Reshaping the Sales Process with Configured Products

Reshaping the Sales Process with Configured Products

If you’ve shopped online in the last few years, you’ve probably been exposed to product customization and personalization in some form. 

Car companies let you build your car from the ground up, choosing everything from the engine size to the stitching on the seats. Even food and beverage companies are creating personalized nutrition plans, vitamins, and protein shakes—you name it, and you can customize it.

However, when this trend enters the realm of complex B2B products, the number of possible combinations becomes truly mind-boggling. 

B2B customers have higher expectations, too, so the stakes are higher. 

Mess up the customer’s configuration and the rework could cost you immensely—not to mention lose you a customer. 

The question is, then, how do companies manage to offer this level of customization without drowning in complexity?

The answer lies in some impressive technologies transforming how businesses handle product configuration, pricing, and quoting. 

We’ll discuss these technologies here, so read on to learn exactly how companies deliver the level of configuration buyers want while streamlining their sales processes. 

The Rise and Rise of Customization

The desire for personalized products isn’t new. Historically, customization was the norm—tailors crafted bespoke suits, cobblers made shoes to fit individual feet, and furniture makers designed pieces for specific homes. 

However, mass production, ushered in by the Industrial Revolution, pushed customization to the sidelines, making standardized products more accessible and affordable.

Fast forward to today, and we’re witnessing a renaissance of customization, sometimes called the era of “mass customization.” This time, it’s driven by technology, data, and a shift in consumer expectations.

Let’s look at the numbers. The most comprehensive data we have on customization preferences comes from a 2015 Deloitte study titled “Made-to-order: The rise of mass personalisation.” 

Despite being nearly a decade old, this survey of 1,560 adults still provides valuable insights into consumer attitudes toward customization. Key findings include:

• Consumer Interest: Around 36% of consumers actively seek out customized products, indicating a strong appetite for personalized offerings.
• Willingness to Pay More: Consumers are ready to invest more for customization, with significant premiums observed across various categories. This includes 81% for clothing, 79% for footwear, 76% for furniture, and 77% for fashion accessories and jewelry.
• Impact on Purchase Decisions: Customization profoundly influences buying choices, with 59% of consumers acknowledging its decisive impact.
• Demographic Preferences: Younger consumers, particularly those aged 16-24, show a strong interest in customization, with 53% interested in customized clothing and 48% in customized footwear. Among those aged 25-39, 50% are interested in customized furniture, and 45% in fashion accessories.
• Fewer Returns: Businesses offering customized products report a 40% decrease in product returns.

So, how does this 2015 data stand up today? 

Well, once you’re used to spotting instances of customization, you start seeing them everywhere. In fact, it’s so common that we probably don’t notice it anymore!

A recent 2024 article from The Conversation discussed the rise in personalized products and demonstrated how it’s a vital strategy in the toolbox of the world’s biggest brands. Take these examples:

1. Coca-Cola: Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke” campaign, which began in Australia in 2011, personalized bottles with popular names. This is now common worldwide. 
2. Fashion and Footwear: Nike offers custom shoes with thousands of styles, colors, and icon combinations, catering to individual tastes and preferences. 
3. Beauty Industry: L’Oreal uses in-store technology to scan customers’ skin and produce customized foundation from 72,000 possible combinations. This level of personalization was unimaginable just a few years ago, and it’s exactly the kind of complex configuration that demands purpose-made software. 
4. Starbucks: Starbucks uses its mobile app to offer personalized games and rewards based on individual customer data and preferences, creating a personal experience beyond just the product.

The Conversation article also touches on some salient points I’ve discussed with Epicor CPQ customers.

Namely, personalization at scale unlocks new sales strategies that help businesses differentiate. It represents a new way of doing business and connecting with customers. 

This isn’t just about bending processes to suit customer expectations but also about finding new ways to grow your business. 

So, how do you go about practically offering configurable products? The great news is that facilitating them is no longer exclusive to massive brands like Nike, for reasons we’ll discuss below. 

CPQ: The Engine Behind Mass Customization

As we’ve explored the growing demand for personalized products, a question naturally arises: How do you manage all the options?! 

Imagine you’re a furniture manufacturer offering customizable sofas. Customers can choose the fabric (let’s say 50 options), the color (another 20 options), the size (5 options), the arm style (4 options), the leg finish (10 options), and add features like USB ports or reclining mechanisms (5 options). 

A quick multiplication shows us that this single product line has 1,000,000 possible combinations (50 x 20 x 5 x 4 x 10 x 5). Now, multiply that complexity across your entire product range. 

