11 Ways to Reduce Time to Quote

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    Manufacturing companies face increasing pressure to deliver quotes quickly. Every delay in the quoting process risks losing business to more responsive competitors. Epicor CPQ overcomes this challenge through eleven powerful capabilities. Each capability helps slash time to quote while improving accuracy and customer satisfaction throughout the entire QTC (quote to cash) process.

    Let’s take a look at these eleven capabilities and how they differ from slower traditional ways of doing business:

    1. Visual Drag-and-Drop Configuration

    Configuring complex products demands significant time and expertise from your sales rep. As product options and dependencies multiply, potential customers face longer journeys to discover their ideal solution, often navigating through extensive part numbers, rough sketches, and requiring specialized industry knowledge.

    Visual product configuration transforms this experience. It empowers users to design with intuitive drag-and-drop interactions, easily filtering to modify colors, dimensions, parts, materials, and more. This visual approach accelerates the quote generation workflow, reducing what once took hours to mere minutes. Behind this seamless interface, a no-code rules engine validates each selection in real-time.

    When users attempt to create a product that would face manufacturing challenges or perform suboptimally in real-world conditions, Epicor CPQ intelligently prevents those selections while providing clear explanations. This instant feedback further speeds up the process by avoiding costly manual errors in the production cycle. The result: faster configurations, quicker quotes, and a streamlined path from concept to delivery.

    2. Real-Time Dynamic Pricing

    Legacy pricing strategies often involve manual calculations, spreadsheet lookups, and multiple approval workflows, lengthening the time between configuration and quotation. Epicor CPQ eliminates these delays with intelligent dynamic pricing rules.

    As customers configure their products, the platform’s pricing engine automatically calculates costs in real-time, accounting for material selections, dimensions, quantities, and even regional pricing variations. These sophisticated rules can apply volume discounts, factor in custom specifications, and incorporate margin requirements without manual data entry.

    3. Intelligent Approval Workflows

    The approval bottleneck represents one of the most frustrating delays in the quote process. Conventional workflows often trap quotes in email inboxes awaiting review, with each stakeholder creating a potential delay point.

    Leading CPQ solutions streamline quoting efficiency with intelligent approval automation. The tool routes configurations and quotes to the appropriate approvers based on predefined rules—whether for technical validation, pricing exceptions, or management oversight. Automated notifications alert approvers instantly, while intuitive dashboards highlight pending actions.

    For standard configurations within established parameters, Epicor CPQ can bypass approval stages entirely, allowing immediate quote generation. When approvals are necessary, parallel routing ensures multiple stakeholders can review simultaneously rather than sequentially. The system also maintains a complete audit trail of all decisions, reducing human error.

    4. One-Click Professional Quotes

    Creating polished customer quotes has traditionally been a time-consuming final hurdle in the sales process, often involving manual data entry, document formatting, and rigorous checking for errors.

    CPQ reduces these delays by generating comprehensive quotes directly from approved configurations. The solution turns technical specifications, pricing data, and customer information into professionally formatted proposals, complete with product visualizations, terms and conditions, and detailed specifications.

    Built-in validation rules ensure quotes meet company standards and contain all required information before delivery, eliminating repetitive tasks and improving sales performance.

    5. Smart Customer Insights

    Old-school sales strategies often suffer from disconnected customer relationship data, with valuable insights buried in disparate systems or sales representatives’ memories. This fragmentation creates delays as teams search for historical preferences and previous interactions.

    Our data-driven CPQ software continually captures and organizes customer data during each configuration session, building a rich profile of preferences, requirements, and purchasing patterns. The platform records which features customers explore, options they select, and configurations they ultimately purchase.

    This intelligent data collection enables sales teams to quickly reference past quotes, clone previous configurations as starting points, and proactively suggest relevant options based on historical selections. The solution identifies cross-sell and upsell opportunities tailored to each customer’s unique profile, accelerating the configuration process and enhancing the customer experience.

    6. Single Source of Product Truth

    Traditional product configuration workflows often struggle with fragmented information scattered across multiple systems, spreadsheets, and internal documents. Sales teams waste valuable time hunting for current specs, compatibility rules, and accurate pricing.

