Financial Management Blogs by SAP
Get financial management insights from blog posts by SAP experts. Find and share tips on how to increase efficiency, reduce risk, and optimize working capital.
cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 
yogananda
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
2,952

Optimizing Sales Processes and Revenue Generation

In today's competitive business landscape, organizations need to streamline their sales processes to achieve optimal efficiency and revenue generation. SAP CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) is a cloud-based solution that helps businesses achieve this goal by providing a centralized platform for managing the entire sales process, from quoting to order fulfillment.

SAP CPQ integrates with various back-end systems, such as SAP ERP, SAP Sales Cloud CRM, SAP Commerce Cloud, SAP Subscription Billing, SAP BRIM, SAP Variant Configuration & Pricing, and S/4 HANA Public & Private Cloud for product master, pricing, credit check, ATP check and other data, to ensure that all sales information is accurate and up-to-date. This integration streamlines the sales process and eliminates the need for manual data entry, which can lead to errors and delays.

SAP CPQ also provides a guided sales process that helps sales representatives walk through each step of the sale, from identifying the customer's needs to creating a quote and closing the deal. This guided process ensures that all sales opportunities are handled consistently and efficiently.

Benefits of SAP CPQ for Back-end Integrations & Sales Journeys

There are many benefits to using SAP CPQ for back-end integrations and sales journeys, including:

    • Increased sales efficiency and productivity: SAP CPQ streamlines the sales process and eliminates the need for manual data entry, which can save sales representatives time and increase their productivity.
    • Improved quote accuracy: SAP CPQ integrates with product master data to ensure that all quotes are accurate and up-to-date. This can help to reduce errors and improve customer satisfaction.
    • Shorter sales cycles: SAP CPQ provides a guided sales process that helps sales representatives close deals more quickly. This can help to shorten sales cycles and improve revenue generation.
    • Enhanced customer experience: SAP CPQ provides a self-service portal that allows sales reps, account managers to configure products, request quotes, and track orders. This can help to improve the customer experience and increase customer satisfaction.

SAP CPQ Business Process Flow

The SAP CPQ business process flow typically consists of the following steps:

    • Lead capture and qualification: Sales representatives capture leads from various sources, such as marketing campaigns, website inquiries, and referrals. They then qualify these leads to determine if they are a good fit for the company's products or services.
    • Opportunity creation: Once a lead is qualified, a sales representative creates an opportunity in SAP CPQ. The opportunity includes information about the customer, their needs, and the potential sales value.
    • Solution configuration: The sales representative configures the products or services that meet the customer's needs. SAP CPQ provides a guided configuration process that helps the sales representative select the right products and options.
    • Quoting: The sales representative creates a quote in SAP CPQ. The quote includes the pricing for the configured products or services, as well as the terms and conditions of the sale.
    • Negotiation and close: The sales representative negotiates the terms of the sale with the customer. Once the terms are agreed upon, the sales representative closes the deal and creates an order in SAP CPQ.
    • Order fulfillment: places an order with standard integration to backend ERP, S/4 HANA Cloud, & On-Prem. The next process streamlines the order, which will be fulfilled by the fulfillment team.

Explore Business Processes for faster and seamless integration.

Lead-to-Cash Process

The lead-to-cash process flow consists of the following five sub-processes:

    • Contact to Lead – Marketing expert creates a campaign to generate sales leads, and targets existing or new customers via mechanisms such as email, personalized recommendations, and so on. Based on the customer’s consent and interactions, the customer is identified as a potential lead.
    • Lead to Opportunity – The lead is qualified, forwarded to sales, and converted to opportunity. Analytic tools can be used to assess the potential of the lead, and identify if the lead is worth pursuing.
    • Opportunity to Quote – The sales representative assesses the readiness of the opportunity to be offered a quote. The customer can request a quote on the web store or the sales rep can create the quote for the customer.
    • Quote to Order – The quote is presented to the customer and can be negotiated, until a final agreement is reached. Once the quote is accepted by the customer, it gets converted into an order.
    • Order to Cash – Based on the different types of items in the order, the order gets split into physical, subscription, and service products, and are sent to the back-end systems for further processing. The sales and service orders are fulfilled by the S/4HANA back-end system. Subscription orders are sent to SAP Subscription Billing system, where they are provisioned. The order status in SAP Commerce is marked as complete, only when all three orders are complete.