How, then, do you ensure that each configuration is viable, accurately priced, and can be manufactured efficiently?

This is where Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) technology steps in to help. At its core, CPQ is the engine that powers mass customization, enabling businesses to offer highly personalized products at scale. 

It’s a relatively new software category that was once valued at $2.2 billion in 2022 but is predicted to reach a remarkable $7.3 billion by 2030. That reflects the rapidly rising demand for product customization/configuration solutions.

Let’s pull back the curtain on CPQ and explore how it addresses these challenges:

Configuration

The ‘C’ in CPQ is the cornerstone of customization. 

Advanced CPQ systems use rule-based logic to guide customers (or sales representatives) through the configuration process. These rules ensure that only valid combinations are possible, preventing errors and ensuring manufacturability.

For example, if a customer selects a sofa fabric unavailable in a certain color, the CPQ system automatically removes that color option. 

This prevents the creation of impossible-to-manufacture products and ensures a smooth customer experience.

Pricing

Pricing customized products can be a nightmare without the right tools. 

CPQ systems calculate prices in real-time as customers configure their products. They can account for complex pricing rules, volume discounts, and even factor in current material costs or market conditions.

This ensures that businesses can offer customization while maintaining profitability. It also provides transparency to customers, who can see how their choices affect the final price.

Quoting

The ‘Q’ in CPQ streamlines the quoting process. 

Once a customer has configured their product and received a price, the system can instantly generate a professional, detailed quote. 

This quote can include product specifications, pricing breakdowns, terms and conditions, and even visualizations of the configured products.

For complex B2B sales, CPQ systems can manage multi-line quotes, handle volume pricing, and even route quotes for approval when necessary.

Visual Configuration

Beyond the “CPQ,” many modern CPQ systems include 2D or 3D visualization features. 

This allows customers to see a realistic representation of their customized product in real-time as they make selections. 

For our sofa example above, customers could see how different fabric and color combinations look, or how changing the leg style affects the overall appearance.

Integration

CPQ doesn’t exist in isolation. It integrates with other business systems, such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), and Computer-Aided Design (CAD) software. 

For instance, once a quote is approved, the CPQ system can automatically generate the necessary manufacturing instructions, bill of materials, and even CAD files for production

How It All Comes Together

When these features come together, they enable companies to offer thousands, even millions of product options, with minimal friction or hassle. 

Crucially, CPQ enables this on the front-end while maintaining control over production processes and profitability on the back-end. 

The team at Epicor CPQ has successfully implemented this technology across a diverse range of companies—from small, family-owned businesses grappling with complex product catalogs to large international enterprises that demand intricate customization down to the smallest details. 

Read on for an inside perspective into how CPQ helps real businesses meet the demand for custom products while modernizing their sales strategies and processes.

CPQ Enables Quote Perfection

You know that sinking feeling when a customer asks for a complex quote? That pit-in-your-stomach moment when you realize you’re about to spend the next few days juggling spreadsheets, price books, and product catalogs thicker than your arm? 

It’s a very common situation. Epicor CPQ customer CMTP, an Australian packaging company, found this tough, spending up to two days cobbling together quotes. A customer wants to buy—their credit card is in their hand—but you have no choice but to say, “Hang tight, I’ll get back to you on Friday with that price.” 

Joshua Martin, CMTP’s Digital Projects Lead, summed up quite how impactful CPQ can be in such scenarios:

“It’s taken a quoting process that might have a turnaround of two days into something that now takes five, 10 minutes max. So that’s a massive, massive difference.”

Five to ten minutes instead of 2 days. Let that sink in. We’re talking about going from “Let me get back to you next week” to “Let me get that quote to you after I finish this coffee.”

And CMTP isn’t alone here. Over at Frameless Hardware Company (FHC), they were burning 1-2 hours on each large quote. Post-CPQ? Jesse Dorado from their Technical Sales team laid it out:

“Processing large quotes and entering them into the system used to take 1-2 hours. Using CPQ, we can now complete the same task in just 10-15 minutes at most…it automatically connects to our systems—no manual input.”

No manual input. Music to the ears of anyone who’s ever sent a quote with the wrong figures late on a Friday afternoon!

Smart, Accurate Quotes, Every Time

On the topic of accuracy, CPQ also handles the sheer volume of data that comes with offering a broad range of complex, customizable products.

