CPQ IS A GAME CHANGER FOR B2B ECOMMERCE

CPQ Is A Game Changer For B2B Ecommerce F P X . C O M | 1 - 8 6 6 - 8 2 6 - 6 3 4 4 | 2 6 0 0 D A L L A S PA R K W AY, S T E 5 9 0 | F R I S C O , T X 7 5 0 3 4 © 2017 All rights reserved. FPX and Configure-Price-Quote are registered trademarks of FPX, LLC. Predictive Applications is a trademark of FPX, LLC. The FPX logo is a trademark of FPX, LLC. I N T R O D U C T I O N For B2B sellers, the market has shifted as sales generated from B2B commerce sites now outpace B2C properties. According to Forrester Research,* nearly $1.13 trillion will flow through US B2B ecommerce properties by 2020 with that number expanding to nearly $6 trillion when applied to the global market.** Figures like these indicate that ecommerce represents more than a trend; it’s a paradigm shift for B2B organizations. While many B2B organizations have already begun the journey toward an ecommerce strategy by delivering their simple product offerings through an ecommerce platform, these companies struggle with the challenge of applying their enterprise’s entire portfolio to an omnichannel digital strategy. In this paper, we’ll explore a point of view around the demand for customer- and user-centric ecommerce strategies in the B2B market, how they pertain to a broader need for omnichannel delivery, and ultimately how enterprise Configure, Price and Quote (CPQ) solutions are empowering this progression. We’ll then look at how organizations can better identify methods for attracting today’s buyers. We’ll consider the technology vendors and partners that can facilitate a cohesive experience across all channels to drive revenue, improve margins, decrease costs, and nurture customer loyalty. *Forrester Research, US B2B eCommerce To Reach $1.1 Trillion By 2020, April 2, 2015 **Forbes B2B eCommerce Market Worth $5.7 Trillion by 2020: Alibaba & China the Front-Runners: 02 W H Y B 2 B E C O M M E R C E ? B E C A U S E I T ’ S A B O U T M E E T I N G C U S T O M E R E X P E C T A T I O N S . At this point, most people have accepted the fact that “buyers, not sellers, are in the driver’s seat.”* To be sure, B2B sellers have grown wise to the fact that their customers not only prefer, but now demand the convenience of the user-driven experiences they’ve grown accustomed to from B2C retailers. As Gartner Inc. states in its 2017 report: “B2B customers may be buying products and services on behalf of their organizations, but their expectation is being shaped by their B2C experience, and includes the expectation that the vendor will know who they are, what they have bought during prior transactions, and will tailor a product catalog or product recommendations to their requirements.”** There’s plenty of evidence confirming this shift in buyer expectations. A study conducted by Forrester Research indicates that 74% of today’s business customers find it easier and more convenient to complete transactions online as opposed to working with a sales representative. Similarly, 93% of those surveyed prefer to complete purchases online when they know what it is they need to buy.*** As the numbers indicate, it’s pretty simple: modern B2B buyers want options. If your current ecommerce solution is a glorified online product catalog, then we hate to break it to you, but customers are going to go to someone else. *Forrester Research, Digital Forces Catalyze A Tectonic Shift In B2B Channels **Gartner Inc., What’s Hot in Digital commerce in 2017, Chris Fletcher ***Forrester Research, Death of a (B2B) Salesman, April 13, 2015 04 E C O M M E R C E B U Y E R S A R E Y O U R B E S T C U S T O M E R S . It’s well understood that businesses need to get wise to the modern customer journey and provide different inroads to purchase (including ecommerce). But what’s the return on such a significant shift in go-to-market strategy and delivery? In a survey of B2B professionals, 51% of organizations that channel-shifted to ecommerce and omnichannel offerings experienced increased customer spending, including greater spend per engagement, greater T H E I N G R E D I E N T S F O R A S U C C E S S F U L E C O M M E R C E S O L U T I O N What does a successful digital buying and selling environment look like? Chances are you already know. You probably have an Amazon Prime account, or a Netflix subscription or have a personal profile on one or perhaps a dozen online retailers. By incorporating the look, feel, and functionality of B2C environments into ecommerce platforms, B2B sellers map to today’s buyers by offering: • Prominently displayed customer reviews • Interactive product catalogs • Real-time support • Real-time inventory updates • Guided buying and selling • Personalized settings • Automated renewals • Mobile-enabled functionality for any device The reality is that modern buyers are smart. They know what they like and what they don’t. They know what works and what doesn’t. customer loyalty and renewals, lower cost to support customers, as well as rendering low-volume customers profitable and sustainable by allowing sales teams to focus on higher-end selling engagements.