Elly Yates-Roberts |
Sales is a complex business. As companies worldwide tackle soaring costs, salespeople may need to resort to every trick in the book to successfully make sales and meet targets by getting customers to dip into their strictly guarded budgets.
In addition to these challenges, salespeople may also have to reckon with complex quotes and agreements. Account managers at Netherlands-based brewing firm Heineken have dealt with precisely these issues, which have been exacerbated by the organisation’s size and global reach. The well-known organisation develops and markets premium beer and cider brands, and has a portfolio of more than 300 international, regional, local and speciality beverages. When creating quotes and agreements, sales representatives in the Dutch market had to manage several applications to generate documents from scratch.
To address this challenge, Heineken implemented a configure, price, quote (CPQ) solution from software provider Experlogix, which also has its European headquarters in the Netherlands. The service enables users to create complex quotes and agreements quickly and easily, while also using guided selling functions to improve accuracy and remove the risk of them introducing errors. In addition, the service centralises the sales process on Microsoft Dynamics 365 customer relationship management (CRM).
The Experlogix solution also provides automation capabilities so that users can pre-configure quotes and agreements before they even visit the customer, with a prompted questionnaire that quickly provides all information about product variations, pricing, discounts, timing and more.
“CPQ is easy to work with and allows us to create complex quotes and agreements in a short time frame,” says Jaap Versnel, business analyst at Heineken. “CPQ is simple to use; it’s got a great look and feel and offers the best value for your investment.”
According to Versnel, the solution provides account managers with everything they need to finalise and present a quote or agreement to their customers within a single visit. Updates and changes can be processed with a few clicks; if a quote or agreement is feasible, the CPQ processes it instantly. However, if there’s an issue, the solution provides prompts and directly alerts the account manager so they can input the right information.
“Our CPQ tool enables Heineken to maintain a single Microsoft Dynamics CRM database that holds all pricing and product information,” says Jeff Holway, vice president of Microsoft alliances at Experlogix. “Sales account managers can launch the CPQ directly from Microsoft Dynamics CRM and work through a guided sales process with assurance that all information and records are always current and centralised with the Dynamics database. The full CPQ/Dynamics integration ensures businesses work with one version of the truth.”
By implementing Experlogix CPQ, 120 sales account managers at Heineken have reduced the time they spend creating and updating agreements by more than 50 hours per week.
This article was originally published in the Winter 2022 issue of Technology Record. To get future issues delivered directly to your inbox, sign up for a free subscription.