HOW CPQ JOBS ARE CHANGING
COVID-19 has transformed how CPQ projects are delivered, and it is going to be the new normal for a while. How will it change our career in CPQ?
Future of Offices after Pandemic, What to Expect
Our work lives have been changed, after the pandemic has started. While going through the 2nd wave and another partial lock-down, it seems to be that we need to just face the reality and prepare for the changes coming to our work lives. A few articles to highlight the changes we’ll see.
Shift of Technology after Covid 19
When I have realised the magnitude of Covid 19 globally, I have made a few predictions about CPQ market, including big investment in updating existing CPQ platforms, focusing more on self-serve options, and move away from on-premise solution to cloud-based CPQ solutions. Here’re are some articles about CPQ and other technical shift because of Covid 19.
COVID-19 and Market – 3 Articles
COVID-19 and its impact on the market, how we are fighting back, how the emerging markets are being hit and new business opportunities.
Adaptability is Key for Survival for a Business
Our world is changing, from education to grocery to how we work, all in response to the current pandemic. Ability to adapt to the changing market is key for our survival. Sharing 3 articles on how the businesses are adapting to the changing environment.
Getting Ready for Future Job Market
It is not a surprise anymore that our lives will be changed, and so will the job market and our career. We will see some industries to grow very fast post pandemic era, while some industries will have to go through major re-invention to be profitable again. I’ve collected 3 articles for you, 2 focus on job skills and one on Canada job market (might be similar for USA as well).
Weekend Articles
3 interesting items regarding COVID-19 pandemic, but let’s start with a cartoon that expresses the hardwork of our healthcare professionals.
Tips on Working from Home
For many professionals, because of current pandemic, working from home is the only option. For them, it might be the first time they are working from home, away from the office desk and the colleagues. For me, it is day as usual as I’ve been working from home for the last 15 years! My kids grew up expecting to find me in my office upstairs! There are lots of tips on how to work from home, I’ve shared three articles here. For me, I’ve kept a room as my office, and it has a nice desk, nice printer and I’ve kept it very tidy. It helps me focus on my work, without any distractions.
Brush Up your Skills while in Shutdown
In Canada, it’s been 3 weeks already since the shutdown started. We are all seeing the effect of it on our economy, and it might get worse before it starts to get better. So, for the last few weeks, I have been focusing heavily on improving skills.
Source: unknown (apologies)
Two achievements so far, beyond my 8 to 5 work from home – I’ve got cpqworld.com website up and running and just finished an online certification from Coursera.org.
I encourage all the folks to take advantage of this downtime and get our skills sharpened!
History of CPQ
CPQ, or software to Configure, Price and Quote a product, has been around for a while. I remember my first CPQ was built on VB platform, and used mostly to perform guided selling for very large projects (multi-million dollar). Later, when I started rolling out BigMachines back in 2009 (now, Oracle CPQ) to replace our home-grown software, we started the cloud-based CPQ journey. Over time, I got to work with many of such platforms, small niche players to mega enterprise software. Anyway, here is a brief history of CPQ.
“CPQ technology was born in the 1980s in the form of the “configurator,” a rules/logic-based system used to ensure customer specifications didn’t conflict with enterprise resource planning. Eventually, the use of the application shifted toward CRMs and became more of a front-office and sales application.
When ecommerce started to gain momentum, configurators became a part of interactive selling, and when a solution for the quote-to-cash problem was needed, a more modernized CPQ application started to come into its own.”
Source: https://www.fpx.com/what-is-cpq-configure-price-quote
“Come the early ’90s, sales force automation (SFA) was really starting to catch on. More and more companies were beginning to automate many of the arduous tasks that were once dependent on humans. At this point, configurators were being brought to the front office.
By the late ’90s, technology, in general, was advancing by leaps and bounds and eCommerce began gaining momentum. Configurators had grown to be a part of interactive selling.
When the early 2000s rolled around, many small to mid-sized sales organizations found themselves needing a solution for the quote-to-cash problem. At the time it was still fairly laborious and they needed a way to streamline and automate the process even more.”
The CPQ concept officially caught on and gained traction in 2010 when Gartner Research created a report where they stated that “CPQ systems typically include pricing engines, proposal generators, quoting systems and rules or constraint engines, and are complemented by approval and authorization workflows.”
Since then, CPQ continues to gain more and more attention – and there are no signs of it slowing down. Sales organizations understand the need to scale their sales processes and are using CPQ solutions to deliver a personalized sales experience while still controlling time and cost. ”