Harness Quote-to-Cash to Drive Optimal Business Outcomes

May 30 by Conga

Regardless of the headwinds they face, executive teams must deliver on corporate goals and produce business outcomes that meet or exceed the expectations of shareholders. They are accountable for the results that their businesses are able to achieve within well-defined fiscal periods.

Hence, the CEO, CFO, other members of the C-Suite and their direct reports give top priority to four major issues:

• Revenue – generate sales that allow the organization to consistently grow and gain market share

• Profitability – secure returns from the sales team for backers and for reinventing in the business

• Customer experience – improve ease of doing business for customers to increase market share, customer satisfaction, and repeat business

• People – gain greater productivity from staff by encouraging collaboration and alignment of behaviors with corporate objectives

Further validation of these goals comes from Gartner Research’s annual CEO survey.

The Quote-to-Cash process plays a strategic role in achieving progress with these outcomes at an operational level. It is instrumental in helping enterprises secure optimal results in sales and buying cycles. Key business measures are impacted, such as: improved sales accuracy, increased sales efficiency, improved sales effectiveness, larger deal sizes, higher win rates, improved margins, more opportunities, more simplicity, and increased speed-to-market.

More specifically, Quote-to-Cash tackles many of the underlying challenges that hinder performance against these measures. For example, if revenue growth goals are contingent on larger average deal sizes, lack of product knowledge and rogue discounting presents obstacles. QTC applications like Configure Price Quote (CPQ), catalog management, and deal management help sellers assemble more compelling quotes for prospects and better manage discount requests.

Quote-to-Cash Transformation Solves Underlying Business Challenges

Benefits:

Improved Accuracy

Challenges Solved:
• Inaccurate quoting
• Billing and invoicing issues
• Rebate mismanagement
• Inaccurate commission payments
• Frequent customization of T&Cs and SLAs

Increased Speed-to-Market

Challenges Solved:
• Slow Quote-to-Cash cycle time
• Slow new product introductions
• Reps respond to customer requests slower than competitors
• Delays in delivery of subscription services

Larger Deal Size

Challenges Solved:
• Difficulty cross selling, upselling and selling across the entire product suite
• Maverick discounting

Improved Margin

Challenges Solved:
• Legacy sales system
• High legal fees
• No visibility into operational performance

More Simplicity

Challenges Solved:
• SKU proliferation due to excessive product/service options and multiple customer segments being served
• Limited customer and partner visibility
• Multiple entities (e.g. sales partners, solution integrators, outsourcing) involved in serving Customers

Increased Sales Efficiency

Challenges Solved:
• Frequent executive involvement
• Low value-added tasks and low workforce productivity due to manual processes along sales cycle
• Inadequate tools (e.g. mobile, offline quoting)

More Opportunities

Challenges Solved:
• Poor partner channel effectiveness
• Lack of/insufficient E-Commerce platform

Higher Win Rates

Challenges Solved:
• Renewal mismanagement
• Low sales conversion rates
• Suboptimal pricing

Improved Sales Effectiveness

Challenges Solved:
• Poor sales enablement (e.g. onboarding, product training, job-specific training)
• Low quota attainment and high sales turnover

Many enterprises remain largely unprepared for this new normal of fluid, fast-changing, and challenging markets. Under-investment in Quote-to-Cash is a key factor inhibiting their capacity to respond to market changes and generate growth. These shortcomings point to the need for a fundamental change in the way companies engage customers and compete in their industries.