Simplus: Navigating the Complex Quote-to-Cash and CPQ Implementations

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Does your sales team continue to rely on spreadsheets for manually configuring price quotes? If yes, you are not just draining your resources but also compromising security and accuracy. In such a scenario, what companies require is an integrated Quote-to-Cash (QTC) software that improves the chances of successful sales and collections. Salesforce solutions perfectly fill the bill. Salesforce Quote-to-Cash and compare, price and quote (CPQ) quickly generate quotes to convert the leads into opportunities before they run dry and eliminate any errors while generating quotes or prices. However, a successful CPQ implementation is dependent on a thorough understanding of business processes and in-depth expertise in CPQ to make the process simpler.

Companies look for viable partnerships that can guide them through complex sales transactions, allowing them to beef up sales and scale as the business grows. Guided by the mantra of “making complex things simple,” Simplus, an expert in Salesforce Quote-to-Cash implementations, provides leading cloud solutions to help companies achieve a strategic vision, improve performance, and deliver value to the stakeholders.

Simplus has been pioneering the Quote-to-Cash and CPQ landscape with its innovative solutions, assisting clients on a global scale, year-after-year. Here’s how they do it.

Give us an overview of Simplus.

Simplus is a Platinum Salesforce Partner and industry leader in Quote-to-Cash implementations, providing enterprise-wide digital transformation through advisory, implementation, change management, custom configuration, and managed services. With more than 2500 successful projects and a customer satisfaction rating of 9.68 percent, Simplus is in the top one percent of all Salesforce partners, empowering businesses to improve, innovate, and scale.

We were focused on CPQ right from the beginning and continue to shape today’s Quote-to-Cash processes, delivering implementation, advisory, and managed services for a range of Salesforce products.

Could you elaborate on the general trends pertaining to Salesforce landscape and how Simplus is aligning itself accordingly?

Salesforce’s mission is to empower companies to connect with their customers. In that regard, Simplus has aligned itself with Salesforce early on; we established niche expertise in Quote-to-Cash by collaborating with SteelBrick CPQ. A few years later, Salesforce acquired SteelBrick, and it became Salesforce CPQ. Since then, it has evolved rapidly, and the need for expert consultants has grown with it. Simplus has a proven background and expertise in CPQ to be those consultants.

Simplus invests resources in the same regions and industries as Salesforce does and typically draws most of the strategic moves based on the Salesforce investments. Salesforce currently invests in seven industries— financial services, manufacturing, media, healthcare, government, retail, and travel—and we follow suit by focusing on the same industries. In fact, 88 percent of our opportunities lie within those industries. Our recent acquisition of Sqware Peg was partly motivated by the rise in Salesforce investments in the APAC region. There’s a huge potential for cloud computing out there—over 26,000 direct jobs created by Salesforce alone—and we’re excited to be a part of it.

Simplus has aligned itself with Salesforce early on; we have established a niche expertise in Quote-to- Cash by collaborating with SteelBrick CPQ

Please elaborate on your core Salesforce service offerings and technology expertise.

Simplus is a global leader in Salesforce CPQ implementations. We are devoted to helping our clients generate quotes faster, eliminate errors, and focus on growing their business. Our experienced team of Salesforce experts, including success managers, system administrators, developers, business analysts, and operations experts provide a wide range of Salesforce managed services to oversee and navigate customers through CPQ implementations. Simplus’ innovative and modernized advisory services also help them understand opportunities, solve pain points, and attain successful digital transformations. Added to this, our change management services can enable successful execution of change strategies and ensure that change happens at the employee level. Through Simplus’ Authorized Training Reseller (ATR) partnership with Salesforce, customers gain access to the entire Salesforce Training catalog including administrator, business user, and developer courses. We also deliver highly specialized implementation, advisory, and managed services for Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Community Cloud, and Contract lifecycle management (CLM).

Please elaborate more on your strategic acquisition of Sqware Peg.

In early 2019, Simplus broadened its global expansion in the APAC region by acquiring Sqware Peg, the first Salesforce partner in Australia. This was our first international acquisition and sixth Salesforce partner acquisition since 2016.

Sqware Peg is a pioneer in the APAC region and has been transforming businesses with Salesforce technology since 2004. With offices in both Sydney and Melbourne, the company is exclusively focused on the Salesforce platform. This partnership is mutually beneficial; while Sqware Peg brings in expanded industry reach and expertise to Simplus, we cater additional resources to Sqware Peg. We’re enthusiastic about the possibilities with this partnership and are already underway with integrating our teams.

Could you please cite one or two case studies on how you have enabled clients to overcome their hurdles and attain desired outcomes with your solutions?

The Mitsubishi Electric, US wanted to implement a better way to approve quotes for distributors, verify pricing, and cut the cycle time for customers, along with efficiently managing the training, certifications, and accreditations within its partner programs. Simplus helped them execute a plan to improve cycle times, and productivity dramatically. Simplus provided a customized solution leveraging the power of Salesforce.com CRM to allow the segmentation of accounts by region, type, and size. It triggered a full 360-degree view of commercial customers and residential contractors, increased visibility in the contractor-sales pipeline, and created greater customer segmentation. The new solution brought more customer data to the sales teams and drastically reduced the time for quote approval and order fulfillment. Within just six months of going live on Salesforce.com, Mitsubishi experienced game-changing improvements in quote approvals and pricing verifications, along with significant reduction in cycle time.

Tell us in detail about the plans of your company’s expansion in terms of services offered, types of client served, and geographical presence.

Simplus is one of the largest global CPQ technology service providers, with more than 230 certified consultants and offices in the US, Canada, Australia, and the Philippines. We are a strong leader in Salesforce Quote-to-Cash innovation, introducing unique intellectual properties like the first CPQ-focused manufacturing accelerator for Salesforce in 2018. In January 2019, Simplus successfully closed $20 million to innovate our product and service offerings further, and to acquire companies with complementary solutions valuable to the customers.

Are there any other interesting insights you would like to talk about?

Simplus emphasizes the importance of company culture above all, and it clearly shows; we’ve been repeatedly awarded for our managers, company outlook, and company culture by renowned market researching firms and organizations over the years.