Note: The information in this blog post is considered out-of-date and kept for archival purposes. This article is not about the new Revenue Cloud (previously known as RLM).
Click here for the up-to-date blog post comparing Salesforce CPQ to Revenue Cloud (RLM).
Salesforce CPQ is actually part of Revenue Cloud!
Salesforce Revenue Cloud consists of two products — Salesforce CPQ and Salesforce Billing. So, one is not better than the other. You may find yourself asking, “Would it be better to set up both of them at the same time?
If you are looking for more information regarding what it is and what it includes, this article may be helpful for you.
Let’s Define what Salesforce CPQ is
Salesforce CPQ is a robust set of functionality that allows businesses to empower their sales teams to build quotes and renewals that are accurate and fast to create. It also provides the structure for companies to set up checks and balances, so approvals are required only when it matters most.
They are Better Together
Setting up both of them at the same time is a great way to have the whole end-to-end process established early on. If you are confident in the products you will be selling for the next 12 months and want to know the financial metrics for a given customer, this is a good option for you.
Please review our quickstarts for more information regarding our pricing for these products.
Advantages to CPQ Alone
Typically businesses will set up Salesforce CPQ, and at a later point, they will add on the functionality for Salesforce Billing. This process is great for companies that may be unsure what products they will be selling in the future but want to ensure their renewals will be streamlined from the start.
Salesforce CPQ Renewals
The Salesforce CPQ renewal process is set up by utilizing the initial quote and all subsequent Salesforce CPQ quotes to arrive at a total of products and quantities.
For example, your first quote sells on January 1:
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- 10 of Product A, for 12 months (expires on December 31)
Later in the year, that customer wants to:
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- Remove 2 of Product A and,
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- Add on 10 of Product B but make the end date December 31
Then your automatically generated renewal for the Salesforce CPQ for the next year in January will state
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- 8 of Product A and,
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- 10 of Product B
Renewals with Salesforce CPQ can be overwhelming, but it is incredibly time-saving when properly configured. If you are looking for further explanation of how renewals work, try this youtube video.
Advantages to Salesforce Billing Alone
It is pretty uncommon for businesses to set up billing without CPQ, but it’s doable. It might be a good option for companies with robust systems in place to track information and are interested in integrating salesforce with their accounting system and need to establish the integration using best practices.
Connecting your systems in this manner will make things much easier if you ever do decide to set up Salesforce CPQ in the future because your invoice system and your orders will all be set up already. Of course, there will be some work to ensure the pre-existing billing system is compatible with the new CPQ system. Still, the required lift will be significantly less than if a billing integration was set up with only custom objects, not with Salesforce Billing.
For more information on the details of Salesforce Billing, please look at the official documentation here.
Still need more assistance?
We’d love to help! Feel free to contact us or check out the details and offerings featured in our CPQ and Billing quickstarts.
