Make Your CPQ Process Insanely Efficient with These 3 Workflow Interventions

The configure, price, quote (CPQ) workflow is where many B2B businesses watch hopelessly as their sales momentum grinds to a painful halt. 

There are plenty of deal-killing disasters lurking in the manual quoting process (hello, outdated prices, clunky configurations, and accidentally promising a customer something impossible). 

But the real kicker is that every moment you spend putting out these fires is a moment you’re not spending doing what you do best: selling and building relationships with your customers. 

The outlook isn’t completely bleak, though. There’s a smarter way to approach your CPQ workflow that can turn your existing cumbersome CPQ process into something that feels almost magical. 

(Wake-up call: sales reps that don’t use CPQ software take 73% more time to produce a quote or proposal than reps using CPQ). 

What is a CPQ Workflow? 

A CPQ workflow is the process you use to understand a customer’s needs, tailor a solution, calculate a price, and deliver a quote. It’s particularly common (and important) for B2B organizations that sell complex products and services. 

There are a lot of steps involved in configuring a product for a specific client, making sure the price is accurate, and generating a professional proposal that conveys all that info. Without a CPQ workflow, this entire process can quickly become chaotic—and doing it manually can lead to all sorts of mistakes which can cost you credibility and deals. 

Sales cycles are notoriously long and competitive in the B2B world, so being able to respond quickly and confidently can be the difference between winning or losing a deal. 

Key Components of an Effective CPQ Workflow

Here are the three most important parts of a great CPQ workflow. 

1. Product configuration

This is where you match your offers to the customer’s needs. A good configuration tool only lets you choose compatible options and stops you offering impossible combinations or leaving out important parts. 

Many tools will also let customers see the options available upfront, so there’s less back-and-forth as they decide what’s a good fit for them. 

2. Pricing

Your CPQ system should account for everything, including volume discounts, regional variations, contract terms, and any special conditions. Automatically assigning prices to different configurations or product combinations takes away the stress of trying to do it all manually, which can be time-consuming and—let’s face it—a recipe for disaster. 

3. Proposal generation 

Once the product is configured and priced, it’s time to put it all together in a proposal. We all know the benefits of a polished, accurate proposal. It helps you look professional and makes it easy for customers to say yes. 

Tip: many CPQ tools often include templates and branding options. 

The Benefits of Optimizing Your CPQ Workflow 

According to a Salesforce report, an optimized CPQ workflow can lead to 10x faster quote generation and makes the quote-to-cash process twice as fast. 

Here are some other benefits you can enjoy. 

Streamline Your Sales Cycle

There are plenty of companies out there still juggling spreadsheets and manually piecing together proposals. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and all that… but it could be costing you a ton of time and money. And wouldn’t you rather your team spent their time doing what they do best—selling?

An optimized CPQ workflow is an antidote to these traditional, clunky ways of working. It automates those tedious, manual tasks so you don’t have to cross-check configurations or triple-check a quote matches your latest discount policy. 

When everything works together and everything flows in one place, you’ll start to notice fewer bottlenecks and errors. 

Improve the Accuracy of Your Quotes

Nothing kills momentum faster than a wrong quote and the inevitable scramble to fix it. Customers expect precision, and if your numbers don’t add up (or start to change midway through the process), it undermines trust and can delay the deal. 

A decent CPQ workflow uses real-time data to make sure every quote you send is spot-on. The automated pricing function takes out the complexity of volume-based discounts, tiered pricing, or region-specific rates. 

The key word here is consistency. When you know every quote is built using the same rules and data, you can confidently move deals forward without second-guessing. 

Create More Clap Worthy Customer Experiences 

Every moment in the sales cycle is another opportunity to show customers why they should choose you. If you have an awkward configure, price, quote process, this can be really difficult to do. When the initial contact is clunky, leads are going to think working with you will be equally as frustrating. 

With an optimized CPQ workflow, customers get fast, accurate quotes tailored to their needs without waiting days for answers. This has a knock-on effect—it shows your business is organized and easy to work with. 

But more than this, an easy CPQ process makes it easy for customers to say yes, so you can push leads through your pipeline faster. 

3 Steps to Implementing a Better CPQ Workflow 

Implementing a successful CPQ workflow doesn’t happen overnight. Follow these steps for the best results. 

1. Assess Your Current Workflow 

Before you can fix your CPQ process, you need to understand what’s broken. 

