The lead-to-cash process in most organizations is complex. Add in multiple products and product lines, pricing configurations, discretionary discounting, and distributed sales and order fulfillment teams, and the complexity grows tenfold. For many life sciences organizations, this is their reality. And because there are so many moving parts and layers in this equation, when silos exist within the organization, the wheels can start to come off when there are significant changes in the company or the marketplace.
With many organizations in the life sciences industry facing explosive growth at the same time customer experience has taken a front seat, it’s more necessary than ever before to work to abolish silos and create a “one-team” culture through technology.
But, it takes more than just adopting technology. There needs to be a blend of efficiency, collaboration, and thoroughness across the entire organization –– from marketing to sales and supply chain to customer success. So, the technology life sciences organizations use needs to be the right technology and it needs to be aligned.
This alignment starts by migrating away from legacy quote configurations and spreadsheets (or sticky notes) and moving towards cloud-based CRM tools such as Salesforce CPQ software. A solution like CPQ can act as a junction point between sales, operations, and the entire organization –– helping to eliminate silos that create inefficiencies and redundancies that negatively impact the customer experience and the bottom line. As data becomes more and more valuable, the information you compile during the sales process needs to feed into the information the operations team uses.
Now is the time to ensure organizations are internally aligned to better meet customer needs –– and many across the life sciences sector are turning to Salesforce CPQ software to create that cohesion.
Standardizes organizational processes
As many organizations continue to work virtually for the foreseeable future, it’s imperative to establish a more standard operating model. A lack of standardized processes often slow cycles or result in inaccurate pricing, configurations, or order acceptance.
This is where CPQ tools can be used to create standardized processes to handle everything from quoting to fulfillment. Salesforce CPQ, for instance, unlocks data to give a clear picture of what can be offered to the customer, enabling teams to track, analyze, and forecast accurately and uniformly. It also minimizes errors with preprogrammed rules that take into consideration account quantities, discounts, customizations, product compatibility, and optional features while also ensuring all sales reps and channel partners are up to date and complying with the latest product offerings and SKU configurations.
Improves sales pipeline visibility
One of the biggest concerns for many life sciences organizations today is a lack of visibility into the entire sales and supply cycles. While CRMs are critical to providing greater visibility into sales pipelines, they don’t paint the entire picture. Without an integrated CPQ system you can’t fully optimize what you can’t see. By connecting CRM and CPQ solutions, organizations gain a 360-degree view of the lead-to-cash journey.
Through CPQ and the use of standard Salesforce dashboards, workflows, and reports, organizations increase visibility into opportunities and automated approvals. Additionally, the analytics provided by CPQ software gives organizations insights into lead quality and overall process effectiveness –– data that is considered gold to sales and organization leaders.
On top of that, it’s important to note that because Salesforce’s CPQ platform is cloud-based it provides accessibility from any device, anytime, anywhere, further enhancing pipeline and process visibility.
Streamlines communication and cross-collaboration
Within most organizations, marketing, sales, finance, fulfillment and customer success, and operations are all very separate and siloed departments. CPQ software helps organizations work within one collaborative database — enhancing internal communication while improving efficiency and effectiveness while selling.
The seamless integration that CPQ software offers with CRM and ERP systems creates a streamlined end-to-end process across all departments. For example, sales can monitor the status of deliveries, executives can monitor the sales process, and operations can monitor trends to plan for new deals. Combining CPQ with ERP leads to a reduction in operating costs, and on-time production is greater because the operations and materials and manufacturing departments are in the loop.
Using the right technology platforms, such as CPQ, ensures the entire organization — from sales to operations and fulfillment — is operating from a single view pane. They share access to important patient and provider data, which can help inform marketing, sales, and product decisions while reducing costs and driving revenue.
Ultimately, cohesive internal experiences are also reflected outward –– creating better, more streamlined, and more personalized experiences for patients and other important stakeholders. A benchmark that is more important than ever before.