Sandwiched between sealing the deal and realizing the cash is kind of crucial stage of your business operations: fulfillment. This is where your company actually delivers on the goods or services you promote. It seems easy enough, and in many ways it is. But there’s more to it. 

Fulfillment may be a straightforward stage in your company’s QTC journey, but that doesn’t mean it’s without potential complications. Below, we’ll highlight three key quotes from Gilles’ thought leadership on how QTC solutions can impact the fulfillment stage. And, for a more in-depth look at all of the considerations you need to address to make your fulfillment process seamlessly integrated with the rest of QTC automation, check out the full book, available now on Amazon. 

1. Why QTC oversight is still critical during fulfillment

“This step is the most straightforward of the entire QTC process: all of the conditions have already been laid out and agreed upon by both parties in the contract. However, it is still a process that needs oversight, and a QTC solution is vital to ensuring just that. After all, changes may be made to the order at any time, and you need to make sure that those changes are reflected in the final product. Using a fully integrated system that provides a complete view of the customer, you can do just that. With a full QTC solution, you can be sure that all necessary parties have access to the right information.” —Gilles Muys 

2. Going from quote to order, from sales to operations 

“The fulfillment process often requires data beyond products and prices. Therefore, such data should be collected and stored in a different place than the quote, especially if it was unknown or not available during the quoting cycle. In addition, most ERP systems use a concept of “sales order” or “customer order” to feed the fulfillment process. Therefore, you should carefully consider how the quote information will be translated into order information that can be consumed by your fulfillment process, and using a “staging” object between the quote and the sales order in your ERP system is generally a good practice.” —Gilles Muys

3. Subscription-based models make fulfillment more involved 

“Because CPQ integrates powerful capabilities to support the subscription-based model, amendments and renewals can introduce some complexities for your fulfillment team. These complexities come from how you provision upgrades or downgrades, and terminations or cancellations. With the rich data model in Salesforce CPQ, you are fortunately just a few calculations away from providing the right data to your downstream systems.” —Gilles Muys

Continue reading about the implications CPQ, CLM, and Billing solutions have for the way your fulfillment operations are managed: The Definitive QTC Guide.