Many B2B companies struggle here because their workflows evolve piecemeal over time—one spreadsheet here, a pricing update there, and a homegrown system patched together with good intentions. But that often leads to inefficiencies, errors, and overall frustration.

Start by mapping out your current workflow step by step. 

• Who’s involved? 
• Where do delays happen? 
• What tools or manual processes are in place? 

Redundant tasks, outdated pricing, and a lack of visibility across teams are all common pain points. For example, if your sales team can’t see real-time inventory data or relies on outdated configurations, quotes can easily become inaccurate and delay the deal.

The goal at this stage is to uncover any gaps.

Are your processes slowing down response times? Are errors slipping through the cracks? Identifying these issues upfront gives you a clear picture of what can be improved. 

2. Integrate CPQ with Your CRM and ERP Systems 

The best CPQ systems don’t live in a vacuum. They integrate seamlessly with your CRM and ERP systems so sales reps no longer have to toggle between systems. 

When your CPQ can pull real-time data from your existing tools, it’s much easier to send accurate quotes that reflect current inventory and pricing rules. For example, your CPQ can instantly apply any negotiated rates to a long-term client contract. 

The ease of integration here is important. The smoother it is, the less friction you’ll feel across the entire sales cycle. The more cohesive your entire tech stack is, the less chance there is of duplicate data and errors. 

Choose a tool that integrates well with your existing software. Experlogix easily integrates with major ERP and CRM systems so you can get set up and started in seconds. 

3. Automate Approval Workflows 

It can really drag out the sales cycle if a quote needs to go through several layers of review, each with its own sticking points and delays.

When you implement an automated CPQ workflow, you can set up approval rules that match your business logic. For instance, quotes within a specific discount range can bypass manager approval, while higher-value deals are automatically flagged for review. 

As you’re creating your new and improved CPQ workflow, think about what rules you want to put in place or what rules would make sense for your business. Do you want to fast-track quotes for loyal customers? Do you want extra layers of approval for deals of a certain size? 

Take some time to think about what matters to you. Getting all this in place from the get-go will make your life considerably easier as you grow. 

Case Study: Improving CPQ Workflow in Construction

Construction equipment dealer, Swecon, turned to Experlogix CPQ to help modernize its outdated, rigid configurator system. 

“Our old configurator’s interface was old fashioned, and it couldn’t be easily updated,” said Eva Karlsson, IT Service Manager for Sales and Marketing at Swecon Group. “We wanted something that would give our sales team a centralized system to configure products, as well as save quotes and order information efficiently. At the same time, we needed more functionality from the configurator itself; the inflexibility of the old system had become too big of a headache.”

As the business continued to expand, the limitations of its existing systems and processes became more apparent, leading to the search for a new CPQ solution. 

With instant and seamless integration with Microsoft Dynamics 365, Experlogix brought Swecon’s sales process into one central place by connecting CPQ, CRM, and ERP data in real time. 

The sales team can now easily and consistently create accurate orders. The integration with Dynamics CE gives sales all the data they need to configure an order, while the ability to pull metrics like net price and profit from Dynamics Finance and Operations, provides more visibility over sales performance. 

As a result, Swecon has eliminated any and all silos and dramatically reduced the number of order errors. 

Case Study: Enhanced Efficiency in Medical Manufacturing 

For many years, Freedom Concepts had been manually pricing their adaptive bikes and seating solutions—each of which was highly customized to the user’s needs. 

The system was riddled with delays, errors, and plenty of downtime, and the brand was finding it increasingly hard to meet customer-specific needs. 

“Our previous product configurator was no longer being supported, and it had problems and constraints to begin with, so the jump to another solution was something we needed to do,” said Colin Bock, mechanical engineering technician at Freedom Concepts.

“We started looking for more functionality to help our sales team and more easily configure our products.” 

Freedom Concepts’ old configurator was not only cumbersome to use, but it also left significant gaps in processes that depended on moving data between the old CPQ software and the company’s CRM, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales.

To fix these problems and evolve in line with its customers’ needs, Freedom Concepts needed a more reliable CPQ solution that could easily handle the highly customized configurations that needed to be produced.

The organization now uses Experlogix CPQ for its two product lines, with more than 100 rules and more than 2,000 different options. 

With Experlogix, it’s easy for the company’s engineers to create new rules and logic as the number of configuration options expands or as new needs arise. Plus, Experlogix saves dozens of hours by removing the need to re-create quotes from scratch when changes have to be made. 

