Describing the Opportunity to Quote Stage

Following the Lead to Cash business process, this lesson dives into the Opportunity to Quote stage.

The Opportunity to Quote stage is a pivotal phase in the Lead to Cash business process. This stage is where opportunities are converted into quotes, assigned to a salesperson, and maintained and published to the forecast.

This stage also covers various sales channels and scenarios, including direct sales and e-commerce, as well as the requote process. It is a critical stage in the sales process that ensures opportunities are effectively and efficiently managed to drive revenue.

It encompasses several key aspects:

• First, salespersons are assigned to each opportunity, ensuring that the right team member is responsible for nurturing the opportunity through the quoting process. This allocation of resources optimizes the chances of successfully converting the opportunity into a sale.
• The second step involves the conversion of opportunities into quotes. This involves accurately capturing the customer's requirements and translating them into a comprehensive and competitive pricing proposal (discounts) and relevant cross-sell and up-sell recommendations or to promote products and services.
• Also, the requote process is a fundamental part of this stage. It allows for the revisiting and revision of quotes as per the customer's feedback or changes in the sales environment, ensuring that quotes remain competitive and reflective of the customer's needs.
• Finally, maintaining the opportunity and publishing it to the forecast is the crucial component of the quote stage. This involves continually updating and refining the quote based on customer interactions and market conditions, as well as ensuring that forecasted sales figures are accurate and in line with organizational targets.

The Opportunity to Quote stage also encompasses a diverse range of sales channels and scenarios. This includes catering to direct sales, where traditional face-to-face or remote sales interactions are key, using SAP Sales Cloud. Another sales channel is omnichannel e-commerce, where online transactions and digital platforms play a central role in the sales process using SAP Commerce Cloud.

The Opportunity to Quote stage plays a pivotal role in driving the Lead to Cash process, ensuring that opportunities are effectively managed, and translating into viable revenue streams for the organization.

Let’s look at the following image:

You can see in the previous image some of the applicable solutions and business usages of this Opportunity to Quote stage:

• Sales assesses and qualifies the potential of leads and prospects, identifying those that are most likely to convert into opportunities in SAP Sales Cloud.
• Embedded machine learning is used for smart deal scoring in SAP Sales Cloud.
• A salesperson is assigned to an opportunity that scores high in SAP Sales Cloud, they are given the responsibility to engage with the potential client and capitalize on the favorable conditions presented by the high-scoring opportunity.
• The customer revisits the website and is guided to create a customer order consisting of physical products, subscriptions, and service, and gets cross-sell and up-sell recommendations in the SAP Commerce Cloud.
• When a customer requests a quote in SAP Commerce Cloud, the platform quickly generates an accurate and personalized quote based on the customer's needs and available inventory.
• In SAP CPQ, a visually appealing PDF quote is generated for the customer, containing all necessary details and personalized information.