Each unique deal requires unique configuration. Having a flexible CPQ platform that’s easy to configure and also connected to your revenue systems is a critical input to a high-impact deal desk.
Introduce financial controls upstream
Most CPQ platforms aren’t set up to handle complex enterprise pricing and billing terms — which can keep your deal desk process from giving your finance team what it needs to recognize revenue efficiently. Diverse, long-term revenue strategies require more than a one-size-fits-all approach, and a quote-based deal view isn’t built to allow nimble responses to deal details.
Many platforms base their metrics around speed of quoting and how quickly they can accelerate a sales pipeline. As a result, customers can customize a quote however they want, but there are no guardrails in place for things like how you’re allocating your revenue, how you’re going to bill over a certain period of time, how you’re going to renew, how you’re going to make changes over the course of a customer lifecycle.
Offering a limitless menu of options might be good for customers, but it isn’t good for finance teams. A CPQ platform with financial controls built in gives sales the flexibility to create quotes that make sense from a revenue recognition perspective while also supporting customer needs.
Automate complex QTR processes
Building quotes for something like pay-as-you-go pricing gets complicated quickly. Without built-in support for this kind of pricing model, finance teams must build manual workarounds, which increases the potential for accounting errors.
A configurable CPQ platform allows finance teams to model revenue projections upstream, set up a performance obligation against these projections, establish billing terms, and then trigger the process run automatically once the deal is closed.
This automated QTR process frees up finance teams to work on moving forward critical business initiatives instead of cleaning up inconsistencies or that require constant back-end support.
Minimize manual accounting work
Without upfront structures to keep your CPQ process aligned with your rev rec strategy, accounting will become more labor intensive than it has to be. Building controls into your CPQ platform from the beginning can save your business time and money.
If you don’t have safeguards in place, things get tangled down the line in finance. The way companies solve for this is by paying millions in fees to have an auditor look through the ad hoc things that happened over the course of the deal because they lacked the proper controls at the beginning.