Business Process Overview for Cloud

The following overview is explained from end to end: You can read brief descriptions of the process by showing the pointer's direction over them. The description that follows the overview also provides more details. Click the image to maximize the graphic size.

Master Data Integration

Get an overview of the master data flow in the Solution Business for Cloud Deployment process.

The following graphic shows the recommended replication methods:

Business Partner Replication

 Sending Application Receiving Application Replication Method Setup Information More Information
SAP S/4HANA Cloud

SAP CPQ


SAP Master Data Integration and SAP Integration Suite

Scope item 6BVInformation published on SAP siteIntegration of SAP CPQ with SAP Master Data Integration
SAP Subscription BillingSAP Master Data Integration or SAP Integration SuiteScope item 57ZInformation published on SAP siteReplication of Business Partners to SAP Subscription Billing
SAP Entitlement Management

SAP Master Data Integration and SAP Integration Suite

Replication of Business Partners to SAP Entitlement ManagementPush Customer to SAP Entitlement Management from S/4HANA Cloud (alternative replication approach without SAP Master Data Integration)

 

Product Replication

 Sending Application Receiving Application Replication Method Setup Information More Information
SAP S/4HANA CloudSAP CPQSAP Integration Suite  
SAP Entitlement Management

SAP Integration Suite


Replicate Product from SAP Subscription Billing to SAP Entitlement Management


or


Replicate Product from SAP Subscription Billing to SAP Entitlement Management with Timer

 

SAP Subscription Billing

SAP S/4HANA CloudSAP Master Data Integration or SAP Integration SuiteScope item 57ZInformation published on SAP siteReplication of Products and Rate Elements to SAP S/4HANA Cloud

Pricing Data Replication

 Sending Application Receiving Application Replication Method Setup Information More Information
SAP S/4HANA Cloud

SAP Variant Configuration and Pricing

Synchronous API callPricing for SAP S/4HANA CloudSAP Variant Configuration and Pricing for SAP S/4HANA Cloud

Knowledge Base Replication

 Sending Application Receiving Application Replication Method Setup Information More Information

SAP S/4HANA Cloud


(Advanced Variant Configuration Model)

SAP Variant Configuration and PricingSynchronous API callConfiguration for SAP S/4HANA Cloud

Forwarding Configuration Requests to Advanced Variant Configuration

SAP Variant Configuration and Pricing for SAP S/4HANA Cloud

SAP Variant Configuration and Pricing


(Advanced Variant Configuration Model)


SAP CPQ


(Configuration Attributes)

Synchronous API callVariant Configuration IntegrationIntegrate SAP CPQ with SAP Variant Configuration and Pricing

Business Process Flow & additional Diagrams :


Solution Process for Lead to Cash for Hybrid Component

Below Solution Value Flow Diagram depicts all supported business activities contributing to the solution process variant.Click on + to expand the Business Process flow

Solution Business Standard Process Flow (SAP CPQ Integration with S/4 HANA Cloud)


Solution Business for Cloud Deployment provides an end-to-end process for managing all aspects of a solution offering. It considers the overall experience, from the initial quoting, over fulfillment to billing, accounting, controlling, and revenue recognition. A corner stone of this sales scenario is the solution order, which allows the bundling of physical goods along with services, projects and subscriptions in one integrated order.

Lead to Cash for Hybrid Deployment: Quote to Order ( SAP CPQ Integration with SAP Commerce Cloud)

 



Lead to Cash for Hybrid Deployment: Solution Components for Master Data Integration (MDI)

 

 

Solution Business for Hybrid Deployment: Overview Process Flow

This flow instructs integration by connecting the quote object in the Quote 2.0 engine in SAP CPQ with the solution quote object in SAP S/4HANA & BRIM (SAP Billing and Revenue Innovation Management) 

Solution Business for Hybrid Deployment for Master Data flow

Below Solution Data Flow diagram depicts key flows of master and configuration data of the business process variant.