Solution design: Improve margin, speed and quote win rate with guided selling and decision support

In this use case we want to create a sales bidder quote with guided selling and decision support.

Situation description:

This use case is most targeted at sales account executives so we will look at the flow in Pricefx from this perspective. In the current state, bid creation takes valuable time away from selling and lacks the speed and insights needed to be successful. The good news is that in Pricefx, there's an opportunity to automate sales quoting processes informed by inline analytics and insights, with built-in governance and workflows. This leads to margin expansion, higher win rates and improved sales efficiency, even more so when integrated into existing CRM sales workflows.

Workflow

Let's see how we can improve the quoting process and price FX.

Step 1: ToDo List

We're starting off on the home page, in this case, with a Sales Rep view.

We have all the dashboards, individual quotes for contributors, or a team quotes in case you are a manager, as well as approvals in the ToDo List.

For this flow, we are going to start out at the To Do List with a quote renewal. You can see that an individual quote which is either expiring or requires one’s attention has been assigned .

We will open up the individual quote items. To do so, click on the item (in blue). In the new window you can see all the details regarding the quote as well as the status. As we browse, you will notice that  this individual quote has already been approved (in line with the header you will see Offer - Approved). If this is the case, most likely you are not going to make any changes.

We will however, back out of the quote, select and duplicate it. TO do this, you need to go the home menu :options: ➡️ Quoting ➡️ Quotes and click on the quote you want to duplicate. Click then Duplicate in the bottom black ribbon.

We have already done so for this quote and named the copy P53, and it is the one we will work with for this flow.

Step 2: Creating a quote 

The process of creating a quote is fairly similar whether you are starting from scratch or duplicating it. You will need to review your header information first. In this case, we've updated the effective dates, meaning start and end dates.

For the renewal, we selected an individual customer, but we will not actually change it.

If you were to start at the beginning, you may want to filter down by geography, and then find the customer that you are looking for more specifically, and maybe make some other decisions around things like currency, incoterms and so on. To do this, click on the magnifying glass icon in line with the Customer box and in the table that opens, you can filter down according to your interest. When you have selected all the fields you want, click on Confirm selection in the bottom right corner. (in blue)

Step 3: Items and product recommendations

Moving on to items, in this scenario, we already have the items that we've selected. You could add additional items by browsing the catalog. At his point you can filter down based on product criteria and other filtering criteria in order to find the specific products that you need to add into the quote, or potentially look at recommendations in terms of adding products. To access the product recommendation, click on Input Parameters in the box on the right side, then click on Open (in blue) below.

When we look at product recommendation, the products within the quote are checked and a peer comparison to see if there are alternative cross sell and upsell products will be done. In this case, you could be looking to go for wallet share or looking to increase margin based on the portfolio that you're offering. As we have all the products in here that we wanted to establish, we're going to make some decisions in terms of pricing. You can make quantity changes or other changes by line item, or you can do these in a mass edit format, by clicking Mass Edit. For example if you wanted to override the quantity to a certain amount or add a discount percentage across the entire quote, you can apply these and they would be updated for all the different selected line items.

Step 4: Filtering and comparing information 

From there you can make individual decisions to override the quantities to higher or lower amounts on a line item by line item basis. As you are making line item decisions, you can go to some specific filters that might help a little bit in terms of looking at competition. (Competition view ➡️ Calculations ➡️ Show (in blue)

In this case, we can see our top five competitors at a product level and make decisions on competitive pricing. We could also change the filter to take a look at a guidance view. This is one of the more common views where we're checking not only our individual list price and discounting, but we're comparing that against optimized pricing guidance. To access this view, click on the blue cogwheel ➡️ Fast quote - Guidance view

Again, in this case, we can see that there is some margin alerting based on price quality, thus comparing our target floor and stretch price to the selected price. So, we can choose to override the price or change the discounting to increase the quality score and potentially get rid of some of this margin alerting based on the floor target and stretch price.

You can also see some other contextual decision support around a variety of information and KPIs for the quote, including calculation results for pricing guidance, competitor information, a whole variety of other analytics and views around rebates, promotions and other elements that impact the quote.

For instance, you may check out the inline analytics. When opening this view, you can see specifically where you are from a quantity and an invoice price where a discount percentage based on my floor, target and stretch. 

What this is telling you is that there is a lot of recent transaction history that's below the floor. In other words, potentially, there's a competitive action that's in place making it difficult for you to go to target or stretch price. This is something that the pricing team might be able to help you with.

Step 5: Selling guidance

Once you've made your initial changes around quantities, pricing, discounts and consulting your pricing guidance, you may want to browse some other information around guidance. In our flow, we can see what our target is. We're actually 8% below targets and that might have an impact on our specific performance and workflow. By looking at workflow we can see we have a three- level workflow approval, and the recent codes for each one of those different approval levels.

You might also want to do some messaging to colleagues in order to go back and forth before you kick off the approval, or approach this specific customer in a more holistic view.

There is an embedded customer's Insights analytics that gives you KPIs and direction around where you are trending for revenue, margin and volume for this customer as well as four full waterfall and revenue breakdown and trending analyses. 

In this case, it might take a look at where your discounting is. In this scenario, we look fairly even, so there is not much need for concern about the volume discounting. There is quite a bit going on in terms of rebates and payment terms for the off-invoice discounting, so this is something that should be considered.

You could also do a comparison to the previous quote to return an alternate quote. In this case, we can see our previous quote versus our current one and see what the margin change is between the two revenue margins.

You can also see the portfolio change. Several of these products are the same, but some are different. This gives you a good view in terms of what has been sold before and what the margin impact is, should these changes be applied. It also gives you an idea of what kinds of changes can be made from a scenario standpoint.

Step 6: Approving and exporting the quote

To wrap up, you can e-mail the quote directly to the customer. You can export it as a PDF.

In the case you export to PDF, Pricefx also has an embedded E-signature technology as well as attached terms and conditions. Now you can kick off the final approval.

Once the workflow has been started, you can get a view of what the workflow looks like in terms of being a one, two or three-step process, what the reason codes are for that.

If you are a manager or an approver in this process, you can go ahead and submit and approve the quotes. As an individual user, you can also add additional steps to the process if that's required. Once the quote is approved, it will be sent over to ERP or other similar systems where it will make the basis for pricing as transactions come through to the system.

And there we have it, improved margin speed and agility quoting and CPQ with guided selling and decision support in Pricefx.