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While most companies agree that their contracts are critical documents for their business, the creation, approval and management of contracts typically remains a manual process. With more companies adopting CPQ tools like Salesforce Quote to Cash, the speed and efficiency of the quoting process is dramatically improved, leaving sales operations looking to drive further improvements in sales processes such as contract creation and approval.
Transforming the quote to contract process can yield significant benefits across the company. Sales teams will see shorter sales cycles with less time spent manipulating documents and waiting for approvals. Management and Legal will see more accuracy and lower risk with fewer occurrences of non-standard contracts. And customers will appreciate more efficient and collaborative interactions with their sales person.
When looking to improve the quote to contract process, there are five essential capabilities that drive big benefits.
Most modern CPQ solutions (and certainly Salesforce CPQ) have the ability to generate documents from quotes. Look for ways to leverage the configuration capabilities of the CPQ tool to drive the use of standardized contracts that are appropriate for the products and services on the quote. Guiding the salesperson to the right contracts with the appropriate terms is a big improvement in increasing efficiency and lowering risk.
Document generation from the quote is a great first step, but continue to look for ways to eliminate any manual steps in the process. A big win is to ensure that contract versions are automatically tracked and maintained in Salesforce so that everyone involved in review and approval is working off the right document. Look for an automated way to keep an audit trail for changes along with the documents; emails are hard to track and reference. Finally, automate the negotiation process with customers by incorporating tracked changes in documents back into the quote system.
As with the quoting process, contracts also have an approval process. Bring visibility to the process, required approvals, and status of the documents to facilitate the salesperson’s ability to complete the transaction. Look for tools to ensure that workflows can accommodate multiple routes, delegates in case of absence, and triggers or notifications to avoid delays.
Make it easier for your Legal team, sales reps, and customers by deciding on and consistently using a collaborative tool they all know and like. There are many approaches to creating, editing and sharing documents, including Salesforce Quip. Be sure to use a tool that makes it easy to combine content and communication in a single, simple experience.
The more streamlined the process, the easier it is for sales to adopt and use. Keeping the quote to contract process native in Salesforce is a key advantage that reinforces several of these essential capabilities. A Salesforce-native solution will benefit your company in standardization, visibility, and automation by closer integration with Salesforce CPQ.
Learn more about how to improve the quote to contract process by attending the webinar Extending Salesforce CPQ with Redlining and Contract Lifecycle Management (March 29, 10:00am PT) presented by Will Spendlove, VP Product Marketing, Salesforce Quote to Cash and Bernard Gutierrez, VP Solution Consulting, Model N. Register here.
About the Author
Gene Eun is the Product Marketing leader for Model N's Revenue Cloud, a suite of enterprise-grade, Salesforce-native Revenue Management applications that encompass the pricing, quoting, contract management, rebate and incentives management processes. Gene has extensive industry experience, having spent over 15 years in product management and product marketing at leading enterprise software companies including Oracle, Salesforce, Siebel Systems, and PeopleSoft. You can follow Gene on Twitter at @geun352.