Common Obstacles in CPQ Workflow Optimization 

Optimizing your CPQ workflow can feel like a big lift, especially when you hit roadblocks along the way. Here are the most common challenges businesses face and why they matter.

Data Integration 

If your CPQ, CRM, and ERP systems aren’t hooked up correctly, it can create a mess of data silos. Your reps won’t have access to real-time info, which means they might quote outdated prices or offer solutions that don’t actually align with your current inventory. 

User Adoption

Getting your whole team on board and excited about yet another piece of tech can be hard. Nigh-on impossible, sometimes. But we’ve found that adoption struggles often stem from overly complex interfaces, inadequate training, or a lack of communication about how the new workflow will help. 

Customization vs Complexity

A CPQ workflow should reflect your business’s specific needs, but it’s easy to get bogged down in the minutiae and overload it with customizations you think are necessary but actually aren’t. This can quickly create a clunky, difficult-to-maintain system that’s confusing and slower to use than your previous manual process. 

Lack of Clear Ownership

CPQ optimization often falls into a gray area when it comes to who’s responsible. Is it sales, IT, or operations that own the workflow? Without clear accountability, no one takes charge of refining the process, which can lead to problematic bottlenecks and half-finished integrations. 

Inconsistent Data Management

Inconsistent data can wreak absolute havoc on your CPQ workflow. Things like outdated product specs, mismatched pricing rules, and incomplete customer records can dramatically impact how you quote new customers. Essentially, if you put garbage in, you get garbage out. 

Approval Delays 

If quotes need multiple layers of manual review or there’s no clear escalation path, the sales cycle can stretch on and on with no end in sight. 

Best Practices to Tackle These Challenges 

Overcoming CPQ challenges takes a thoughtful, step-by-step approach. Here’s how you can tackle the most common pain points and set your workflow up for success. 

Start with Strong Planning and Collaboration

Bring key stakeholders into the conversation as early as possible. Discuss pain points, identify bottlenecks, and agree on the goals you want your CPQ system to achieve. 

Prioritize Clear, Hands-On Training 

A powerful CPQ system that does its job well is only as effective as the people using it—and that often requires training. Use step-by-step tutorials, live demos, and real-world examples to show how the system can speed up core tasks.  

For best results, don’t stop at a single training session. Offer ongoing support and answer questions so your team doesn’t feel stymied by limited knowledge. 

Keep Customization Simple 

Obviously, you want your CPQ workflow to mimic your business needs, and to do that, you need to customize a fair amount. But overloading your new CPQ workflow with too many features too soon can backfire. 

To avoid creating a headache for yourself, start with the essentials: automated pricing rules, real-time product configuration, and guided selling. These are the core functionalities that make the biggest impact early on.

Monitor Progress and Collect Feedback

Regularly check how the system is performing and whether you’re hitting the goals you want to. Are quotes going out faster? Are there fewer errors? Ask your team for feedback so you can see what’s working and what’s not. 

You can then use this feedback to make incremental improvements. Maybe your approval rules need a quick tweak, or your training materials could cover more scenarios. 

Check Your Data is Healthy

Before you start pumping data into your CPQ, check it’s clean, accurate, and up to date. Check for outdated pricing, any patchy product specs, or customer details that are wrong. 

Simplify and Automate Approvals 

Bottlenecks happen in all kinds of situations, but you can reduce the chances of them cropping up in your sales cycle by automating much of the approval process. Set clear rules for what kind of configurations or setups need manual approval and then automate the rest. 

Create a Culture of Change Management

Change can be tough, especially if your team is used to doing things a certain way. Address this from the get-go by being transparent about why the new workflow is needed and how it’s going to help everyone in the long run. 

Playing the Long Game for a Perfect CPQ Workflow

You can’t “set and forget” your CPQ workflow. It’s something that grows and adapts to your business. To keep things running smoothly, prioritize regular system audits. These help you spot inefficiencies, outdated rules, or unused features that could be streamlined.

You should also keep your team up to speed with periodic training updates, especially as your business evolves or new features are added.

Are you ready to enjoy faster sales cycles and a better overall experience for your team and customers? Experlogix has helped countless businesses simplify their CPQ processes with powerful, flexible solutions. 

See the difference it can make for you. Book a demo today. 

FAQs About the CPQ Workflow