New report from Simplus highlights industry trends in rapidly expanding CRM ecosystem.

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH—SEPTEMBER 21, 2018—Two out of every three business leaders using a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform have yet to implement sales forecasting, backend integration and social network integration to help inform sales strategies, according to a new report from Simplus.

The State of the Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) Industry report found that businesses are primarily using CRM solutions for more standard sales management-related opportunities, including opportunity and pipeline management (90 percent), account management (80 percent) and contacts management (70 percent).

The findings underscore the untapped potential of CPQ technology to serve as the catalyst for next-generation sales growth strategies, especially to guide upselling and cross-selling opportunities. Market revenue derived from CPQ software already has topped $878 million annually globally, and the business intelligence firm Gartner predicts the CPQ industry will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 20 percent through 2020.

The State of the CPQ Industry report is based on the insights of more than 400 business leaders across industries that are using CRM solutions to drive next-generation sales and profitability strategies.

Other insights from the State of the CPQ Industry report include:

1. Businesses overwhelmingly recognize the value of utilizing a CRM solution: CRM solutions, including the one developed by global leader Salesforce, are becoming increasingly central to driving the customer experience throughout the sales lifecycle. The State of the CPQ Industry report found that 90 percent of business leaders say their needs are well-reflected in their CRM platform, and 80 percent agreed that CRM makes them more effective at their job. Moreover, 70 percent of business leaders rated their CRM a perfect five stars when asked to consider its impact on their bottom line. Similarly, when asked to consider personal satisfaction with their CRM, 75 percent of business leaders gave it a perfect five-star rating.
2. Businesses have not fully tapped into the potential of their billing and ERP systems: Billing and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are designed to integrate many of the core processes and workflows necessary to run a business, from accounting to HR to inventory management. However, 50 percent of business leaders reported that their company uses neither a billing nor ERP platform, and 40 percent said that while they have billing and/or ERP platforms, they either use them rarely or not at all. Furthermore, businesses are still learning how to use many of these next-generation capabilities. While more than half of business leaders reported using their ERP/billing platform to manage services such as contract editing, contract collaboration, contract templates and contract approvals, only 20 percent reported using the platform for revenue recognition, and less than 10 percent reported using their platform for ordering, payment processing and general ledger accounts.
3. CPQ integrations with CRM and ERP are still in their infancy: The full power of CPQ is unlocked when businesses integrate their CPQ platform with other systems, especially CRM and ERP. Integration enables a CPQ platform to gain automatic, real-time access to valuable customer data. This enables CPQ not only to consolidate pricing management by creating a single system of record, but also to use machine learning and artificial intelligence to provide critical contextualizing information about customers, sales histories and all available pricing options. Just 10 percent of business leaders reported having CPQ systems that integrate with ERP, and just 5 percent reported having CRM systems that integrate with both CPQ and ERP.

The findings of the State of the CPQ Industry report reveal that businesses view CPQ as a catalyst for future sales growth, even as they are still learning how to fully take advantage of CPQ. The survey found that more than 40 percent of businesses are planning to implement a CPQ solution over the next year.

“As businesses recognize that sales are becoming more complex and context-driven, CPQ stands poised to help them unlock the full potential of next-generation cloud solutions to help them manage these sales,” said Ryan Westwood, CEO of Simplus. “CPQ truly is a catalyst for future sales growth that businesses overwhelmingly will depend on to maintain their competitive edge.”

For more information, please contact 1-833-SIMPLUS or email [email protected].

Salesforce CPQ is among the trademarks of Salesforce.com, Inc.

About Simplus

Simplus is a Platinum Salesforce Partner and an industry leader in Quote-to-Cash implementations. We provide enterprise-wide digital transformation across the entire Salesforce ecosystem through advisory, implementation, change management, custom configuration and managed services. Guided by the mantra “making complex things simple,” we use leading cloud solutions to help companies achieve a strategic vision, improve performance and increase value to stakeholders. With more than 2,000 clients and a customer satisfaction rating in the top 1 percent of all Salesforce partners, Simplus helps companies improve, innovate and grow. For more information about Simplus, please visit www.simplus.com.