CPQ

CPQ SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION FOR SALES CYCLE OPTIMIZATION

Client

Alaska Rubber Group is the leading distributor of industrial and hydraulic hose and fittings, as well as lifting and rigging supplies in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. Established in 1980 with a single store in Anchorage, the company has since experienced significant growth through strategic acquisitions and expansions. Today, Alaska Rubber Group operates five locations in Alaska and an additional five branches in Washington.

Challenge

Alaska Rubber Group (ARG) isn't in the business of software development but was looking to hire a trusted software company for a custom solution development project aimed at optimizing their sales cycle, increasing productivity, and expediting their customer's journey through the buying process. Our product team proposed developing a robust CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) builder with the potential for broader adoption within the hose and fitting industry and other industrial sectors.

During the implementation process, we faced some architectural limitations. Most of them depended on product datasets and the ability of the CPQ administrators to map this product into the correct data flow. The challenges and risks that surfaced included the high costs associated with CPQ implementation, existing competition from CPQ tools, and the complexities of ensuring data governance and quality. As part of our unique approach to building and optimizing this new CPQ system, we introduced Temporal's workflow automation engine to manage and coordinate the complex data flows and processes involved. We did this integration to boost the reliability and efficiency of the CPQ tool, ensuring smooth operations across many different sales channels.

Strategy

The project scope encompassed critical components such as data storage, front-end service, search service, CPQ core, import data service, and configuration service. At the early start, we involved our Business Analyst as a proxy Product Owner and conducted a short Product Discovery phase. The goal was to gather the essential requirements needed to initiate prototyping sessions and define better the boundaries of the future system. We broke the project down into a milestone-based approach to ensure transparency and the client's involvement along the way. This included conducting demos after each 2-week milestone to showcase the progress achieved and make sure we were hitting our goals. We knew from past experience that the team who would build this needed to consist of highly skilled professionals, including full-stack developers, a Solution Architect, a Business Analyst, a UI/UX designer, a Project Manager, and a Quality Assurance expert.

/ CPQ

Solutions

Technologies

PHP, JS, SQL
Frameworks: Spiral Framework,
Cycle ORM, ReactJS
Technologies: GRPC, REST,
Google protobuf
Tools: Temporal.io, AWS, Docker, Git,
Gitlab CI/CD, PHPStorm (BE IDE), SwaggerUI

To meet the ARG's unique needs, we utilized Spiral Scout's one-of-a-kind Rules Engine core, tailoring it to match their specifications. Recognizing the complexity and sensitivity of CPQ systems, we purposefully designed the CPQ tool as a stand-alone solution that could be used more universally for other types of businesses. This would allow ARG to potentially sell this to other companies in the hose and fitting space to gather some of their investment back while at the same time using the solution for their own business and saving money.

The decision to build Temporal into our technical stack was a huge success in terms of managing the CPQ workflows. This engine allowed us to automate the interactions between different services such as data storage, search service, and import data service, that helped us signifcantly reduce manual intervention and improve response times."

Results

Through our partnership, we successfully delivered a CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) tool that significantly enhances ARG's sales cycle efficiency and productivity and will reduce the dependence on a salesperson in the field. This software solution not only expedites customer journeys but also enables seamless digital transformation processes. Our collaborative sessions with Unilog, who served as the e-commerce platform that ARG was going to market with, were invaluable in identifying the most effective approach for seamless data integration. The CPQ tool can be further refined and tailored to meet the unique requirements of clients and businesses, offering a flexible and adaptable functionality.

Review

“Cpq is a system allowing clients to define complex product dependencies in a form of simple user experience. It is an Engine built to simplify the complex product building and quotation process.“