When you’re looking to implement Salesforce Quote-to-Cash in your organization, the question is not if you should retain a third-party Salesforce implementation consultant, but how to get the most out of your Salesforce consultant. Salesforce’s partner ecosystem is filled with Salesforce-certified, expertly trained consultants who know best practices like the back of their hand and can spot potential pitfalls from a mile away. By understanding what your Salesforce consultant is capable of doing for you, you’ll be able to optimally utilize your consultant’s expertise and experience to hit a digital transformation homerun.

For all things pricing and billing, there’s no better implementation partner than Simplus. Simplus is an elite Platinum Salesforce Partner that offers a rare depth of expertise and insight into the inner workings of Salesforce Quote-to-Cash. As we discussed in a previous blog post, you want to be using Salesforce’s CPQ (Configure-Price-Quote) solution to supercharge your digital transformation goals. Simplus will ensure that Salesforce Quote-to-Cash fundamentally changes how employees think about and relate to their jobs and one other. And when you’re ready, Simplus will guide you in upgrading to Salesforce Billing—the final piece of the CPQ puzzle that will allow you to manage your sales lifecycle entirely from within Salesforce. Let’s explore the essential ways you can and should be using Simplus consulting expertise to achieve your Salesforce Quote-to-Cash digital transformation goals:

1. Rely on Simplus to help you develop an implementation roadmap: Salesforce Quote-to-Cash comes preloaded with endless features and functionality, and every organization needs to prioritize and decide which pieces to implement and when. Rather than let whims and personal preferences dictate this process, you should be deferring to an implementation consultant to set the proper pacing for you. Simplus will start with a series of listening sessions to fully understand your current workflows, your existing pain points, and your top goals and priorities. Then, we’ll guide you in developing a long-term implementation roadmap that will help you achieve your digital transformation goals rapidly and at minimal risk. We’ll push back if your pacing is too fast or too slow, and we’ll help you plot out early wins along your implementation roadmap that will give your team a boost of confidence and propel forward momentum.

2. Rely on Simplus to advise you on optimized, best-practices implementation strategy: During Salesforce Quote-to-Cash implementation, there are two main types of best-practice strategies to juggle: one, implementing Quote-to-Cash in a way that is compatible with how the platform is universally designed and optimized to function. And two, implementing Quote-to-Cash in a way that is optimally aligned with your workflows, roles and hierarchies, and other business processes. Simplus is a masterful adviser on both fronts. We have completed more than 700 CPQ implementation projects—more than any other certified partner—and know what works, what doesn’t, and how to steer clear of pitfalls and obstacles that could derail your success.

3. Rely on Simplus to help you establish a data migration and data management plan: Like any technology, Salesforce Quote-to-Cash is only as reliable and insightful as the data put into the system. You need to figure out which data sets to migrate, how to clean them up and standardize them, and how to maintain them over the long term. Simplus has a deep understanding of how Quote-to-Cash uses data, and how an organization can reliably and efficiently generate this data. We’ll help you figure out which data sets to clean up and import, and which are unnecessary or redundant. Moreover, we understand how to establish workflows and processes that ensure employees consistently generate and maintain the data that Salesforce needs, so your data sets don’t become stagnant and outdated over time.

4. Rely on Simplus to help tie your implementation goals to your strategic business goals: Many organizations implement technology like Salesforce Quote-to-Cash thinking it is just another incremental technology upgrade that represents another cost to the organization. But Quote-to-Cash actually is a conduit for achieving strategic business goals—and it’s your job to make this alignment clear for your C-suite leaders. Simplus is optimally positioned to guide you on this front. For example, if the C-suite has decreed that customer satisfaction scores should be 95% or higher, Simplus will help you demonstrate how Quote-to-Cash implementation leads to shortened times to get quotes approved, more flexible billing options, and improved visibility and speed in resolving customer complaints, such as pricing and billing discrepancies.  

5. Rely on Simplus to help you develop and track meaningful KPIs: Tracking the return on your Salesforce Quote-to-Cash investment is critical. The best KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) will show that you have not only reduced costs and boosted profitability, but also have freed up employees’ time to focus on higher-value tasks, changed how employees think about pricing and billing functions, and strengthened relationships with your customers. Simplus will work with you to identify which KPIs will be most applicable, insightful, and immediately actionable within your organization. We’ll also help you set up Quote-to-Cash dashboards and auto-generating performance reports that enable you to comprehensively measure the value Quote-to-Cash is adding to your bottom line. Our goal is to ensure you optimally use KPIs to promote a culture of continuous process improvement and strong end-user adoption.

Digital transformation is one of the most important outcomes of your Salesforce Quote-to-Cash investment. To achieve the digital transformation home runs you seek, you need an expert implementation partner like Simplus. You can rely on Simplus to help you develop an implementation roadmap, advise you on best-practices implementation strategy, establish a plan for migrating and managing data, tie your implementation goals to your organization’s strategic business goals, and develop and track KPIs that help you improve more efficiently and intelligently.

In the next blog post in our digital transformation blog series, we’re going to explore best-practices strategies for getting end users across your organization to adopt the Salesforce Quote-to-Cash platform—and ultimately embrace new workflows and new ways of thinking that are essential to driving digital transformation.