BigCommerce is a fast-growing company that had no rigid pricing or quoting structure to scale with its success. And after a bad experience with another implementation partner, BigCommerce was in desperate need of help with their Salesforce platform.

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BigCommerce is an ecommerce software company that offers hosted shopping cart solutions for a variety of businesses. From enterprise solutions to emerging businesses, the BigCommerce platform is built to solve the common issues of on-premise e-commerce software.

With a complex pricing model and low operational guidelines for salespeople, BigCommerce Solutions Architect Nicole Smith knew something needed to change.

 

A failed implementation

Before partnering with Simplus, BigCommerce had implemented its QTC instance in-house. The solution was over-configured, and past admins had clouded it with unnecessary functions in order to fix previous issues. Smith turned to her success manager at SteelBrick (now Salesforce CPQ) for advice on an implementation consultant that could help sort out the mess.

 

“When we first starting working with SteelBrick (now Salesforce CPQ), they initially recommended a different partner other than [Simplus],” Smith said. “We would get the paperwork going with this partner, and then we wouldn’t hear from them for two weeks. The only way I was able to work with them was to chase them down.”

 

After weeks upon weeks of this cat and mouse game, Nicole said that BigCommerce had had enough. She went back to the SteelBrick success manager and told him the relationship with the consultant wasn’t going to work. That’s when he recommended Simplus.

 

Jumping right in with Simplus

Smith said that she knew within 24 hours of working with Simplus that it was already a night and day difference from the previous partner.

 

“We knew from the get-go that we were going to get the ball rolling with Simplus,” Smith said. “Which was really great considering it took weeks with the other partner. Within 48 hours, the team at Simplus had an SOW in our hands, and we were able to get the project underway in the same time the other partner took to just answer us.”

“Simplus was able to jump right in, guns blazing, right when we contacted them,” Smith said. “We had a really bad taste in our mouths from the last partnership attempt, and Simplus just made the whole process seem so simple.”  

 

Startup sales: a lawless land

With no real guidelines set up to constrain bad selling habits within their sales team, BigCommerce was handing out deals at outrageously low prices. These bad practices were dealing a blow to the company’s revenue.

 

“We are a startup, and for us sales is sort of like the wild wild west,” Smith said. “Salespeople could essentially do whatever they wanted and throw pricing wherever they needed to get the deal. So we were in need of a solution to act as a guardrail for what the salespeople could and could not do.”

 

These “guardrails,” Smith was hoping, would help constrain unruly sales in their incredibly complex pricing grid and control what they could price and quote to customers.

 

Complex processes, complex prices

BigCommerce sells different tiers of their products to customers that range from small brick and mortars to large enterprise companies. For larger companies, which is what BigCommerce is mainly using their CPQ instance for, the pricing can become very complex. For example, a company will have a standard monthly price that is dependent on the number of orders and price per order that they sell. As such, BigCommerce’s pricing model is constantly fluctuating.

 

 

“We use SteelBrick in such a way that we are able to implement other objects that put proper prices on their bills based on these fluctuating conditions,” Smith said.

 

 

In addition to complex pricing, BigCommerce needed a more efficient approval process. Simplus laid out a custom approval to streamline the quoting process, while also helping solve the problem of an unchecked sales team.

 

The Simplus difference

On the heels of a failed implementation with another partner, BigCommerce was looking to get a solution out the door, but not at the expense of quality.

 

“We are open-minded and interested in putting out the best option and not just the quickest option — something both we and the team at Simplus really aligned on,” Smith said. “With aggressive timelines, Stu and Derar hit the ground running with me and were beyond helpful in setting up Steelbrick, working through complex setup and pricing models with ease. Stu has managed our project so well in making sure we consistently make progress, while Derar has gone above and beyond to help implement the processes that work best for us. There’s no question who I’m going to back to. Their knowledge and talent have far succeeded my expectations!”

 

The BigCommerce SteelBrick implementation was completed quickly and efficiently in order to meet the specific business requirements of the client. After a bad experience, Simplus was able to save the SteelBrick implementation and build a lasting relationship with BigCommerce.