CPQ Tool Integrations For A Simplified Purchasing Process

1. CPQ Tool Integrations For A Simplified Purchasing Process ======================================================================== Integration of CPQ into your end-to-end purchasing process may either make or kill it. When you have the correct CPQ integrations, the fundamental activities of your organization function more efficiently and at a reduced cost. Whether buyers self-serve or choose to engage with a sales rep, they gain instant access to all the data they need to make fast, well-informed purchase decisions. This article lists the CPQ integrations that manufacturers must provide to deliver a simplified, frictionless, and empowered end-to-end purchasing experience. Important Points: •Significance of CPQ Integrations •CPQ Integrations that Manufacturers Must Have •How Epicor CPQ Manages CPQ Integrations •Additional Ways CPQ Simplifies the Buying Process Firstly, Let’s Examine the Significance of CPQ Integrations You must integrate your CPQ solution with all of your personnel, procedures, data, and systems in order to create an industry-leading purchasing experience, maximize the return on your CPQ investment, and automate your engineer-to-order processes. This is carried out via CPQ integrations. Sales representatives and self-serve consumers interacting with your items will access all the information they need to make an immediate, simple purchase choice with the correct CPQ connectors. Real-time inventory levels, lead times, and customer order history are available right there in CPQ. A single source of truth is created by integrating CPQ with CRM, ERP, and the other tools you use to manage your company. It breaks down silos, provides real-time visibility from anywhere, and houses your data securely in an accessible centralized repository. The advantages of CPQ integrations are as follows: •All of your data is instantly accessible to employees in every department. •By releasing data from silos, you can improve teamwork and communication while enabling your staff to work to their full capacity. •The team may coordinate data input across systems to reduce human labor and errors. •When data disperse, there are many "points of entry" for would-be hackers, but data that is held centrally is safe and secure. •By automating each step from the shopping cart to the shop floor, you can integrate the complete end-to-end engineer-to-order process through a digital thread and serve consumers more swiftly. CPQ Integrations That Manufacturers Must Have 1. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

2. To foster connections at every level of the purchasing process and get improved pipeline visibility, your CRM handles interactions with prospects and customers. Your sales teams will have a comprehensive understanding of the customer and the selling environment thanks to the integration of CRM and CPQ. If a customer has interacted with your product configurator online or with a sales rep, that information is stored in CRM for a more personalized approach and a smoother buying process next time. The additional advantages of sales automation software for manufacturers are listed below. 2. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Most company processes, including accounting, inventory, supply chain management, project management, and more, are managed by your ERP. Consider it the backbone of your day-to-day activities and your primary data store, and business intelligence. All the information your consumers need to make an order is instantly accessible when CPQ and ERP are integrated. Without ERP integration, customers and sales reps have to reach out manually to other departments for information which is inefficient and lengthens the sales cycle duration. To understand more, read how CPQ and ERP integration unifies front- and back-office functions. 3. B2B eCommerce Integrating your eCommerce platform with visual CPQ can instantly make your B2B eCommerce shop immersive and appealing. You can embed a visual product configurator into your website, enabling visitors to configure complex products in 3D. No matter how complicated the product, any configuration is possible with a CPQ system that has a strong rules engine. Plus, the back-and-forth between sales and the shop floor is nixed, shrinking the sales cycle and creating more satisfied customers. (After all, they know what they will get since they have already seen it on film.) Learn how to choose the best B2B eCommerce platform for your company. 4. Computer-Aided Design (CAD) CAD is design software that automates the process of manual drafting. The problem is that although it’s vastly superior to pen and paper, creating CAD drawings is still slow and a considerable drain on engineering resources. Integrating CPQ with CAD makes it possible for your CPQ solution to auto-generate CAD files based on configuration data. Everything is automated. The engineering department receives CAD files and may easily make changes or approve them with a few clicks. Your engineering and sales teams are coordinated through CPQ and CAD integration. It gets everybody on the same page, eliminating the confusing email chains that generally come with honing the final design details of a highly configurable product. The client will experience fewer delays and pointless encounters as a result of improved communication and teamwork.

3. Here is our overview of design automation and CAD for sales. 5. Numerical Control (CNC) To automate production and speed up the delivery of goods to clients, CPQ interfaces with several shop floor technologies. Just as CPQ auto-generates CAD files, it also automates control of various machining tools, such as CNC machines and 3D printers, with the right integrations. The ability to automate some of the most challenging and error-prone operations provides you a significant competitive edge as goods get more advanced and competent shop floor workers are harder to come by. How does Epicor CPQ Manage CPQ Integrations? At Epicor, integrations are at the core of everything we do. That’s why we’ve partnered with Mulesoft– the world’s leading integration platform for SaaS and APIs–to make connecting all of your core business systems, websites, and apps to Epicor CPQ quick and easy. A universal communication layer is provided by the MuleSoft Connector for Epicor CPQ, making it simple and safe to provide reuse access to your data from any cloud or on-premises system. Plus, Epicor customers have access to MuleSoft’s Anypoint Exchange, where they can access hundreds of connectors, templates, examples, and RAMLs. What Other Ways Can CPQ Simplify the Purchasing Process? When selecting a CPQ provider to work with, consider the following aspects in addition to integrations. Each helps to make the purchasing experience quick and easy. Immersive product representations. Customers should be able to see and customize goods in 3D using your CPQ. Customers who see completed goods before buying are better informed, and experience less purchase anxiety, increasing the conversion rate and average deal size. Dependable rules engine. Make sure your CPQ includes a rules engine that can easily handle challenging mathematical functions and manufacturing logic if you want to conclude more transactions and minimize human mistake. Configurator with a focus on customers. If you manage an eCommerce business, you know the value of enabling self-service for customers, particularly in the wake of COVID-19. Pick a solution that allows you to paste a little amount of code to incorporate a visual configurator into your external website.