Configure One
CPQ Simplified

Quote turnaround time and pricing inaccuracies are some of the biggest challenges faced by companies, especially manufacturers, when it comes to the quoting and manufacturing of orders for configurable, multi-option, and customizable products and services. The reasons are varied, and range from sales people having inadequate or incomplete product knowledge; inaccurate or expired price lists, and outdated product definitions. Add to that a lack of process around keeping your master data system up to date and you have some significant challenges that get in the way of profitability. Configure One enables companies to overcome these challenges, increase revenue, and reduce cost by automating the configuration, pricing, quoting, and manufacturing processes. The following interview with Michael McDonnell, co-founder, and VP of Product Development at Configure One highlights the company’s expertise in the Configure, Price, and Quote (CPQ) space, their unique value proposition, NetSuite integration, and their roadmap for the future.

Who are your typical customers and what are the typical challenges that they face? How are you addressing these challenges?

Our customers are primarily manufacturing companies who do both B2B and B2C sales. Some of the most common challenges that they face are long quote turnaround time, incomplete sales worksheets, pricing inaccuracies, quality and rework issues, and high rates of product returns. We are able to reduce quote turnaround time by upwards of 90 percent while ensuring that all factors relevant to generating an accurate quote are identified early on in the process, and that all product, pricing, and manufacturing rules are followed. When a sales rep talks to a customer, all relevant data for that opportunity is clearly identified, allowing for the creation of a valid quote document that can be easily shared with the customer.

We offer our customers a comprehensive CPQ solution, allowing them to create unique configurations for complex products. Product rules and logic guide users through the configuration process, as opposed to tribal knowledge and personal experience (or lack thereof). As the user creates a configuration, pricing is updated in real-time. Either during the quoting process, or after a quote is won, CPQ data is shared with other business systems—including most CRM and ERP platforms—so that sales opportunities are always up-to-date and demand can be accurately forecast. During the configuration process the buyer can see visual representations of the product they’re considering purchasing—both in 2D and 3D views—to both aid in the accuracy of the configuration, and to provide a competitive differentiator for our customers.

Could you walk us through the configuration, integration and visualization aspects of the product offered by you?

The power of what we offer is the ability to take a complex situation and greatly simplify it. That is why the strength of any CPQ solution is how efficiently you can write rules that model real-world conditions. At Configure One, we have yet to find a configuration problem that we were unable to solve. Our CPQ solution provides our customers with the flexibility to write incredibly complex rules in a compact manner so that they can quickly build configurable products and maintain them over time. One of the ways we do that is through the robustness of our rule-writing environment and the speed and the strength of the configuration engine.

We believe it is important not to allow our software to operate in a data silo.

Our customer environments have a wealth of business data, often dispersed throughout several disparate systems, including ERP and CRM. Given this is almost always the case, we offer several standard integration modules, allowing our customers to quickly get up and running and leverage existing data. For example, our seamless integration with NetSuite allows our customers to engage with their customers by creating accurate configurations and quotes via CPQ and managing the opportunity within NetSuite. This creates huge organizational efficiencies by ensuring that all relevant information is available to sales reps and management in one place. Our integration capabilities go beyond NetSuite and include CRM and ERP platforms such as SAP, JD Edwards, SalesForce, Oracle CRM, and Microsoft Dynamics.

What the end user or buyer usually loves the most about any product is what they can see. That’s why visualization is at the core of what we do. During the configuration process users can see both 2D and 3D representations of the product they are configuring, helping to ensure that the intended product is appropriate for their needs. This also provides a tremendous differentiator for our customers against their competition, which breeds customer loyalty. That’s a wonderful thing!

Please walk us through your onboarding process?

For Configure One, onboarding begins before a deal is closed. Our sales process is highly consultative so as we learn about our prospective customers’ businesses and help to identify their pain points, we are developing their future objectives with our software. This means we can propose the right mix of product and services to help them address problems without an unnecessarily lengthy business discovery process post sale.

Once a customer is onboard, we take a hands-on approach in training them on the use of the software. This is typically done in a multi-day program where they learn how to write various rules, model pricing schemes, create document templates, and generate manufacturing data as part of the configuration process. This is all supported by various practical exercises, training documents, admin guides, and the expertise of our world class Services organization.

After training, we transition to planning for implementation. This activity usually follows on the heels of training and is held over one or two days. The goal of these sessions is to help our customers lay out a well-reasoned project plan, identify key milestones throughout the project, and realize a return on their investment as soon as practical.

Beyond the implementation planning, our level of engagement can vary based on what is needed. In some instances, customers want us to lead the implementation effort and model the product, pricing, quoting, workflow, and manufacturing rules in the software. In other cases, customers lead the implementation effort on their own, relying on us for periodic check-ins, mentoring, and follow-on training. Regardless of the experience of the customers with the implementation of software projects, we are able to support them using the mode that best suits their timeline, current staffing levels, and need for urgency.

How has the track record been so far and what does the future hold for your organization?

The future is bright for Configure One! Over the past year alone we have increased our headcount by approximately 25 percent. This is a reflection of both market demand and our strong commitment to product development. For example, we work closely with our customers to best understand what their needs are and to develop a strategy to best address them. This greatly influences our product development roadmap, as we regularly solicit from our customers their opinions regarding future versions of the product—what they want to see added, how we can improve upon what’s already there, where their businesses are going and how we can best support them.