FHC’s President and CEO, Christian Rodriguez, painted a picture that’ll be familiar to anyone who’s wrestled with custom products:

“It’s a business based on custom hardware—custom-sized doors and openings with multiple options for glass types, handle types, colors, heights, widths, etc. All that quoting was previously done through Excel. But the problem was the prices were never up-to-date from the manufacturing side.”

It’s an extremely tricky situation. You can collect a beautiful, high-ticket quote and promise the customer the earth, but then it gets through to manufacturing, and they throw it back in your face. 

They can’t build what you’ve promised. Materials have changed, and components are out of stock; “we don’t have bright blue, we’ve only got neon blue”—an awkward situation that can see a buyer abandon you for a competitor. 

With CPQ, FHC didn’t just speed up their quoting. They ensured accuracy from collecting a sale to quoting it and sending it to manufacturing.

As Armando Rodriguez described: “With the logic structured in our CPQ system, 90% of our orders no longer require manual engineering work. Tasks that used to take my engineers half a day can now be completed in minutes. As a result, we’ve significantly reduced our lead times by several days.”

3. Bringing Products to Life: The Visual Revolution

I mentioned earlier how the best CPQ systems—like Epicor CPQ—offer more than the “CPQ” itself. Namely, Epicor CPQ offers impressive video game-like 3D models that truly illustrate how custom products come together. 

School Specialty’s journey into augmented reality (AR) demonstrates this in action. 

Adam Halfmann, their Senior Director of Program Management, shared an insight that stuck with me and the Epicor CPQ team:

“We’re one of the first distributor private label furniture manufacturers serving the K-12 education market to have augmented reality for our furniture products.”

We’re not talking about a slightly better catalog or a fancier website. This is about fundamentally changing how customers interact with products before they buy.

Halfmann continued: “From the sales team’s perspective, AR is a huge opportunity. They can walk into a school and say, ‘I can’t physically bring a cafeteria table with me, but with augmented reality, I can place one right here, right now, so you can see exactly how it would look in your space.’ It’s a game-changer for them.”

School Specialty’s numbers back this up, too:

• 16% higher engagement with the configurator
• Over 375,000 product options explored
• 22% increase in custom configurations added to the cart

This tells a story of customers who are more confident in their choices, more invested in the process, and ultimately more likely to make a purchase. It’s not just about the wow factor (though that certainly helps). 

It’s about giving customers the confidence to make decisions, reducing the back-and-forth in the sales process, and ultimately creating a smoother path from initial interest to final sale. 

4. Mastering Complexity: From Overwhelming to Manageable

Let’s examine how CPQ can help businesses with incredibly complex products—in this case, houses. 

Van Wijnen, a Dutch housing developer, would sometimes have to configure 200 houses simultaneously for a project. Each property contains multiple customizable features, resulting in millions of combinations. The work required to deliver that without friction was truly immense. 

After much deliberation, Van Wijnen chose Epicor CPQ, which helped them achieve what many would consider impossible:

• Constructing 2,400 houses and apartments within a year, each assembled in a single day, which CTO Jan H. Wiebenga called a “huge acceleration”
• Reducing the need for deep technical expertise in their sales team
• Offering affordable housing despite the sophisticated processes involved

Jan H. Wiebenga, their CTO, shared a statistic that really drives home the impact:

“Our sales time has been cut in half, looking at it from first customer contact until the realization of the project itself.”

5. The Integration Breakthrough: Systems in Harmony

The days of siloed systems and data bottlenecks are numbered, and NanaWall Systems is a perfect example of why. Joe Rapolla’s comment stuck with me:

“Beyond the visualization capabilities, Epicor CPQ has excellent integrations with Salesforce, AutoCAD, and Solidworks for lots of different output workflows.”

This level of integration is what sets modern CPQ solutions apart. It’s not just about generating a quote—it’s about creating a seamless flow of information from the initial customer interaction right through to production.

In my experience, this kind of integration is often the missing link in digital transformation efforts. 

It’s one thing to have powerful tools; it’s another to have them work together flawlessly. When they do, the results can be transformative.

I’ve worked with companies where this level of integration cut order processing times by 30% or more. That’s a huge competitive advantage in markets where responsiveness can make or break a sale.

6. Empowering Sales Teams: From Order Takers to Trusted Advisors

The impact of CPQ on sales teams is perhaps where I’ve seen the most dramatic change over the years. Xenith, who manufactures high-end sports equipment, is a case in point.

Jonathon Pop, their VP of Digital & Technology, framed their challenge succinctly. And it relates to what we discussed above about customization becoming a widespread expectation among both B2B and B2C buyers:

“People are buying in new ways. We want to meet their needs, wherever they are.”

