Quote to Cash – Simply Defined

Quote-to-Cash (abbreviated as Q2C or QTC) is one of the hottest topic in CRM world, especially in Cloud platforms. It has been explained and defined in multiple ways, but most of them are neither comprehensive nor lucid enough for non-techie people. Even Wikipedia has a short paragraph on it. This article is yet another effort to define Q2C in a simpler and coherent manner.

Quote to Cash, as the name suggest, is an end-to-end business process which includes steps from product modelling and all the way up to revenue recognition at the end. In between it includes:

• Product Setup – Defining products/service structures, bundles/components, configuration rules and pricing methods.
• Quote Life Cycle - Create quote, configure products, apply promotions & discounts, internal approvals and generate quote output document for customer negotiations.
• Contract Life Cycle – Create and manage contracts, negotiations and approvals.
• Order Management – Create orders and order orchestrations.
• Asset Management – Create and manage assets. Assets based ordering (change orders, terminate/renew/close assets).
• Invoicing & Billing – Generate invoices and manage cash collections.

These steps are not new and has always been part of complete sales process, but the noticeable point is that these were accomplished by independent and silo systems in enterprise landscape. As example, excel sheet could be used for quotes, a custom developed application for order management, while a renowned COTS product for billing/invoicing. But none of them were native to CRM system. Being technically and functionally disconnected, each of these applications/products needs integration to complete the process. Also, these siloed pieces bring lot of inefficiencies and delays in sales cycle and may result in wrong product configurations, erroneous quotes, incorrect orders/invoices and ultimately loss of revenue and customers.

The advent of CRM cloud platforms enabled companies to build the complete Q2C solution stack natively on CRM and overcome cons of having Q2C process as disintegrated. This provides a close integration of Q2C with CRM system, 360 degree view of the customer across functions, single source of truth for products/services, synchronization among different sales channels and many more. Let’s detail out some of the key benefits of adopting CRM native Q2C process:

1. Q2C process impacts every function of the organization including sales, finance, legal and operations. It enables all functions performing their job efficiently in the complete sales cycle and have a 360 degree view of the customer journey.
2. Automated Q2C process avoids incorrect product configurations, erroneous quotes, contract issues, order mistakes and revenue losses.
3. Speed is the most critical aspect of any sales function and Q2C helps in improving it. Quick quotes, speedy approvals and digital contracts help sales reps sell faster and improve revenue and margins.
4. Q2C process in CRM platform assist in maintaining the single source of information across sales channels. In addition to this, it provides better control over pricing and visibility of products across different channels.
5. With 360 degree view of customer, sales reps get ample opportunities for cross/up sales and customer retentions.   

In modern sales process, Q2C is becoming a de-fecto in laying the foundation for company’s margins and market presence by contributing heavily in smart and quick selling of products and services. Organizations are ready to invest in bringing their complete Q2C process on CRM platform to sell more and get competitive advantage. So, are you ready to join the stream?