Strategic Goal

to automate the sales and billing processes, improve visibility into customer entitlements, and increase the efficiency of the sales and service teams by deploying an integrated Quote-to-Cash platform.

Challenges

The company faced several operational challenges:

  • Offline and Non-Integrated Sales and Billing Processes: The sales process and billing were often conducted offline or with non-integrated solutions, leading to inefficiencies and errors.

  • Low Visibility into Customer Entitlements: Lack of visibility into customers’ entitlements led to missed upsell and cross-sell opportunities and decreased the quality of customer service.

  • Billing Errors: Errors and omissions in billing data led to discrepancies and customer dissatisfaction.

  • Region-Specific Catalogs and Pricelists: Maintaining region-specific catalogs and pricelists in Excel was time-consuming, error-prone, and complicated ongoing maintenance.

  • Manual Data Replication: Manual data entry at various stages of the process led to numerous errors and inefficiencies.

  • Mid-Term Contract Changes: The need for manual, time-consuming reevaluation of billing for upsells, cancellations, and other contract changes caused delays and inefficiencies.

Solution

The company collaborated with CLARITY to deploy a comprehensive solution combining several SAP and third-party tools that tackled these challenges effectively.

  • SAP Sales Cloud and SAP CPQ: The integration of SAP Sales Cloud and CPQ streamlined the sales process by providing automated region-based catalogs and pricelists, improving proposal accuracy and sales team efficiency.

  • SAP S/4HANA: SAP S/4HANA served as the core platform, ensuring seamless integration between systems, enabling real-time data flow, and enhancing overall process visibility.

  • SAP Subscription Billing: Automated billing processes were implemented through SAP Subscription Billing, reducing errors and manual effort while ensuring accurate billing and timely revenue recognition.

  • SAP Cloud Platform Integration: SAP CPI facilitated stable, accurate data flows between various systems, providing traceable references to objects across different platforms and improving data consistency.

  • Kimble and Cobra: These tools were used to optimize project management, service delivery, and the tracking of upsell opportunities, improving client engagement and service efficiency.

  • DocuSign Integration: DocuSign optimized the approval and contract management process, reducing delays and improving customer experience with fast, electronic approvals.

Results

The integrated solution delivered significant operational improvements:

  • Simplified Sales Process: Region-based catalogs and pricelists were automatically selected, reducing errors and speeding up the proposal creation process.

  • Improved Entitlement Visibility: The integration provided better visibility into customer entitlements, improving support and service efficiency and enabling the capture of more upsell opportunities.

  • Automated and Accurate Billing: Automated billing through SAP Subscription Billing ensured that invoicing was accurate, timely, and compliant with service agreements, reducing errors and billing discrepancies.

  • Enhanced Service Efficiency: Improved visibility into the install base enabled the service team to respond more effectively to customer needs, leading to higher customer satisfaction.

  • Increased Upsell Opportunities: Better insight into customer entitlements allowed the sales and service teams to identify and capture additional revenue through upselling and cross-selling.