by twieberneit | Feb 22, 2021 | Blog, CRMKonvos |
This CRMKonvo was supposed to be with Thomas Verly, a highly experienced Sales- and IT leader. We wanted to learn from his experience how to enable sales operations. What is important, what to measure? Do you really need a CPQ system? Unluckily he could not participate due to the heavy snow storm in Texas that caused major disruption. The good news is that Thomas and his family are safe Now, the CRMKonvos team has more than 70 years of CRM experience. We are coming from very different angles. So, we decided to tackle the topic, making some good points. Enjoy this episode and look forward to another one with Thomas Verly. Coming...
by twieberneit | Apr 12, 2018 | Analysis, Blog |
The News SAP has recently announced the completion of the acquisition of Callidus Software, Inc. Unsurprisingly, CallidusCloud’s assets shall get consolidated under the umbrella of SAP Hybris leveraging the customer relationships that the existing leadership team, which shall continue to lead their team, has built. CallidusCloud is a leader in sales performance management and in the CPQ area and also has some more interesting assets, notably their contract lifecycle management offering, which ties nicely into the CPQ piece. The CPQ software has a (first) working integration into SAP’s Cloud for Sales, which got announced in September 2017 and that gets continuously improved. One seemingly simple, yet powerful feature of the CPQ software is the indicator for margin health that gets updated as a sales representative works upon a quote. The software’s ability to generate multi-level workflows based upon changes of prices or contract clauses creates an efficient workflow, which includes the customer when using the portal based delivery of documents during negotiations. All in all the software is geared towards making the sales process efficient. CallidusCloud’s solutions shall be sold standalone as well as integrated into SAP solutions and a roadmap shall get announced at SAPPHIRENOW in June 2018. I have done a brief initial analysis of this acquisition right after the plan got announced and followed up with some musings about how CPQ can be delivered in a customer experience fashion. The Bigger Picture With CallidusCloud’s CPQ SAP now has at minimum three configuration engines that can get used by customers: ERP Variant Configurator SAP Hybris CPQ CallidusCloud CPQ A fourth one comes into the picture if I...
by twieberneit | Feb 12, 2018 | Blog |
In all likelihood you know that CPQ stands for Configure, Price, Quote. CPQ software helps mainly B2B companies to more efficiently sell highly configurable products. As the name suggests, the software helps sales people during the three steps of configuring the product, getting and agreeing a price for it, and finally initiating the quotation process. The more variables, or parts, a final product has the more advantage a CPQ tool offers to both, sellers and buyers. It is geared for streamlining and accelerating the sales process while reducing errors. A CPQ system typically ties into CRM- and ERP systems and, apart from being made available to channel partners, is often also exposed through an e-commerce system (have you ever configured your car online?). CPQ currently being a hot topic (and not only since the planned acquisition of CallidusCloud by SAP) there is a good number of companies offering this functionality. But in many scenarios CPQ also needs a CLM. Now I hear you asking: what is CLM? After all there are many possible long terms for this abbreviation. Why does it connect to CPQ? And why does this combination make an appearance in a blog that distinctly focuses on CRM, customer engagement and ultimately an improved customer experience? Starting from the end: CPQ, and by extension CLM, is more and more becoming a link between the front office and the back office and therefore has considerable impact on the customer engagement process, and hence influences the customer experience. So, what is CLM? CLM is an abbreviation for Contract Lifecycle Management. As such it deals with the creation of contracts,...
by twieberneit | Feb 1, 2018 | Analysis, Blog |
The News On January 30, 2018 SAP announced that its subsidiary SAP America, Inc. has entered into an agreement to acquire Callidus Software Inc., a leader in sales performance management and CPQ software. With a price tag of around $2.4 bn this is the most expensive acquisition SAP has announced in quite a time. With this acquisition SAP gets closer to the target of assembling the “most complete and differentiated portfolio to manage today’s customer experience” and claims that the combination of the CallidusCloud Lead to Money suite in combination with its own (Hybris) customer engagement suite creates a “leading solution portfolio”. SAP intends to consolidate the CallidusCloud solution set into its Hybris portfolio, with the sales cloud being the technical integration point of the software. As usual, the existing management team will stay on board. The Bigger Picture According to the most recent Gartner Magic Quadrants for Sales Performance Management (dated 15 January, 2018) and Configure, Price, and Quote Application Suites (dated 29 January, 2018) SAP catapulted itself into the leadership position of Sales Performance Management and into a visionary position in the CPQ market. Forrester Research already in their Forrester Wave: Configure-Price-Quote Solutions, Q1 2017 placed CallidusCloud into the leader section of their wave. With SAP’s Hybris solutions, including Gigya, SAP already has a powerful customer engagement suite, albeit with some gaps, a significant of which got plugged with this acquisition. While SAP CPQ is fairly capable on the C and P there is some deficiency on the Q. And it bases on grandfather IPC – not a bad engine, but one that is getting tired. Friend...