Xenith chose Epicor CPQ partly because it can be embedded directly into a website. In more technical terms, Epicor CPQ’s REST web services and the Embed API provide seamless integration with Xenith’s Shopify and their own company website.

In other words, you can customize your products live on their site. Epicor CPQ handles the back-end process of enforcing product rules and forwarding engineering data, such as CAD files, to manufacturing teams. 

Some numbers indicating Xenith’s success:

• Transformed their selling process with a visual, maintainable configurator
• Generated approximately 15,000 transactions per month on their website
• Launched their new CPQ solution in just three months

What the numbers don’t show, however, is the qualitative change in how their sales team operates. We’ve seen this theme time and time again: with CPQ, sales reps move from being order takers to becoming trusted advisors.

The CPQ Advantage

As we’ve seen through these real-world examples, CPQ is far more than just a quoting tool. It’s a transformative technology that touches every aspect of the sales process and beyond.

From dramatically reducing quote times and eliminating errors to enabling complex product visualization and seamless system integration, CPQ is helping businesses meet the growing demand for customization while streamlining their operations.

The companies we’ve examined —CMTP, FHC, School Specialty, Van Wijnen, NanaWall Systems, and Xenith—represent just a fraction of the businesses benefiting from CPQ technology. 

Each of their stories highlights a different facet of what modern CPQ solutions can offer.

As customization continues to dominate consumer expectations across industries, the role of CPQ will only grow in importance. 

It’s not just about keeping up with demand—it’s about staying ahead of the curve and turning the challenges of customization into opportunities for growth and innovation.

Want to learn more about how Epicor CPQ can modernize your sales processes? 

Contact us and we’ll be happy to answer your questions and give you a demo.

CPQ FAQs

1. How does product configuration software help product managers meet diverse customer requirements and manage product variations?

Product configuration software is essential for product managers as it enables the efficient management of product variations and ensures that diverse customer requirements are met. This software allows for the creation of customizable product options, making it easier to address specific customer needs and preferences while maintaining consistency across different configurations.

2. What is the role of product configuration management in optimizing the manufacturing process and handling product variants?

Product configuration management plays a critical role in streamlining the manufacturing process by ensuring that all product variants are accurately defined and managed. This involves setting up and maintaining configuration models and product attributes in a product configurator that aligns with the manufacturing capabilities, thus reducing errors and improving efficiency when producing different product variants.

3. How can guided selling improve the customer experience by leveraging product configuration models and related products?

Guided selling uses product configuration models to recommend the best options and related products based on a customer’s specific needs and preferences. This approach enhances the customer experience by simplifying the decision-making process and ensuring that the configured products align with what the customer is looking for, leading to higher satisfaction and potentially increased sales.

4. How does configuration management contribute to effective inventory management and the handling of product attributes?

Configuration management is crucial for maintaining accurate inventory levels and managing product attributes effectively. By ensuring that all configuration items, including product features and constraints, are properly tracked and updated, businesses can optimize inventory management, reduce excess stock, and improve the availability of unique product variants.

5. What are the benefits of using a configuration model to handle complex product attributes and ensure compliance with constraints?

A configuration model helps manage complex product attributes by defining rules and constraints that ensure only valid product combinations are available for selection. This not only simplifies the product customization process for customers but also ensures that all configured products comply with technical and regulatory constraints, reducing the risk of errors and improving overall product quality.

6. How do product settings and product configuration software enable product managers to offer unique products that meet specific customer needs?

Product settings within product configuration software allow product managers to define and manage unique product attributes that cater to specific customer needs. This configurability ensures that customers can customize their products to match their exact requirements, leading to higher satisfaction and a competitive advantage in the market.

7. How does the concept of configurability help in managing product variants and ensuring that customer needs are met?

Configurability refers to the ability to customize products based on specific customer requirements. It allows product managers to efficiently handle multiple product variants by enabling the creation of tailored configurations that meet individual customer needs. This flexibility is key to addressing diverse market demands and ensuring customer satisfaction.

8. How can product managers utilize configuration management and related tools to address customer requirements while optimizing the store view and product settings?

Product managers can use configuration management tools to align product settings with customer requirements, ensuring that the products displayed in the store view are relevant and meet customer expectations. By managing product attributes and configuration items effectively, they can create a seamless shopping experience that reflects the available product variants and their associated features, ultimately driving sales and customer loyalty.