At cpq.se we have one goal when we have our initial meeting with a new customer:
To be live as soon as possible.
This is a challenging task because there are so many things you CAN do, and it's difficult to understand what you SHOULD do (and what things to leave for improvements in a later phase).
That's why we always get very quickly from talking to doing.
As I'm writing this, Patrik and Ida is in a workshop analyzing product data, pricing strategies, quote templates, CAD-visualization and integrations.
The question they want to answer is what really required to go live and how can we leverage the functionality that is already set up in our standard CPQ setup?
Once we get a roadmap for the project we can set a date, the day that we go live with a working, first version of CPQ.
Say that we start on October 28, 2022. That would typically mean that we can let the first real user into the system February 10, 2023. At this point in time we will already have a working first version of online CAD - helping the user understand the product during configuration and producing quotes with the exact level of details for sales.
Maybe we'll do some updates to the quote branding in the beginning of March, and then we'll be ready to do the official go-live April 12, 2023.
We would typically run the project online, with short and effective training sessions in the beginning. As the configuration evolves we would typically move into a more coaching role instead. We believe it's key success factor that the sales logic is described and maintained by the customer themselves, by the experts that really knows the product. But at the same time it's also important to describe the product logic correct from the beginning That's why the guidance from one of our principal consultants is equally important - especially in the start of the project.
Once we go live we will continue to do weekly updates, adding even more automation for the sales reps and partners. As the product continues to evolve there will be weekly big and small updates to the product logic. We would add more roles to simplify usage, we'll remove things that we realize no-one is using anyhow and start to integrate the solution with ERP and CRM.
Then on October 21st, 2024 we might publish yet another Customer Story - just like we do for Swift Lifts today.
Summarizing yet another successful Tacton CPQ implementation.