CPQ Software for Engineering & Construction
Winning large-scale construction and engineering projects requires ensuring that anything quoted can be engineered or built. The sales process, from opportunity to quote to engineering, is fraught with complexities. Having a reliable product configurator and quoting solution eases some of the burden on engineering sales teams and ensures projects are profitable.
Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) software can help engineering, construction, and building materials companies land projects through efficiencies in configurations and pricing. A reliable, error-free quoting process gives a sales team a greater opportunity for success.
CPQ for engineering and construction sales simplifies complex product and service configurations. Quote automation increases the validity of bid submittals and contracts, increases win rates on bids and proposals and ensures timely delivery.
How CPQ Connects Sales with Engineering
CPQ allows sales reps to quickly generate accurate quotes for customers based on their needs without having to wait for engineering to validate product configurations. CPQ integrates seamlessly with product information from ERP, PLM, PIM, and DAM. This data synchronization gives sales teams instant access to product details, configuration options, and pricing models, thus eliminating delays that can otherwise slow down the sales process.
Moreover, CPQ simplifies collaboration between sales and engineering teams by allowing both sides to work from the same product rules and validations when creating tailored solutions for their clients. For instance, if a customer wishes to customize a product or service, CPQ provides an interactive interface where both teams can create a valid product configuration. This way, customers get exactly what they need promptly while both teams benefit from greater efficiency.
Challenges CPQ Solves for Engineering and Construction Companies
In addition to alleviating the disconnect between Sales, Engineering, and Manufacturing, CPQ helps businesses solve the following challenges:
- long sales cycles
- invalid configurations resulting in design changes
- inaccurate pricing
- delays in quote approvals
- revenue leaks due to production errors
- inconsistencies in approaches to quoting products and services
CPQ Solutions for Engineering & Construction
Conga CPQ Overview
DealHub CPQ Overview
Oracle CPQ Overview
Salesforce CPQ Overview
PandaDoc CPQ Overview
CPQ Software Benefits for Engineering and Construction Companies
Engineering and construction companies often use ERP systems to manage accounting, human resources, supply chain, and production. CPQ brings the processes, people, systems, and data together to unify the sales-to-engineering process. Integrating price lists, product configurations, discounts, and materials availability from the ERP system into the CPQ enables sales reps to respond to RFP and RFQs fast with accurate price quotes.
This automation of product configuration and quote generation dramatically reduces the sales cycle, increases sales team productivity, and improves the customer experience. The bottom line is that CPQ offers many advantages that help engineering and construction firms stay competitive and grow revenue.
Now, let’s dive into the benefits of implementing CPQ software.
Faster Sales Cycle: With CPQ software, sales teams quickly create quotes and bids, reducing the sales cycle’s length. This can be especially helpful for large, complex projects. CPQ software ensures orders are correct, which reduces the chances of errors, reconfiguration, and delays.
Streamlines Quoting Process: CPQ software reduces the time it takes to prepare quotes and respond to RFPs and RFQs. Faster response time and accurate quotes greatly improve the chances of new winning projects. Additionally, CPQ ensures sales teams use a consistent process to produce bids and quotes that are on-brand and accurate.
Accurate Orders: Many CPQ software platforms for engineering and construction offer visual product configurators with 2D or 3D models. Engineering calculations, CAD drawings, bills of materials (BOMs), and similar documentation can all be generated automatically, ensuring a seamless order transfer between sales and production.
One Source of Truth: CPQ software integrates with PLM, ERP, and CRM systems, so sales reps access real-time data and insights into projects. Additionally, having Engineering and Sales teams working together means that problems that may halt production are identified and addressed early.
Improves Sales Performance: CPQ incorporates guided selling and a sales playbook to help engineering and construction sales teams create quotes to customer specifications. It also helps identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities to ensure customers get all the related products or services needed to complete their projects.
On-Time Projects: CPQ software uses accurate data to create quotes, bids, and proposals, so projects are delivered on time, every time.
Minimizes Errors: Quote errors can add costly project delays. CPQ software accurately prices product and service combinations and verifies project configurations to close deals faster, complete projects on time, and protect margins.
Increases Profitability: CPQ software can enables engineering and construction firms to bid more accurately on projects and win more contracts. Additionally, CPQ helps construction companies track materials and project costs more effectively, enabling them to keep costs down and margins high.
Why Engineering Companies Need Product Configurators
Engineering companies that sell highly-configurable products need product configurators to provide their customers with the most accurate and cost-effective solutions for their individual needs. Product configurators enable engineers to quickly and accurately design complex products that fulfill customer requirements while considering any rules-driven constraints on the design, such as size, load limit, and power consumption. They also allow engineers to create virtual prototypes of products, enabling them to test different configurations in a digital environment before manufacturing physical parts.
In addition, product configurators enable engineers to collaborate more effectively with suppliers since they can easily access supplier databases to find appropriate components for their designs. By accessing these databases, engineering companies can save time searching for components or materials needed for specific designs instead of combing through catalogs manually. Ultimately, product configurators are invaluable tools for engineering companies as they provide the most efficient means of designing customized products that best meet customer needs.
How CPQ Can Help Your Engineering Team
CPQ helps companies reduce the staff and resources needed to prepare accurate quotes and bids. CPQ platforms built for construction companies and engineering firms often include visual configuration engines that enable sales teams to sell and engineers to focus on designing. Visual configurators simplify and integrate sales and engineering processes to deliver a superior customer experience.
Product Configuration: CPQ software enables rules-based guided visual selling. It provides an easy-to-use interface that makes it simple to configure complex products and generate accurate production documents for the manufacturing floor.
Quote from Anywhere: Whether in the field or the office, CPQ helps engineers, field technicians, and construction managers generate accurate quotes on any device.
Sales Collateral: Engineering and construction firms that use CPQ can send compelling sales collateral as part of their quotes. CPQ brings quotes, sell sheets, contracts, and more into one platform that sales representatives can share with all deal stakeholders.
Pricing: Pricing and discounting can be complex, especially for highly customized projects. With CPQ, sales teams can automate pricing based on real-time price lists, so bids and proposals are always accurate.
Approval Workflows: A tightly-controlled rules engine and approval workflow ensure correct product configurations are sent from sales to engineering.
Integration: CPQ software integrates seamlessly with other platforms, preventing errors caused by manual quoting and data synchronization issues. Most engineering and construction CPQ software platforms integrate with CRM, ERP, ETO, and PLM systems.
Reports and Analytics: CPQ software enables sales and engineering teams to leverage all product, pricing, and sales data in one place. This unified data helps generate accurate business intelligence and reports that drive business decisions, inform sales strategies, and improve forecasting.
Rhonda Bavaro excels in boosting SaaS companies’ growth through innovative content marketing, thriving in the dynamic sales tech industry amidst evolving technologies that drive revenue acceleration.