* Although it’s true that many B2B buyers migrate between channels throughout the buying cycle, the fact remains that a viable ecommerce solution is imperative to attracting and retaining buyers while supporting traditional direct and indirect sales channels. *Forrester Research, The Case For Omnichannel B2B In order to achieve buy-in, businesses need to determine how their omnichannel strategy can help users find what they need quickly, provide recommendations and automate processes to reduce the time it takes to complete initial as well as recurring transactions, and ensure orders are completed promptly and accurately so there is no doubt as to whether a product or service is provided error-free and on-time. 06 W H E R E D O E S C P Q F A C T O R I N T O A L L T H I S ? The B2B market is a turbulent environment. Price fluctuations, customer or dealer-specific pricing, volume discounts, and complexly-configured products all factor into the quote-to-order process. The issue for B2B sellers is managing these variables on a massive scale. With complex rules governing everything from pricing to configuration, it takes a powerful application — something more than a PIM — to accurately manage the innumerable variables that come with modern B2B transactions. In the Forrester Wave: Configure-Price-Quote Solutions, Q1 2017,* analyst John Bruno writes that CPQ has grown up, out and beyond its traditional role as a sales enablement tool. He writes that “The back-office functionality set of yesteryear’s CPQ would not survive in the age of the customer, and vendors responded by overhauling and reinventing CPQ to both enable modern consultative sellers and serve their more demanding customers.” He goes on to write, “As modern sales strategies have continued to evolve, CPQ has enabled newer channels like self-service, customer service, and automated ordering through internet-of-things (IoT) devices.” Modern CPQ gives B2B buyers and sellers the power and resources they need to: • Easily configure orders while maintaining dizzyingly-complex business rules • Seamlessly integrate with existing CRM platforms for quick, easy adoption • Eliminate costly reworks by accurately validating all product and service solutions in real time • Generate instant and accurate quotes while incorporating pricing and discounting rules • Offer automated approvals, renewals and intuitive guided selling opportunities • Leverage data to better maintain margins and customize and enhance product and service offerings to customers With the right enterprise-grade CPQ application, businesses can reduce the time and resources needed to move from click to close. Gone are the roadblocks of botched configurations, selling out-of-stock product, inaccurate quotes or pricing, or lapses in communication between sales teams on the front end and product and development teams on the back end. *Forrester Research, The Forrester Wave: Configure-Price-Quote Solutions, Q1 2017 It takes a powerful application to accurately manage the innumerable variables that come with modern B2B transactions. “ 08 The Time To Act Was Yesterday 1 2 3 4 Cloud-based SaaS solutions provide the flexibility organizations need to complement and extend their existing systems. SAP, Salesforce, Microsoft, IBM and Oracle users don’t have to expend resources trying to integrate their ecommerce solution with their CRM and ERP. With platform and vendor agnostic capabilities, many of the leading SaaS vendors seamlessly integrate within a company’s entire technology stack. As opposed to waiting years to finalize and implement a solution, the flexibility of cloud-based SaaS providers allows organizations to get up and running and realizing tangible returns with minimal investments of time and resources. Another advantage of platform-agnostic SaaS solutions is the low total cost of ownership (TCO) that comes with reducing reliance on IT and developers. Businesses can cut costs by reducing, or all but eliminating the need for ongoing