Efficient Salesforce CPQ Implementation: Simplifying Your Sales Process – A Case Study

Overview

A client specializes in renewable energy providing turbines and generators for rent to meet fuel needs in the US and Canada. Although they currently use Pipedrive as their CRM, they are not utilizing it effectively. Management oversight is lacking because salespeople rely on various systems, such as spreadsheets, to manage and record their sales activities. 

The client intends to expand their business to Europe and Latin America due to the significant demand in these regions, driven by the booming renewable energy market.

Central Issue

The Pipedrive CRM does not support efficient business operations. The program hinders the client’s sales process, creates bottlenecks in workflow, and requires unnecessary extra work. These issues ultimately decrease productivity, customer satisfaction, and team collaboration. 

Proposed Solution

Streamline sales strategies and management systems by migrating data and business functions from Pipedrive to Salesforce CRM.  

Pain Points and Inefficiencies

The renewable energy company encounters multiple difficulties while using Pipedrive. These challenges stem from a lack of unification between the software and the staff’s processes. 

The Pipedrive CRM has negatively affected sales team management and consequently led to decreased motivation and performance. Some of these issues include:

1. The Pipedrive CRM platform faces low user adoption within the company, resulting in incomplete and unreliable data. This makes it challenging for management to oversee the sales pipeline and generate meaningful insights. Consequently, the client is finding it difficult to make informed decisions.
2. The sales team does not use a centralized database to record and access their most crucial information. Each member uses a different organizational system, with the client holding its data among various spreadsheets and disparate platforms. Due to this disconnect, generating quotes is unnecessarily challenging and time-consuming. 
3. As the CEO is the sole individual approving quotes, the client is experiencing significant delays in the quoting procedure. Additionally, the Pipedrive CRM does not provide a function that filters out specific quotes, causing further delays.
4. The current structure is overly rigid and does not allow the staff to adjust the price according to negotiations. Coupled with a needlessly complex pricing model that includes premium, market, and floor prices, this system has become increasingly difficult and cumbersome to manage. 
5. The client has reported that their company lacks a transparent sales guidance process, especially when meeting environmental regulations. This issue is even more concerning given they work in the renewable energy sector, and noncompliance can significantly hinder their operations. In addition, their staff has struggled to track required information with Pipedrive effectively. Ultimately, these inefficiencies have led to delays in the installation and implementation of gas turbines.

Recognizing the need to address the above-mentioned issues, the company decided to reassess the CRM system and enact changes that would better support the sales team. 

Custom Solution

By carefully considering the client’s unique pain points, Astreca Consulting professionals devised a personalized implementation plan for the company. This method included moving the client’s data and processes from Pipedrive to Salesforce. Upon completing the migration, Astreca created a customized sales operations system with management strategies to enhance overall productivity and oversight in the business. 

Astreca determined that the client needs to improve their current pricing model, data integrity, analytics, and operations to remain competitive in the renewable energy sector. A more logical, streamlined approach can help the company maximize profits while keeping up with industry changes. By implementing these changes before global expansion, the client can prioritize higher-level tasks. The integration plan included the following objectives:

Improve Pricing Model

• Automate the process for updating price books to develop a more efficient pricing model. This measure will save costs and boost revenues by presenting uniform, simplified pricing to customers across all goods and services.  
• Generate accurate quotes with incorporated pricing methods to correctly represent each product or service’s cost. The client’s customers can then make informed decisions when selecting a good or service, reducing the risk of pricing disputes or misunderstandings. Additionally, prompt and accurate quoting will demonstrate the company’s attention to detail and professionalism.
• Implement CPQ standard functionality to successfully manage product bundling, pricing, and template setup. This will also streamline the ordering process, making it easier for the client’s customers to find and purchase the right products for their needs. Overall, it will ensure accuracy in pricing and billing, eliminating costly errors and delays.

Ensure Accurate Data

• Automate notifications for new accounts to ensure accuracy and reliability. Since the system will push these notifications as soon as the client creates a new account, it reduces the risk of human error while saving the client time and resources. 
• Use Salesforce flows and custom fields to generate account numbers automatically. This approach will help the client improve precision while eliminating the mistakes that occur with manual entry.    

Enhance Insights

• Utilize custom fields on opportunities to allow the company to track job information and analyze data specific to its operations. These comprehensive analytics will give the client greater insight into their sales process to make more informed decisions. Further, It will help them better understand their customer needs and preferences.
• Employ Salesforce CPQ guidance Selling functions to help the sales team choose the appropriate products and services. The Salesforce Selling features will allow the business to streamline its sales strategy by enabling its reps to generate proposals and quotes swiftly and precisely. Additionally, it provides insight into customer intel, allowing the client to make data-driven decisions. 

Streamline Operations

• Integrate DocuSign for electronic signing to simplify the process of form validation. This tool will also help to reduce the risk of fraud since all parties involved can be sure that the document has been signed and reviewed by the right people. Lastly, it saves time and money since the client can execute the entire process without printing, scanning, and faxing paper forms.

Thoroughly test and adhere to best practices for optimal Salesforce platform performance with third-party applications. Independent testing will guarantee that Salesforce functions are running smoothly and efficiently when the client is ready to go live. It also helps to prevent serious issues such as data loss, security threats, or system downtime, which can negatively impact the company’s operations and bottom line.