Overview and Concepts
About Collaborative Quoting
Collaborative Quoting is a capability that extends Smart CPQ by transforming the buying journey by creating an integrated, collaborative digital environment that promotes stronger interaction between buyers and sellers. The core capability and functionality allows sales users to share quotes through an online, secure digital website where the buyer or other key stakeholders or reviewers (e.g. partners or distributors, SMEs, technical experts) can collaborate on deal proposals together to simplify the selling workflow and improve sales velocity.
This capability leverages Smart CPQ configurations, permissions, quote model, catalog metadata, and other configuration and settings that have been configured in Performance Quoting for Select for Sales Use Cases. For more information on the different quoting use case types refer to the Use Cases help topic.
By leveraging the existing CPQ configuration data and settings, the feature utilizes CPQ micro-services architecture and other B2B platform services to create micro-sites, also referred to as the Collaboration Portal, where users can interact on quotes together with real-time collaborative capabilities.
Collaborative Quoting is the right feature when you want to:
- Provide easy access to quotes in a secure website that allows your customers to view and modify quotes
- Enable digital real-time collaboration between sellers and buyers to accelerate deal closure and ensure all parties are working on a centralized, accurate quote with no loss of context or changes
- Deploy an omnichannel digital self-service experience that allows your buyers to modify proposals per their business needs
- Buyers and Sellers want to use a mobile-friendly digital channel with responsive design that can scale/render automatically depending on device type and screen size
- Automated provisioning of the collaboration portal (also known as micro-sites) that can be securely shared with your customers
- User rights access to limit or make certain parts editable based on roles and session states from the quote model
- Provide your customers with a B2C like product discovery and purchasing experience that is similar to the shopping and purchasing experience found on many eCommerce websites today
From a high-level perspective, the Collaborative Quoting capability enhances and extends the Sales Reps (or Resellers or Buyers) quoting process and workflow by allowing them to share quotes through a digital user experience in lieu of sending PDF or Word document proposals to customers. The quoting and configuration process becomes a collaborative experience between Buyers and Sellers (or Resellers) and is optimized to present specific quote contents from your current quoting model to your end-buyers or customers. Quote contents and data is presented in widgets (grids, components, product cards, etc.) that organize the quote data on the page.
The entire user experience as well as the configuration of Collaborative Quoting has some flexibility and is optimized for viewing quote contents and data on a responsive digital website that natively scales to different screen sizes and device types. The user experience and collaboration capabilities are further enhanced for the end-buyer customer experience to provide your customers with self-service capabilities and functionality for Buyers to be able to review and modify quotes based on the configuration and business rules that are defined by a CPQ Administrator or Sales IT Administrator using both the Performance Quoting - Quote Designer and Collaborative Quoting - Collaboration Portal Designer
Concepts & Definitions
Collaboration Quoting is the secure website or micro-site that is automatically generated by Smart CPQ services once the product add on has been enabled for your Performance Quoting tenant environment.
The Collaboration Quoting website or micro-site displays the quote and product contents that have been configured in CPQ for a particular deal or proposal. Once the quote is configured according to the customers' requirements, the quote can then be shared with the customer and any other recipients or key approvers or stakeholders that need to review the deal proposal.
The anatomy of the collaborative quote is shown below. The list of products that have been selected in the catalog are displayed in Product List view format with product images, the properties configured in the Collaboration Portal Designer and on the right side, a Quote Details summary widget with pre-configured quote fields. At the bottom of the screen is the contextual menu to add new items, generate documents, etc.
DEFINITIONS & TERMINOLOGY:
| MICRO-SITE (ALSO REFERRED TO AS COLLABORATIVE QUOTING) | THIS REFERS TO EACH UNIQUE WEBSITE INSTANCE OF THE QUOTE GENERATED BY SMART CPQ AND PERFORMANCE QUOTING SERVICES. EACH TIME A QUOTE IS SHARED WITH ANY USERS, A MICRO-SITE IS AUTOMATICALLY PROVISIONED BY THE B2B PLATFORM AND SMART CPQ SERVICES. THE MICRO-SITE HOUSES ALL THE PAGE DATA, COMPONENTS, AND CONNECTIONS TO THE VARIOUS DATA PROVIDERS TO RETRIEVE QUOTE AND CATALOG DATA TO DISPLAY THE COLLABORATIVE QUOTE TO THE USER. |
|---|---|
| Components | Components are the specific page elements, sections, and data objects that are displayed in the micro-site. |
| Product Catalog | A catalog represents a coherent set of standard or configurable products and/or services that are sold by a company. The catalog in Smart CPQ is setup using the Catalog Designer application and typically is composed of a certain number of collections in order to structure and organize the products and or services. For Collaborative Quoting, the catalog must be configured for use in Performance Quoting with the necessary collection hierarchy, product metadata and media objects to display to end customers when they want to browse and search for products sold by the company. |
| MICRO-SITE (ALSO REFERRED TO AS COLLABORATIVE QUOTING) | THIS REFERS TO EACH UNIQUE WEBSITE INSTANCE OF THE QUOTE GENERATED BY SMART CPQ AND PERFORMANCE QUOTING SERVICES. EACH TIME A QUOTE IS SHARED WITH ANY USERS, A MICRO-SITE IS AUTOMATICALLY PROVISIONED BY THE B2B PLATFORM AND SMART CPQ SERVICES. THE MICRO-SITE HOUSES ALL THE PAGE DATA, COMPONENTS, AND CONNECTIONS TO THE VARIOUS DATA PROVIDERS TO RETRIEVE QUOTE AND CATALOG DATA TO DISPLAY THE COLLABORATIVE QUOTE TO THE USER. |
|---|---|
| Data Providers | Data providers are responsible for Performance and Collaborative Quoting to retrieve various product, pricing and catalog data. |
| Identity Provider (IDP) | An identity provider is a service that stores and manages digital identities. It also provides authentication services such that applications within a federation or distributed network can verify a users identity. The B2B Platform and Collaborative Quoting rely on Identity Providers to verify the users accessing quotes if the quote originator or sales users enables authentication through an organization's identity provider. |
