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Integrating Salesforce Cloudcraze B2B Commerce with CPQ or Quoting Engines

XCentium offers integration services and components giving CPQ / CloudCraze projects a head start. The following article shows several common use cases that describe how a CPQ or Salesforce B2B CloudCraze Commerce Cloud customer can take advantage of these offerings.

Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) is a software tool that allows sales people to quickly and accurately produce quotes for customers. The complexity of this process is often startling and when approached with the wrong tools can lead to problems.

CPQ, at its heart, is a rules engine that allows an organization to define and organize the guidelines and structures needed for a sales personnel to generate meaningful quotes.

Cloudcraze B2B Commerce is a built-in , native mechanism to maintain product catalogs, pricebooks, promotions, attributes and shopping carts. In short everything one needs to deploy a B2B commerce portal.

We will review three ways of integrating CloudCraze with CPQ to enhance the end users experience while producing a higher ROI for you.  For the purpose of illustration, assume that a company has implemented CloudCraze commerce and is evaluating the best way to utilize Salesforce CPQ

Integrating Salesforce Cloudcraze B2B Commerce with CPQ or Quoting Engines

Case 1: Cart To Quote Roundtrip

The predominant use case when dealing with quotes is a flow that originates in CloudCraze. For this example assume that your catalog has custom configurable products which require a quote. This is just one type of product that benefit from quotes. It is by no means the only type.

Here is what that flow looks like :

  1. Shopper fills cart with products
  2. Shopper clicks “Get Quote” on cart. Cart status is set to “Quote”.
  3. Cloudcraze creates a quote request in CPQ
  4. CPQ notifies Salesperson(s)
  5. Salesperson reviews the request and produces a quote
  6. Salesperson sets the status of the quote as “Ready for CloudCraze”
  7. CloudCraze picks up the pricing from the quote and adjusts the cart
  8. CloudCraze notifies the shopper that a quote has been completed
  9. Shopper logs into CloudCraze reviews his quote
  10. Shopper acceptance converts the quote into a cart. Shopper follows normal checkout

Case 2: Sales Person Sourced CPQ to Cloudcraze Portal

Unlike the first example, in this use case the process begins within the CPQ system and results in a shopping cart / purchase in Cloudcraze. CPQ has access to the same product catalog as CloudCraze. It is conceivable that a sales person completes a quote while on the phone with a customer and wants to present this information quickly to close the deal. 

Here is what that flow looks like:

  1. Salesperson speaks with customer and completes a quote in CPQ
  2. Salesperson sets the status of the quote as “Ready for CloudCraze”
  3. CloudCraze picks up the quote with pricing and creates a cart for the shopper.
  4. CloudCraze notifies the shopper that the cart is available.
  5. Shopper clicks on email link, logs into CloudCraze, and is taken to the cart.
  6. Shopper follows normal checkout

Case 3: Customer Sourced CPQ to Cloudcraze Portal

Think of this flow as a close relation to case 2. Both start in CPQ, but while case 2 describes a salesperson assisted / sourced use case, case 3 looks at a similar setup but started by a customer instead.

Here is what that flow looks like :

  1. Customer configures products he/she would like quoted via a CPQ portal
  2. Salesperson reviews the request and produces a quote
  3. Salesperson sets the status of the quote as “Ready for CloudCraze”
  4. CloudCraze picks up the pricing from the quote and creates a shopping cart
  5. CloudCraze notifies the shopper that a quote has been completed along with sending the cart details
  6. Shopper logs into CloudCraze reviews his cart containing products at quoted prices.
  7. Shopper follows normal checkout to complete the purchase

As you can see, no matter which flow is implemented, the crucial aspect is the friction free integration of CloudCraze with Salesforce and by extension with Salesforce CPQ.  XCentium has extended CloudCraze objects to allow easy integration with CPQ. This groundwork provides a fast route to implementation for any customer contemplating a route to B2B eCommerce on the Salesforce platform.