Download CPQ Project Checklist here.
There are many IT project management related knowledge resources available in the internet. Today, I wanted to share with you something related to CPQ implementation projects, where PM time is limited and where the CPQ consultant has a bigger role to play.
Not that long ago I wrote an ebook about CPQ implementation, where I’m guiding a reader through various topics that needs to be reviewed during CPQ implementation (i.e. Salesforce CPQ). While working on that ebook, I created a Project Tracking Checklist that lists project milestones, but by looking from a CPQ domain perspective.
In my opinion, we can identify 20 milestones/phases in the typical CPQ implementation projects;
- Kick-off – start well, present project goals, align the team
- Intro Workshops – educate your customer and present OOTB CPQ features, that will help you later during the design when key decisions need to be made.
- Security – identify Actors in the system (who are the users?) and define the security setup for your implementation
- CRM and CPQ – design how your CRM/Sales connects to CPQ, what are the processes and data flow between those components?
- Product Catalog – get the product catalog defined and documented, all product variations, configuration process, etc.
- Pricing – get the pricing logic defined and documented, ideally as Excel files with formulas.
- Quote document – get the quote documents used by your customer, define the template for the future state and implement
- Approvals – define the approval processes and approvers
- Order Generation – determine rules and possible automations related to orders and order provisioning.
- Renewals – Subscription based business? Make sure you design how to renew and not drop any revenue opportunity.
- Amendments – Utilise maximum of OOTB features and provide flexibility to your customers.
- Communities – Help your partners sell your products and enable your customers for self service.
- Translations – Translate your product catalogue and quote output documents for a seamless client experience.
- Legacy data migration – CPQ implementation for a brand new business is super rare. Usually, there is some set of data that needs to be migrated during the project, for instance, to automate renewals of current subscriptions.
- Integrations – What is the input process for the CPQ? What is the output? How does it interface with current IT horizon of the business?
- SIT – Nothing surprising, just perform standard SIT process.
- UAT – Same here just do the UAT, one advice, make sure you have key end users involved in the process.
- Knowledge Transfer – I suggest train the trainer approach. Record the sessions you will do with the key users and share that with your customer. One comment: focus on your part of the work. Teaching CPQ should be done by one of the courses or should be agreed specifically in the project.
- Deployment & Go Live – Moving configuration data may be tricky, pay attention 🙂
- Support – BAU mode, if your customer is willing to.
If you are a CPQ consultant, you should look at this list and make sure you touch all areas from the list during your project.