CPQ Fast Path

Work for large Salesforce partner has some benefits. Such as training based on our needs. This time we were lucky to get Roberta Davenport, who provided us with CPQ Fast Path training.

What is fast path training? This is something prepared specifically for business partners, in this case it was the regular CPQ 211 training compressed from 4 days into 2. We are bunch of super clever folks after all, so we can take it all 🙂 And on top of that we got recording of the regular 211 training so we can check it later on our own.

New things I learnt

I played with CPQ a few years ago, but never went through something structured explaining all the relations between different things. The Trailhead trails are pretty good for preparation as well, so be sure to check them out – Admin Fundamentals and From Lead to Cash with CPQ.

But there was definitely a tons of new information:

  • 2 fields with the same API name and type across different objects sync automatically;
  • overageRate and some other fields are custom fields, which has to be create manually to achieve specific functionality, but they have to have specific name. I was told to rather not ask why we have to create them manually and they aren’t provided by default;
  • no debug functionality, so some of your price rule doesn’t work as expected? Go and check each configuration, probably draw it on paper;
  • price rule aren’t only to drive changes in prices, they can be used to drive changes in other fields as well;
  • quote template – either great fit or terrible fit, they support html. They fit when you need something simple, don’t fit if they have a lot of them, have some calculations on it, specific requirement for images, design. Also get requirements early and start working on it early, so you can decide to go for something else

20 commandments of CPQ

Actually it was maybe 50 tips and hints for CPQ implementation, some of them really surprised me:

  • don’t do fixed price (which I love and prefer :-));
  • don’t skip F2F discovery (it wasn’t suprise);
  • don’t omit non-CPQ resources, because they might forget something Sales Cloud admin knows;
  • challenge the go-live date & scope, define scope clearly and fully;
  • don’t omit to test with representative data/volume;
  • don’t bow down in front of customer;
  • don’t blame the package before considering your unsupported customization;
  • make sure they have premium support;
  • don’t fail to leave enough time for proper testing;
  • don’t execute CPQ meta-data deployment with inappropriate tools (heard that Prodly Moover is the go to solution);
  • engage salesforce services support;
  • don’t make reasonable assumptions (A=B and B=C doesn’t mean A=C);
  • don’t create price rules with more than one calculation event or dependent on other price rules withing the same calculation event;
  • don’t create multiple lookup queries on price rule if they can be combined;
  • don’t leave gaps in quantities for tiers;
  • guided selling experience doesn’t necessarily means they need guided selling – customer might just need to support the process to sell, not the selection of products;
  • do simplify product catalog;
  • have the customer check the math;
  • set performance expectation early and consider performance as a requirement early on, load time for quote editor of up to 30sec is pretty normal;
  • use CPQ functionality first when you manipulate the CPQ objects (don’t use PB, flow, apex);
  • don’t use ‚Apply immediately‘ extensively;
  • don’t add picklist value to SBQQ__Type__c on Quote;
  • expect asynchronous processes to produce real-time results;
  • check renewal forecast and renewal quoted at the same time, ideally check the forecast as early as possible ideally right after activation.

Licences

The licencing topic is always interesting, at the same time I feel it is something Salesforce AEs keep to themselves, which I don’t mind as far as I have a feeling what kind of licences customer might need.

  • CPQ
  • CPQ plus (for community + API)
  • CPQ Community Login if you need to expose it to community

Certification

You probably know that there is CPQ certification and also that it is one of the harder. We have been told that this is the certification you don’t want to do on-line but should rather to in certification center. The reason for that is pretty simple – you will be allowed to use paper, which will come handy when calculating the correct prices in price waterfall, which might be the difference between success and fail.

A few materials you might use:

Why would you do that?

Just the day before I had a call with one business partner about their CPQ solution. When I told them, that SteelBrick Salesforce CPQ is the obvious choice for customer, they asked me why. And I realized I should check other providers on the market as well, so I know what are their strength and weak spots.

On the training we – as a group – was able to mention just one „competitor“ and the definition of them was, that their solution is powerful but really slow. Like expect 2 minutes to draw the screen. Really?

So, who is on the market and I should check them? 132 solutions on AppExchange, Apptus is well knows, FlexPricer is free, Kugamon have quite good reviews, appero nicely looking quote creation.

Who else should I check when want to compare more?

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