Throughout the 20th century, high-touch sales approaches have been the primary method companies used to achieve personalization. Seasoned sales representatives sit across from a client, notepad in hand, carefully crafting the perfect solution.
Today’s B2B landscape is moving at lightning speed, with customer expectations soaring and market pressures intensifying. This trusty high-touch approach is simply not built for the digital age.
Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) technology offers a powerful bridge between high-touch and low-touch personalization. It enables companies to maintain the personal touch customers expect while automating and scaling their sales, engineering, and manufacturing processes—delivering the best of both worlds.
The Business Case for Personalization
The commercial value of personalization is compelling and well-documented. Recent research from Forrester shows that 66% of B2B buyers now expect personalization when purchasing products and services. Others consistently show customers are willing to pay more for personalized experiences.
In the manufacturing sector, personalization takes on additional significance. Customers increasingly expect solutions tailored to their specific operational needs, technical requirements, and compliance standards. When businesses deliver this level of customization effectively, they not only secure initial sales but often become deeply embedded in their customers’ operations, leading to long-term partnerships and recurring revenue.
The Status Quo
For most companies, personalization relies heavily on human expertise and relationship building. The process is highly personal but inherently manual, with representatives spending hours customizing proposals and quotes.
The workflow between departments reflects this manual approach. Sales teams document customer requirements, then physically hand them off to engineering for validation. Engineering reviews and modifies specifications, often requiring multiple interactions with sales to clarify needs. Finally, approved designs are translated into shop floor instructions, with each transition introducing potential delays and errors.
While this traditional method excels at building strong relationships, it’s slow, error-prone, and heavily dependent on individual expertise. Knowledge resides primarily with experienced staff rather than in systems, making it vulnerable to employee turnover.
Furthermore, this high-touch approach is increasingly at odds with modern buyer preferences. Research shows that somewhere between 33% and 80% of today’s buyers prefer digital self-service—even those making high-value purchases. This shift toward automated solutions is accelerating as Millennials and Gen Z move into decision-making roles.
While the traditional high-touch approach has served businesses well for decades, several powerful market forces are now making this model increasingly difficult to sustain.
These forces reshaping the business landscape can be broadly put into 3 buckets:
Customer expectations have been shaped by B2C experiences, demanding instant, accurate responses and 24/7 availability. (This trend is widely referred to as “the consumerization of B2B”).
Digital transformation has accelerated across industries, making manual processes appear outdated and inefficient. The share of B2B organizations’ revenue that comes from digital channels has therefore increased––from 32% in 2020 to a projected 56% in 2025.
- Workforce Challenges
60% of manufacturers in the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) outlook survey for the third quarter of 2024 cited the inability to attract and retain employees as their top challenge.
The “Great Resignation” has highlighted the risks of keeping critical knowledge in people’s heads rather than systems, considering training new sales staff on complex product configurations takes months and significant investment.
- Global Market Pressures
Competition has intensified as geographical barriers diminish, forcing companies to respond faster and more accurately to demanding buyers. Simultaneously, product complexity has increased, making it harder for sales teams to master all configuration options and channels.
These market forces have created an urgent need for solutions that can maintain personalization while addressing scale, workforce, and competitive challenges. By leveraging modern technology and automation, companies can transform their approach to customization without sacrificing quality or responsiveness.
How Epicor CPQ Enables Personalization at Scale
The gap between traditional sales methods and modern buyer expectations has never been wider. While experienced sales teams excel at personal relationship building, they’re increasingly challenged by the demands of digital commerce and the need for instant, accurate responses. But what if you could combine the best of both worlds?
Here’s how Epicor CPQ transforms traditional personalization approaches into scalable, digital experiences—without sacrificing the human touch that makes customization effective.
From Tribal Knowledge to Digital Intelligence
BEFORE: Your most experienced sales representatives carried decades of product knowledge in their heads. When they retired or left, that expertise walked out the door with them. New hires spent months learning complex product rules and configurations through trial and error.
NOW: Epicor CPQ captures and systematizes all that deep product expertise. The platform’s rules engine transforms complex configuration logic and engineering constraints into a dynamic digital framework. Even junior sales staff can now confidently guide customers through sophisticated product configurations, knowing the system prevents invalid combinations and ensures manufacturability. Every quote follows established business rules, engineering standards, and customer-specific pricing—automatically.
From Static Catalogs to Interactive Visualization
BEFORE: Customers struggled to envision their customized products from static catalogs and specification sheets. Sales teams spent hours explaining how different options would affect the final product, often leading to misaligned expectations.
NOW: Interactive 3D and AR visualization brings configurations to life. Customers see their customized product from every angle as they make selections, with immediate visual feedback for each change. This hands-on experience helps them understand option impacts instantly, creating an engaging self-service experience that scales.
From Departmental Handoffs to Seamless Workflows
BEFORE: The journey from sales to manufacturing resembled a game of telephone. Sales documented requirements, physically handed them to engineering for validation, then waited for approval before translating designs into shop floor instructions. Each transition introduced delays and potential errors.
NOW: Departments work in perfect harmony through automated workflows. As soon as a configuration is complete, engineering rules are automatically validated, manufacturing requirements are generated, and bills of materials and routing instructions are created—all without manual intervention. What once took days now happens in minutes.
From Manual Quotes to Intelligent Pricing
BEFORE: Creating custom quotes was a time-consuming process. Sales representatives juggled complex pricing rules, volume discounts, and customer-specific agreements while manually generating proposals—a process that could take days and was prone to errors.
NOW: The quoting process is transformed into an automated workflow that maintains accuracy while incorporating customer-specific requirements. Proposals are generated in minutes, complete with technical specifications and commercial terms. Customers can even compare multiple options and configurations side-by-side.
From Single Channel to Omnichannel Excellence
BEFORE: Personalization depended heavily on in-person interactions. Different channels meant inconsistent experiences, pricing, and configuration options.
NOW: Customers receive the same high-quality, personalized experience whether they’re working with a sales representative in person, configuring products through a web portal, or engaging through distribution partners. All channels draw from the same rule set, ensuring consistency and accuracy across every touchpoint.
The Result: True Personalization at Scale
Let’s be real: today’s customers want it all––personalized experiences, instant responses, and perfect accuracy. While the traditional approach of relying on seasoned sales representatives to craft custom solutions has served us well, it’s time for a smarter way forward.
CPQ delivers what today’s market demands: the personal touch of your most experienced sales representative combined with the speed, accuracy, and consistency of modern digital technology. The outcome? Faster sales cycles, more satisfied customers, and increased revenue across all channels.
Reimagining CPQ for Digital Buyers With Product AR
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