Quote to Cash Implementation is a critical business process that can be a game-changer in revenue generation for businesses. In simple terms, Quote to Cash, popular as QTC or Q2C, is an automated business functionality that encompasses entire sales operations ranging from the customer’s intent to buy to the revenue deposited on the sell-side.
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What is quote to cash?
Quote to Cash or Q2C is an automated software application that streamlines all stages involved in a business transaction from service selection, pricing, quoting, contract management, invoicing, and payment receipt.
- With the relevant data stored securely in the cloud, quote to cash can transform how you perform the business end-to-end.
- Quote to cash is both a process and a metric that helps understand how fast and effective sales conversion is.
- Q2C ensures you as a business owner are going in the right way and streamlines sales, customer management, and finance teams.
Why should businesses care about quote to cash implementation?
In this customer age, responding to the needs of individual clients might further the delay. Businesses need to be agile enough to convert interested customers into actual buyers.
The main advantage of quote to cash is the plethora of benefits it offers to both the customers and businesses.
A quote to cash implementation caters to supply chain management, customer management, multiplies business revenue, and smoothens the transactions.
Here’s where an automated quote to cash helps trim the turnaround time in dealing with individual customer needs.
A well-strategized quote to cash implementation:
- Enhances the prospect conversion rate.
- Streamlines the process of quote making, delivery, and payment.
- Assists remarketing for new lead generation.
- Overcomes the silos among inventory management, sales, finance, and CRM teams.
- Empowers you to seal the deal in a quicker time and thus experience faster revenue realization.
How quote-to-cash helps businesses?
Precisely speaking, a business encompasses various sales functionalities including and not limited to cold calling and inbound sales.
Then why should we discuss the quote to cash implementation in specific?
The secret lies here:
It is the success rate of closing a deal that directly adds revenue to a business. And this is what a quote to cash implementation mainly focuses on.
A quote to cash is different in its functionalities from other similar tasks and metrics such as cash conversion and configuration, pricing, and quoting (CPQ). Let’s understand these differences in brief.
Quote to Cash vs CPQ
CPQ is more aligned with product inventory. It helps understand businesses whether they can deliver the orders as per customers’ preferences.
Inbuilt with pricing engines, streamlining workflow reporting, and analytics, a CPQ implementation primarily focuses on configuration and then pricing.
CPQ implementation aids in quote preparation, share it with the customer, track the product inventory, and analyze production delays.
QTC implementation, on the other hand, is a wholesome approach.
From quote preparation to tracking the billing and delivery, a QTC implementation takes care of end-to-end necessities involved in cashing a successful deal. It directly impacts the revenue of a business while also ascertaining that the customer enjoys an enhanced experience while transacting.
Quote to cash directly impacts the revenue-generating capacity of a business.
In a way, a QTC implementation is a superset of the CPQ implementation. It provides negotiation and remarketing with the prospect customer that often is not viable with CPQ.
On the other hand, CPQ implementation is straightforward. If a business is in the nascent stage, CPQ implementation in the initial stages helps understand whether it needs a fully loaded QTC implementation.
What does a quote to cash implementation accomplish?
A QTC implementation elegantly streamlines all departments involved in rendering a successful customer experience. Closing a business transaction faster and boosting revenue via increased sales are some of its added benefits.
A customized QTC implementation offers the following benefits for various teams:
- Integrates sales orders for marketing teams.
- Provides a bird’s eye view of orders for your sales team.
- Communicates with inventory and takes care of supply chain management.
- Throws clarity to the accounts department in various aspects of billing such as taxes and additional charges.
- Eases marketing team’s functioning by offering seamless CRM support.
- Empowers your IT team to monitor silos and communication between all teams involved in sales and revenue generation.
Steps involved in quote to cash implementation
Below are the steps involved in a quote to cash implementation – the comprehensive solution to close deals faster and maximize business revenue:
Configuration of product or services
It is the first step to a successful journey with QTC. Here you analyse and identify the product and/or service you offer to the customer. Here’s where you must give your customer a solid reason to choose your brand over your competitor’s.
Pricing and Quotation
The automated QTC helps prepare pricing that is attractive both to the customer and cares for your margins. And next comes the quote preparation that can make or break the deal. A proven QTC implementation prepares a quote aligned with the business needs and helps make the first impression on the customer.
Contracting
Contracting is a step that demands meticulous inputs. Most contracts often undergo multiple iterations. Thus, this step can be daunting and critical in closing a deal.
At this stage, QTC lets you negotiate with the customer and prepare a legal document that works well for both parties. And at last, you can secure the contract by signing it digitally using an e-signature tool.
Order Fulfilment
Here is where you are ready to thrill your customer with their chosen products/ services. A tailor-made quote to cash implementation helps track if the delivery is completed according to the customer’s preferences and the timeframe mentioned.
Invoicing and Revenue Management
Be it in either evergreen paper format or pdf, an invoice serves as proof of transaction. Q2C provides seamless communication at this stage between both parties and helps resolves collection issues with efficacy.
Subscriptions and Renewals
QTC helps maintain after-sales communication with customers. With a Quote to Cash implementation, cross-selling and remarketing with the customers is a cakewalk.
Now it’s clear that at every step of closing the deal, a QTC implementation offers an automated helping hand, increases the success rate, and cuts down the turnaround time. Thus, a QTC implementation is an effective alternative to otherwise manually error-prone processes that possess inherent silos.
Customers now have diversified options to obtain their desired services and products. When a customer visits your website and shows interest in knowing the quote related to a product/service you are offering, the consequent steps must be simple and agile enough to ensure that the customer does not drift away to your competitor. And this is achievable when you opt for a QTC implementation.
The business world has recognized the necessity of quote to cash implementation to enjoy more revenue and deliver satisfying customer service. Now it’s your turn to leverage the power of quote to cash into your business.
Let’s help you with quote to cash implementation
Now you recognize what QTC is, how it differs from CPQ, and why you must opt for a QTC implementation. Be you are an owner of a small business or a large company keen on churning more deals with the existing customers, a QTC implementation fits you perfectly.
Are you inclined towards CPQ implementation? That’s pretty normal too. As we said, CPQ implementation can be the primary step to handle better inventory management and close the deals without any communication gaps. Gartner and Forrester predicted CPQ to grow faster than QTC.
If you are ready to enjoy enhanced revenues with a successful quote to cash implementation, let us assure you that our expertise is just a click away! Follow us on LinkedIn to stay updated.
