CPQ Roll-out: A Change Management Approach
CPQ, or Configure Price and Quote platform is a sales enablement tool, with the goal to help the companies create commercial offer of highly configured and complex products. In most cases, such platforms or tools incorporate complex product logic, pricing calculations, cost information and business rules in a centralized and automatic platform. The results of deploying such tools include improved productivity, better revenue, pricing accuracy and better sales effectiveness. CPQ also helps the sales and commercial team by guiding them with right questions and recommendations, which speeds up the commercial process itself.
After the roll-out of a CPQ program in the company, the first priority of the business leader or the program leader is to improve adoption. Adoption can be defined in many ways, mostly it refers to the % of the users using the platform; though, some would argue over entitlement, some would fuss over lower numbers. In the end, adoption, to its core meaning, answers the question: “Have my users started to use the CPQ platform yet?” After a few months of going live, the program leader or business leader also needs to prove that the CPQ program is actually adding value to the business. Sometimes, the journey towards acceptable (or, ‘good’) adoption or realization of business benefit (revenue, productivity, cycle time etc.) is a smooth one; more often than we hope for, the first journey does face with some roadblocks though the benefits of CPQ program are always accepted by all parties.
What can we do make the journey a bit smoother for all of us? That’s the question we always ask ourselves before go into the next CPQ project. There are always a lot of preparations needed, and we can discuss those at another time. When we look at the CPQ program from our user point of view, we are actually asking them to change something in their working days. For commercial team, it means they have to learn and use a new system, without their deadline for the work changing. For channel partners or external teams, it might mean going through a new route to get the quote. For our business stakeholders, it is also a change in roles & responsibilities, accountability and commercial deliverables. Consider such changes, let suggest an approach which might help us out a bit for sure. Let’s treat a CPQ program roll-out as an organizational change as well. It doesn’t impact other plans and deadlines of the project, but it better prepares our users so that they can accept the CPQ with open hands.
When leading a major change project, it is important for leaders to recognize that the change process goes through stages, each stage is important, and each may require a significant amount of time. Let’s use John Kotter’s framework for change to navigate the CPQ roll-out driven change process.
- Light a fire for change. The customers of CPQ program have to ‘believe’ that it is time for something better than their old program or Excel/Word method of creating configurations and pricing, they have to ‘feel’ the need and urgency for the change. At the very early stage of CPQ program kick-off, one action we always, and must, take is to get broader buy-in from the users. This can be accomplished via voice of customer activities, frequent communications and doing a small-scale pilot. One note of suggestion here, while trying to convince the users to the idea of new-generation CPQ platform, ‘Appreciative Inquiry’ (where the analysis is done from a positive point of view) is more effective than gap finding approach.
- Get the right people on board. In this complex organization world, and the numerous teams and functions a complex CPQ platform will touch, it is clear that no single person can implement a change of this scale. For successful change, we need to identify the right people for the CPQ roll-out project team. They include the champions with enough power to make sure the needed changes happen and help the CPQ project team to overcome the roadblocks, as well as people who can contribute to the success of the project and the acceptance to the users.
- Paint a compelling picture. Future users of CPQ platform need a clear vision and strategy to inspire them to believe that a better CPQ platform is possible and they can realize benefits by supporting it. The energy and the enthusiasm of the users can work as the positive support which will sure to contribute to the future adoption effort post go-live.
- Communicate, communicate, communicate. Changes, especially the ones which will alter the day to day work of the users, throw everyone into doubt and uncertainty, and people have difficulty in listening well to the logic when they feel anxious. Frequent communication does not only alleviate the anxiety of the potential users waiting for the new CPQ platform to go live, but it also helps the program leader to shape the new behaviors needed from the users to harvest the potentials of a new CPQ platform.
- Get rid of obstacles and empower people to act. Successful change leaders enable the people with time, knowledge, resources and discretion to take steps to make the change happen. For any given CPQ projects, there will always be some obstacles. One goal of good CPQ project planning is to anticipate such roadblocks, unfortunately such sometimes come with good experience as well as knowing the business itself, take actions to remove them as early as possible. Good thing is that empowering the project team who represent the end users to dictate the changes they desire, helps out in wiping out most of the roadblocks as well.
- Achieve and celebrate quick wins. Unless the users of CPQ platform see positive results of their efforts, energy and motivation can wane over time. To keep the momentum going, the CPQ project should never be a long-drawn project with years to see anything useful. Rather, I recommend that the whole project be broken into smaller phases, which will enable the users see the benefit, albeit not to the full capacity yet, and keep the change process moving forward. The release of each phase will provide the highly visible and successful short-term accomplishment boosting the credibility of the CPQ project.
- Keep it moving. Even though initial phases or pilots of CPQ project may yield some quick wins, the full benefit of any CPQ project is dependent upon its completion to the fullest. It’s important for the champions and project leaders to build on the credibility of initial go-live successes, and keep the CPQ project moving forward.
- Find ways to make the changes stick. Another common pitfall of CPQ project is the failure to take necessary steps to keep the project sustained after going live. It is imperative that the project leaders look for ways to institutionalize the new approach of using CPQ platforms for day to day activities, striving to integrate the new values and patterns into work habits. The credibility of a CPQ platform is highly dependent on the accurate and up-to-date data, the process needs to be in place to make sure these are taken care of.
While each CPQ project is unique, and sometimes these stages of change process may overlap with each other, it is important for successful CPQ project to ensure the key steps are followed properly.