COLLABORATIVE QUOTING PROVIDERS & DATA SOURCES
Collaborative Quoting relies on the quote model and catalog data providers in order to populate the product metadata and pricing that are displayed to customers in the quote. The following table shows the data sources that Collaborative Quoting is able to connect to and what each data source provides:
| CATALOG (AND CONFIGURATOR) | (PRODUCT, BUNDLE TYPE OF LINES) | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Quoting | (PRODUCT, BUNDLE type of lines) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Pricing | ✓ | ||
| Dimension | ✓ | ||
| Supported CRM - SFDC / MS | ✓ | ✓ |
Use Cases
| USER TYPE | USER FUNCTION | BUSINESS NEEDS | USE CASES |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business Users (Seller or Sales Organization) | Pricing Manager | Expedite the approval process by reviewing quotes | User wants to be notified of quotes needing approvals and complete approval actions |
| Business Users (Seller or Sales Organization) | Sales Representative | Facilitate collaboration with the Buyer on quote proposals, deals and agreements | Sellers want to share the quotes with their customers (and any approvers/key parties) in a digital environment that allows them to review & update the quote, facilitating faster deal closure |
| Business Users (Seller or Sales Organization) | Sales Representative | Update or modify the quotes in real time with the Buyer | Users wants a self-service way to modify the quote without needing to login to the CRM |
| Business Users (Seller or Sales Organization) | Sales Representative | Understand customers & offer the right products. Close deals quickly by providing accurate quotes. Maintain strong relationships with existing customers | User needs a way to quickly add / search for the right products for the proposal. Provide an online, interactive environment to simplify the back-and-forth quote creation and review process |
| Business Users (Seller or Sales Organization) | Deal Desk Analyst / Approvers | Coordinate deal approvals for fast turnaround time | User wants to be notified when approvals are needed and quickly review deal summary and approve |
| Business Users (Seller or Sales Organization) | Analyze deal profitability by reviewing historical data. Advise sales on optimal pricing structure for deals | User wants to be able to collaborate with the sales user to inform them about pricing or product changes needed if not meeting FTE guidance | |
| B2B Buyer (Business Customers) | Buyer | Needs a self-service method to login into a portal to view quotes that they are working on with the Seller | User wants to view quotes that have been shared with them to review and approve, add or remove products, browse the businesses product catalog to view product detail information such as specifications, data sheets, warranty information, etc. |
| Needs a self-service functionality to modify or update the quote | User wants to be able to update or add items to the proposal that conform with agreed upon pricing rules Adjust quantities, browse or search the catalog, and easily add items |
OVERVIEW
Collaborative Quoting is the right module when you want to:
- Provide easy access to quotes in a secure website that allows your customers to view and modify quotes
- Enable digital real-time collaboration between sellers and buyers to accelerate deal closure and ensure all parties are working on a centralized, accurate quote with no loss of context or changes
- Deploy an omni-channel digital self-service experience that allows your buyers to modify proposals per their business needs
- Easy collaboration with multiple users (buyers, sellers, resellers, partners) being able to work on a quote simultaneously and having the changes synchronized immediately
COLLABORATING ON SELECT FOR SALES QUOTES USE CASE - STANDARD PRODUCTS
The flow below follows Jim the Sales Rep on his journey of creating a spot quote or select-for-sale order using Smart CPQ and then sharing it with his customer Sally. Sally will be given edit permissions to be able to modify the quote contents (e.g. update quantities of line items).
Jim works for a Computer & IT Services company that sells computers and technology products to businesses and resellers.
Jim wants to create a quote and negotiate an order with Sally, a corporate buyer for Acme, an industrial manufacturing firm.
His quoting process is the following:
- Create a new opportunity and quote in Salesforce
- Selecting Products via the Catalog and the Quoting Grid
- Setting the right price and discounts for selected products
- Sharing the quote from Smart CPQ
- Collaborating with Sally on any quote changes that are needed
- Sally approving the quote after making any changes/modifications
- Generating the quote document for signature and approvals
CREATING THE NEW QUOTE IN THE CRM
- To begin his journey in the CRM (Salesforce in this example), Jim creates a quote for an opportunity for the account Acme Industries.
- Now that the quote is created, Jim can start the quoting process in Smart CPQ. He can select any step defined in the Quoting workflow from the Smart CPQ Steps component, and start selecting products in the CPQ catalog, add some to the quote for Sally, set prices and discounts, etc.
SHARING THE QUOTE FROM CPQ
- Now that Jim has completed the product selection and pricing, he is ready to invite Sally to view the quote he has constructed for the deal he is working on.
In this step, Jim will now share the quote by clicking the Share button in the Quote header.
- The Share dialog is then displayed and Jim can specify Sally's email address and customize the invitation message (optional). Next he can select the sharing options that allow him to specify what permissions Sally will have when accessing the quote via the collaboration portal website.
There are several security options:
- Once Jim has selected the sharing options, he can click the Send button which automatically
opens an email with the Collaborative Quoting link and the invitation message via the default email client that has been configured ion his computer. Jim can modify the message body or content and then send the email to Sally so that she can access the the quote via the embedded link.
COLLABORATING ON THE QUOTE
- Once Sally receives the quote in her inbox, she can click the link that opens the quote that Jim shared within the Collaborative Quoting dedicated interface. Sally is then able to view the products and pricing information in the quote, and to interact - in live with Jim or asynchronously - on the quote content itself if authorized to.