Overview

SAP CPQ enables customers, channel partners, and sales teams to configure and price products accurately and efficiently. SAP CPQ simplifies the quoting and selling processes, making it easy to produce accurate quotes and proposals quickly with the optimal combination of products, options, and services. The solution helps sales professionals understand customer needs, narrows down the list of applicable, up-to-date products, collaborates on and proposes the right products and services, and delivers an accurate quotation to the customer rapidly. SAP CPQ makes it easy for sales and partners to sell and for customers to buy. To deliver these solution benefits, we use a hybrid methodology of project phases and agile iterations to deliver SAP CPQ projects.

Table of Contents

Project Delivery Framework Fundamentals

Before going into the details on how each phase works, there is a set of fundamental principles and practices that need to be understood for SAP CPQ. These principles are important across all phases. 

• The project delivery approach for SAP CPQ is a hybrid of waterfall and agile project management methodologies. 

• Business requirements and solution design are confirmed before starting development.

• Development and testing are conducted in an iterative approach, giving key stakeholders rapid visibility into the solution and the opportunity to provide input for the next iteration.

• Training is key for understanding the terminology and the basic foundations of SAP CPQ as you work through requirements gathering and subsequent phases. 

• Ensure you have identified the correct team members to participate in each phase of the project, which will help you avoid any delays and miscommunication as you work through requirements identification, solution design, build and testing iterations, deployment, and training. 

Delivering SAP CPQ by Project Phases

The project delivery framework for SAP CPQ has been adapted and aligned with the below phases, which have been summarized for quick reference purposes. The five phases and high-level stream view are presented below.

Prepare 

The purpose of the Prepare phase is to set the project up for success by establishing the business value objectives that will be achieved and to identify the project team members and procedures that will achieve those goals. Key information about the business’ existing quoting processes and rules are collected and reviewed to prepare the team for requirements gathering and design activities in the next phase.

Prepare Activities

• Identify and document business value objectives and the corresponding project deliverables.
• Secure executive sponsorship and resource availability for all project phases.
• Document project scope and mechanisms for tracking project schedule, budget, status, and risks.
• Develop a project team training strategy and start project team training.
• Obtain documentation of existing business processes and requirements to prepare for project kick-off.
• Confirm the availability of the SAP CPQ development environment and set up administrator access.
• Prepare teams for the project's Explore phase.

Explore

During the Explore phase, the project team reviews information provided by the customer in depth to better understand the current quote creation process and how SAP CPQ can be configured to meet the value objectives. The team documents the requirements and solution design, and uses this as the basis for the configuration performed in the next phase.

Explore Activities

• Conduct a project kick-off workshop, which includes a detailed review of the following aspects of the quoting process:
  • Product catalog and product information
  • User types and user journeys through SAP CPQ
  • Pricing, discounting rules, and approvals workflow
  • Requirements for integration with CRM and ERP solutions
  • Shopping cart and quote design
  • Format and content of output documents
• Document business requirements and obtain approval from the customer.
• The SAP implementation team creates a high-level design document that describes how the customer requirements will be fulfilled by SAP CPQ.
• The SAP implementation team creates a ‘proof of design’ prototype and reviews with the customer to demonstrate feasibility of the proposed design.
• The customer project team utilizes workbooks provided by SAP to document the detailed design for SAP CPQ, such as product details, pricing, discounting rules, and integration requirements. 
• The customer approves the design documents and workbooks, which are used by the implementation team in the Realize phase.
• The customer begins preparing test scripts and acceptance criteria, which are used to validate the completed solution during user acceptance testing (UAT).

Realize

The Realize phase is conducted in an iterative fashion, with the implementation team building out SAP CPQ capabilities and the customer conducting testing and providing feedback for the next iteration. In this way, the customer is able to provide continual feedback and the solution is further tailored to meet their requirements.

Realize Activities

• Configure SAP CPQ according to the approved design.
• The implementation team conducts Unit testing.
• The customer conducts user acceptance testing and provides feedback.
• The team continues iterations of builds and testing until the solution fulfills the approved requirements.
• The customer provides UAT Sign-off and preparation for the Deploy phase begins.

Deploy

During the Deploy phase, the tested solution is migrated to the production environment and the customer prepares for go-live. The end-users complete training on the new solution and the customer transitions from services to support.

Deploy Activities

• Migrate the tested solution to the production environment.
• End-users complete scheduled training.
• Activate end-users accounts.
• Deliver implementation documentation.
• Deliver support transition document.
• The customer transitions from services to support.

Run

The purpose of the Run phase is to utilize the new solution to achieve the benefits offered by a more accurate and simplified quoting process. The customer may choose at this stage to work further with the implementation team on additional enhancements. 

Conclusion

This project framework is applicable either as a standalone implementation or part of the overall SAP Customer Experience solutions. You can refer to Overall SAP Customer Experience solutions Project Framework to learn more about the project setup with multiple solutions across the portfolio. 

Some key links: 

• Project Delivery Framework for SAP Sales Cloud
  
• Project Delivery Framework for SAP Sales and Service solutions
• Project Delivery Framework for SAP Commissions
• Project Delivery Framework for SAP Workflow
  
  

To access all our community or out of the box product documentation, please check out our List of Online Resources.