling to enterprise sales teams, NetSuite again leads with seamless multi-org access and management. Salesforce and Oracle both face challenges in controlling large, global CPQ deployments. Granular reporting and mobile optimization further cement NetSuite as the flexible, scalable option.
Why Choose SuiteDynamics as Your NetSuite Partner?
As an experienced NetSuite Alliance Partner, SuiteDynamics brings deep expertise across NetSuite product suites. Here is why 200+ businesses trust us as their NetSuite CPQ experts:
Proven CPQ Results
Our certified consultants follow best practices refined over 100+ successful CPQ deployments to drive maximum ROI.
Unmatched NetSuite Expertise
Our 400+ NetSuite certifications and 100+ 5-star client reviews validate our standing as leading global NetSuite solution providers.
Rapid Time-to-Value
Our agile implementation accelerates your CPQ rollout with out-of-the-box configurations instead of lengthy custom code.
Ongoing Optimization
We provide managed services to continually maximize usage, adoption, and enhancements post-launch.
Personalized Approach
From initial evaluation through ongoing enhancement, we craft customized CPQ solutions for your unique business objectives.
Read More: NetSuite SuitePeople: Streamlining HR Processes for Organizational Efficiency
Conclusion and Recommendation
CPQ software has quickly become a “must-have” for any company selling configurable products or services. NetSuite CPQ specifically helps future-proof enterprises by supporting flexible pricing, automated renewals, and unified customer data.
For business leaders in technology, manufacturing, or telecom industries, I strongly recommend NetSuite CPQ to increase sales productivity and accelerate revenue growth. The guided selling engine gives sales teams a strategic advantage in driving more deals to close faster.
