Visual South Insights

Can a configure price quote software solution help me?

If you aren’t sure about what configure price quote (CPQ) software is, or you want to improve your baseline understanding, you can check out my other blog, “What is CPQ?”. If you are specifically looking for Infor CPQ software, you can read a review here.

There are a lot of benefits provided by CPQ software, but probably the biggest one is the ability to make it easier for non-engineers to correctly configure a complex solution. As simple as it may sound, a lot of companies struggle with the issue of salespeople, customers, resellers, and others designing a solution (a part or material) that engineering cannot create, and one that manufacturing departments cannot manufacture. When there’s no CPQ solution in place, it creates very long lead times, and complex back-and-forth discussions due to the difficulty in managing all of the emails, drawings, and conversations that have to take place before actual manufacturing can occur. 

What does CPQ stand for?

The software industry has no shortage of three-letter acronyms, so let’s get right to answering the question.  CPQ stands for configure, price, quote.  More specifically, CPQ is a category of software that helps enable the business processes of configuring, pricing, and quoting a product or service.

What should I be thinking about?

If you are in the process of choosing an ERP, it’s important to consider the company you could be partnering with. An ERP selection is a big decision in many ways, one that will affect your company for years to come. But it’s not entirely about the product itself (although making sure it has a good evaluation is important). The partnership you enter into with the vendor must also be the right move for your company. You should be comfortable on a variety of levels with this partnership, but here are the top three things to consider as you shop around:

What does ERP stand for?

You may have been asked to find ERP software for your company but are still wondering, “What is an ERP system?” An internet search of the term “ERP” will yield quite a bit of information, and not all of it is helpful. So let’s start with an ERP definition: ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning, which refers to the management of business processes in an organization. These processes typically include:

• Financials
• Production planning
• Engineering/manufacturing
• Shop floor control
• Sales
• Inventory management
• Purchasing
• Quality

Growing pains

If you are a small- to medium-sized manufacturing company that is growing, you are likely experiencing growing pains. Those pains can come from a lot of different directions, but in our business, we hear about growing pains as they relate to software. As a business grows it becomes more sophisticated and complex, and in turn, the software tools used to manage processes need to match that level of sophistication.