maintenance and updating every time there’s a change in product or pricing; new technologies are introduced via mergers, acquisitions or by purchasing new resources; or when adding discounts, bundles and other features that help your organization succeed. Business agility means being responsive to change. For many enterprises, this requires evolving over time and responding quickly to sudden changes. With a mature SaaS vendor, businesses can tweak their solution over time, modify features and functions, and start seeing revenue right away as opposed to months or years down the road with subsequent versions. More businesses are updating or adding ecommerce. But in many cases, these organizations are simply making their most basic product catalogs available online. And the truth is, these offerings aren’t fooling anyone. Many companies are hesitant to invest too heavily in an ecommerce strategy because of the time and cost associated with implementation. Historically, these businesses wouldn’t have been wrong in exercising caution. The time it took to evaluate, select, implement and go-live with a new site could take years. And oftentimes, by the time everything was rolled out, the market had changed and customer expectations had shifted yet again. Jump to today and many businesses are becoming wise to the notion that Software as a Service (SaaS) technology is making it possible to scale and go live with an ecommerce solution quickly and cost-effectively: 010 A G I L E S O L U T I O N S C R E A T E A G I L E B U S I N E S S E S Our agile solution is powerful enough to manage even the most complex product or solution architecture. Product built to seamlessly complement and extend the capabilities of any existing technologies, FPX is a good citizen of your organization’s technology ecosystem. At FPX, we give your businesses the ability to simplify complex buying and selling processes to better align with the expectations of modern customers. Powerful enough to handle any level of complexity, while also agile enough to advance your organization’s commerce strategy or extend and enhance the capabilities of direct and indirect sales, FPX is the solution to carry your business forward. F P X C P Q D E L I V E R S T H E P O W E R O F O M N I C H A N N E L E N A B L E M E N T Q U I C K LY A N D C O S T E F F E C T I V E LY As the inventor of Configure-Price-Quote, we’ve seen technologies, standards and requirements change over time. While other CPQ solutions are great sales quoting tools, they are limited by their focus on quote-to-cash and are tightly coupled to specific CRM solutions. Our approach is different. Flexibility and agility are the keys to success. As a platform-agnostic, modular solution, FPX CPQ allows your organization to unify customer data, product catalogs, price books, rules and business attributes from diverse systems of record into a single location via our productized integrations with leading platforms such as Salesforce, SAP C4C, SAP Hybris, Oracle, IBM and Microsoft. Our proprietary engine ingests, harmonizes and processes diverse data types and sources to create what we call the “Master Commercial Definition” for your business, which doesn’t require extensive IT development or maintenance. Our cloud-based CPQ application leverages the Master Commercial Definition to deliver an optimized and personalized buying and selling experience – the right product, to the right customer, for the right price – regardless of channel. 012 F P X : E N A B L I N G T H E C O M P L E T E B 2 B C U S T O M E R J O U R N E Y At FPX, our mission is simple: We develop solutions that help businesses sell smarter while delivering experiences that increase engagement and build loyalty. With decades of experience in the CPQ space, we know firsthand that the needs and values of customers change over time. That is why we strive to deliver cutting-edge innovations and thoughtful processes that streamline and optimize all aspects of the buying and selling experience. With our solution, we believe businesses ranging from global enterprises to those in the SMB space can deliver on the promise of a better user experience. To learn more about FPX, our services and applications, visit us at FPX.com F P X . C O M | 1 - 8 6 6 - 8 2 6 - 6 3 4 4 | 2 6 0 0 D A L L A S PA R K W AY, S T E 5 9 0 | F R I S C O , T X 7 5 0 3 4 © 2017 All rights reserved. FPX and Configure-Price-Quote are registered trademarks of FPX, LLC. Predictive Applications is a trademark of FPX, LLC. The FPX logo is a trademark of FPX, LLC.