    CPQ removes these inefficiencies by maintaining a single, authoritative source of truth for all product information. This centralized catalog ensures everyone accesses the same up-to-date specifications, options, and pricing data. When product details change, updates propagate instantly throughout the organization, increasing efficiency and revenue-generating potential.

    7. 24/7 Self-Service Access

    The established configuration approach typically requires direct interaction with sales representatives—creating scheduling dependencies that extend quote timelines. Even simple product configurations often wait until a representative is available to assist.

    Epicor CPQ breaks this dependency with intuitive self-service capabilities accessible from any device. Customers can independently explore product options, visualize configurations, and generate quotes—all from their smartphones, tablets, or computers. This 24/7 access eliminates waiting periods and time zone constraints, improving customer retention.

    Sales representatives benefit equally from mobile access, configuring products during customer visits without returning to the office. They can instantly generate professional quotes on-site, significantly shortening the sales cycle and helping close deals faster.

    8. Automated CAD and Design Generation

    Legacy manufacturing processes often hit bottlenecks when transitioning from sales to engineering. Technical drawings and specifications typically require specialized CAD knowledge, creating delays as engineers translate sales configurations into production-ready designs.

    Epicor CPQ shortens this lag with powerful design automation capabilities. As customers finalize their configurations, the solution automatically generates accurate CAD drawings, engineering specifications, and manufacturing documentation without manual intervention. Complex assemblies that once required hours of engineering time are produced instantly.

    This automation ensures perfect alignment between what was quoted and what will be manufactured, eliminating costly errors and design revisions. Engineering teams can focus on innovation rather than administrative tasks, while manufacturing receives consistent, standardized instructions.

    9. AI-Powered Configuration Suggestions

    Traditional product configuration often involves extensive discovery conversations and multiple iterations as sales representatives work to match complex product options with customer inquiries. This exploratory process can significantly extend quote timelines.

    Epicor CPQ’s AI-powered recommendation engine revolutionizes this approach by intelligently analyzing patterns across thousands of previous configurations and purchases. As customers begin selecting options, the system instantly suggests complementary features and optimal configurations based on similar buyers’ choices and the customer’s own history.

    These smart recommendations highlight compatibility with existing equipment, suggest performance-enhancing additions, and identify cost-saving alternatives—capabilities that once required extensive product expertise. The AI continuously learns from each configuration, becoming increasingly precise in its suggestions, reducing the need for manual processes in the quoting workflow.

    10. E-Signatures and Automated Follow-Ups

    Typical quote completion becomes mired in administrative tasks—printed documents awaiting signatures, quotes languishing in email inboxes, and manual tracking of pending approvals. These final steps can add days or weeks to quote resolution.

    CPQ streamlines this last mile with integrated electronic signature capabilities and automated follow-up systems. Once generated, quotes can be immediately sent for digital signature, reducing printing, scanning, and physical delivery delays. Customers can review and approve from any device, completing the transaction in minutes rather than days.

    11. Seamless Business System Integration

    Conventional manual quoting processes frequently suffer from disconnected software—requiring manual data entry between CRM (customer relationship management), ERP (enterprise resource planning), and product catalogs. These fragmented workflows create redundant work and introduce delays at each handoff point.

    Epicor CPQ’s comprehensive integration capabilities remove these silos by seamlessly connecting with existing business systems. Customer information flows automatically from CRM, while inventory availability and production schedules update in real-time from ERP. Completed quotes can instantly generate sales orders and cash without rekeying information.

    Quick Summary

    Epicor CPQ transforms the quote-to-cash process through innovative technology that eliminates traditional bottlenecks. By streamlining configuration, pricing, approvals, and integration, manufacturing companies can deliver faster, more accurate quotes while improving customer satisfaction.

    Emily Stevens

    Emily Stevens

    Emily is a marketing professional with knowledge across branding, digital strategy, and creative content. She enjoys educating her audience on the benefits of products and how their ease and use can help with efficiency and problem solving.

    Posted in: Sales Efficiency
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