Sending Quotes

Hello Norm Bonenfant and Francesca Shiekh 

TLDR: In general, no single solution does everything you need/want, the way you need/want.

In my view you have 3 either/or options depending on budget and level of outcome wanted:

1. Adapt and live with the consequences of adapting - suboptimal outcomes and service - worse outcome, lowest cost
2. Customise/extend and live with those consequences - high development, resources and maintenance costs - good outcome, most likely the highest total cost of ownership, low future flexibility
3. Buy multiple applications that are amazing at specific things, and interconnect them together - higher software cost, maybe development and maintenance - great outcome, could compare with #2 in terms of TCO or even lower TCO, business flexibility to swap solutions as better vendors establish

Business leaders are edging towards #3 from #2 nowadays based on my experience

This approach can apply also to delivering efficient and beautiful proposals to your customers.

In the past what I have done is build an application accessible from my customers.

Sellers would simply send customers a unique link instead of sending them a quote (or invoice) which would retrieve the latest quote data for that unique url/record in Sugar.

This would give us all sorts of advantages including:

• Comprehensive tracking of how the prospects/customers interacted with your proposals, time spent, open rate etc
• Ability to update the CRM based on their actions
• Ability to pay via credit card if they wanted to do so
• Ability to display/print the information the way you want, being a web page

That's a possibility, which has the downsides of high initial investment and ongoing maintenance for changes.

Another more recent alternative, is to leverage a proper CPQ (configure price quote) solution on top of the CRM.

This approach not only guides your sellers to create proposals faster, which are valid, and follow all your complex business rules (eg: products dependencies, discount ranges, approvals, conditional pricing etc).

This approach reduces mistakes, reduces back and forth, reduces clunkiness, reduces the time it takes for sellers to create quotes based on what they are trying to sell.

Some vendors even provide the ability to view the proposal online, sign it and have the full approval engine.

The vendor I have in mind unfortunately no longer has an integration with Sugar, but I am sure we could overcome that (I am their partner and I focus on integrations and I know Sugar inside out).

Unfortunately Francesca Shiekh I don't think you will find a software that does everything you want. Even the giants keep purchasing other companies and bolt them together the best they can. And they come with hefty price tags and implementations.

Have you considered looking into a modern iPaaS (integration platform)? A platform that allows you to "glue" multiple systems together to achieve a business objective and to reach further your unicity in the marketplace for your customers in terms of experience and service.

Not just integrate systems, not just automate, but orchestrate multiple systems together to achieve your specific business outcome and process, end to end.

The fact is that it is extremely rare to find a single solution that does everything your business needs the way your business needs it to.

With iPaaS you get much closer to that.

Have a read at this article I wrote and see if it resonates.

All the best!

Hello Norm Bonenfant and Francesca Shiekh 

TLDR: In general, no single solution does everything you need/want, the way you need/want.

In my view you have 3 either/or options depending on budget and level of outcome wanted:

1. Adapt and live with the consequences of adapting - suboptimal outcomes and service - worse outcome, lowest cost
2. Customise/extend and live with those consequences - high development, resources and maintenance costs - good outcome, most likely the highest total cost of ownership, low future flexibility
3. Buy multiple applications that are amazing at specific things, and interconnect them together - higher software cost, maybe development and maintenance - great outcome, could compare with #2 in terms of TCO or even lower TCO, business flexibility to swap solutions as better vendors establish

Business leaders are edging towards #3 from #2 nowadays based on my experience

This approach can apply also to delivering efficient and beautiful proposals to your customers.

In the past what I have done is build an application accessible from my customers.

Sellers would simply send customers a unique link instead of sending them a quote (or invoice) which would retrieve the latest quote data for that unique url/record in Sugar.

This would give us all sorts of advantages including:

• Comprehensive tracking of how the prospects/customers interacted with your proposals, time spent, open rate etc
• Ability to update the CRM based on their actions
• Ability to pay via credit card if they wanted to do so
• Ability to display/print the information the way you want, being a web page

That's a possibility, which has the downsides of high initial investment and ongoing maintenance for changes.

Another more recent alternative, is to leverage a proper CPQ (configure price quote) solution on top of the CRM.

This approach not only guides your sellers to create proposals faster, which are valid, and follow all your complex business rules (eg: products dependencies, discount ranges, approvals, conditional pricing etc).

This approach reduces mistakes, reduces back and forth, reduces clunkiness, reduces the time it takes for sellers to create quotes based on what they are trying to sell.

Some vendors even provide the ability to view the proposal online, sign it and have the full approval engine.

The vendor I have in mind unfortunately no longer has an integration with Sugar, but I am sure we could overcome that (I am their partner and I focus on integrations and I know Sugar inside out).

Unfortunately Francesca Shiekh I don't think you will find a software that does everything you want. Even the giants keep purchasing other companies and bolt them together the best they can. And they come with hefty price tags and implementations.

Have you considered looking into a modern iPaaS (integration platform)? A platform that allows you to "glue" multiple systems together to achieve a business objective and to reach further your unicity in the marketplace for your customers in terms of experience and service.

Not just integrate systems, not just automate, but orchestrate multiple systems together to achieve your specific business outcome and process, end to end.

The fact is that it is extremely rare to find a single solution that does everything your business needs the way your business needs it to.

With iPaaS you get much closer to that.

Have a read at this article I wrote and see if it resonates.

All the best!