How CPQ Software is Different from Excel Sheets

Are you looking for an easy way to create error-free quotes? Do you want to increase efficiency while quoting complex products? Want to deliver a faster, more accurate quoting process? Want to spend more time interacting with potential customers and closing deals? If yes, time has come to replace Excel sheets with software tool, more precisely a CPQ software.

The drawbacks of Excel sheets to manage quotes are well-known, yet surprisingly enterprises continue to use spreadsheets. When your product configuration is large and complicated, it is never easy to handle quoting process using Excel sheets. When product prices change frequently, updating your pricing spreadsheets can get as tedious as you can imagine. On the other hand, with CPQ tool, any pricing updates are automatically reflected in the software system.

In case of Configure price quote software, multiple users can handle the software tool and collaborate while configuring a quote. Thus, each one of the user has the opportunity to make some contribution while creating a quote. Integration is another area where Excel sheets are not so flexible. For instance, integrating your Excel with CRM or ERP to import / export your data is no easy. Whereas CPQ tools are pre-built to integrate with a wide number of systems. With a single click, you can effortlessly move data between systems, while keeping everything secure. This helps to streamline processes and enables you to eliminate issues of scattered data in spreadsheets.

Also, quite a few B2B organizations have ‘approval workflow’ that involves performing a sequence of steps to approve specific quotes. Unfortunately ‘approval workflow’ feature cannot be implemented in Excel sheets. On the other hand, CPQ solutions have a built-in approval workflow engine that lets you define and incorporate a workflow into your quoting process. So quotes that do not meet a specific criteria will be automatically stopped from being sent to the customer.