Introduction
PIM is a Product Information Management system that provides a single location, where product information can be collected, managed, and enhanced to create a product catalog, and quickly deliver compelling product experiences across sales and eCommerce channels.
CPQ software is used by companies to create quotes for various product configurations.
Let’s have a look at how CPQ and PIM together can help you to build an effective B2B commerce. But before proceeding further, it is important to understand the basics.
What is CPQ?
The CPQ software, abbreviated for Configure, Price, and Quote, is automation software that enables the sales team to create and deliver quotes quickly, thereby accelerating the quote-to-cash process.
CPQ system together with machine learning and artificial intelligence offers helpful insights into customized product configurations, solid pricing suggestions, and tailored product recommendations throughout the journey of creating quotes.
Along with the ability to authorize the sales team to close deals quicker, the software enhances the experience of the customers by providing quick and customized services to customers.
How CPQ Helps in Building a Better eCommerce Experience?
According to Constellation, CPQ software helped to save around 300 percent of the average time when compared to the manual quoting processes. It created a massive impact on the contemporary perspective of pricing and selling, hence leading to faster sales closing and benefits for both parties.
The AI-enabled CPQ system takes the B2B eCommerce experience to the next level. It provides numerous benefits to the customers, some of which are as follows:
Faster Response Time on Sales Requests
The traditional method of creating quotes involves multiple time-taking operations, which makes it challenging to build quotes manually. In today’s fast-paced economy you risk losing crucial deals if there is a delay in the response time of creating quotes.
With the help of the CPQ software, businesses can overcome this challenge by minimizing the time-to-quote to a fraction of a minute. The sales team can get pricing based on real-time market data by Integrating CPQ software into the processes.
It also helps the B2B businesses to collaborate effortlessly with the stakeholders so that they can quickly address the potential conflicts. With the help of this tool, the customers can get a faster response to their sales inquiries.
Customized Offers
A high level of customization is only possible when you integrate AI-powered CPQ software into your quoting process. It assists the sales team to access accurate and relevant product configuration. It recognizes the purchase patterns and evaluates the price trends so that the customized offers match exactly with the customer’s needs.
Precise Quotes
With the help of CPQ software, the sales team ensures 100 percent accuracy in the configuration process. It not only helps to avoid expensive errors but also saves the valuable time of your customers in generating the right quotes at the right time, thereby ensuring a faster quote-to-cash process and a better customer experience.
The CPQ software even enables beginners to create the most complicated product and service configurations effortlessly. It reduces the risk of presenting inappropriate configurations to the customers, thereby ensuring accuracy in the first attempt.
Instructive Sales Process
The CPQ system enables the sales team to generate an instructive and personalized experience throughout the sales processes. Enhanced automation results in more time in the hands of the sales reps to understand the pain points and needs of the customer.
The outcomes are healthier responsiveness, efficient communication, and highly engaged customers. By leveraging the appropriate CPQ software, the sales team can spend maximum time building strong relationships with the customers.
What is PIM?
A product information management or PIM is a software solution that offers a centralized place to organize the product information, build a product catalog, and distribute it through different channels. In simple terms, it ensures to provide all the information required by the customers in one place.
With the help of the PIM software, businesses can verify that every product description on their website is accurate and updated. If you want to modify any information, you can make the changes in the database, and it will get updated everywhere automatically.
How PIM Helps in Building a Better eCommerce Experience?
Similar to the CPQ software, the PIM system also helps to build a better eCommerce experience in the following ways:
Fast Purchase Decisions
Since the attention span of people is shrinking, businesses are required to assist the customers in making decisions quickly and efficiently. With PIM, businesses can publish new products and services complete with product descriptions and images across multiple platforms easily.
The PIM system is an ideal choice to publish new products and services with limited availability. You can even add updated information if the initial rush slows down.
Reduced Product Returns
Product returns are a huge cost for any B2B eCommerce business. It not only affects the confidence of the customers but also minimizes the profit margins and increases the overhead costs. Although product returns are not preventable, you can limit them by integrating the PIM into the processes.
Uniform Buying Experience
Nowadays, people use different channels to conduct product research before making purchases online. If businesses offer a uniform buying experience to the customers in all the distribution channels, it would become easier for them to reinforce their brand image and provide better customer experiences.
The integration of PIM into your business enables you to create a uniform buying experience that offers a professional and trustworthy image of the brand, hence assuring customers make a swift purchase.
Quicker Sales
With the help of a product information management system, you can answer various queries of the customers regarding the availability of the styles, colors, sizes, and technical product data. This helps the customers to make swift decisions resulting in quicker sales.
Upselling and Cross-Selling Opportunities
To make the shopping experiences effective for the customers, businesses can leverage PIM software to group similar products. Apart from providing an effortless browsing experience to the customers, the product information management system promotes upselling and cross-selling opportunities.
How CPQ and PIM can Help You Build a Better B2B eCommerce Experience?
PIM and CPQ integration can be leveraged to strengthen the tech strategy and build and deliver an effective B2B eCommerce experience. B2B businesses can incorporate relevant and accurate data into their websites and enhance the buying experience of the consumers.
The product-related information in PIM can be utilized by CPQ software to create quotes. PIM can make the sourcing of images and the availability of product configuration a lot easier, by rendering a variety of product images along with the content to the CPQ system.
It is recommended to integrate and have a single directional data flow from PIM to CPQ. For instance, PIM would be the storehouse of all the product information like stock-keeping units (SKUs), unit of measurement (UOM), bill of materials (BOM), origin country, etc.
The businesses can streamline the entire process through a PIM system by sending pre-configured bundles to the CPQ software, including links, imagery, and digital assets.
CPQ can pull detailed product information from PIM and take into account business rules to correlate complex product configurations and create respective product pricing. Sales reps can then utilize this information to provide accurate price quotes.
Key Takeaways
The PIM/CPQ integration is vital for B2B eCommerce operations that help businesses to dispense the roles and responsibilities from the overall perspective of the workforce. It also allows them to use effective tools and software to direct product information and configuration to enhance the shopping experience of the consumers.
