Fast, seamless quoting for a Fortune 500 firm

The challenge

Fix a struggling quote process to increase renewals

More companies are relying on subscription-based models such as software-as-a-service (SaaS) to help them conduct business for their own – and their customers' – convenience. But generating renewal quotes is often complex, frustrating, and time-consuming, hurting the bottom line of subscription providers and their clients.

Subscription providers know that upselling, cross-selling, and renewals are critical to success. VMware has a huge customer base but maximizing its value for quoting renewals presented a challenge. The system was a patchwork of purchase histories, discounts, and details about former customers, all mixed in with enterprise licensing agreements (ELAs).

The company was just about able to create and manage quotes using configure, price, quote (CPQ) platforms, specifically one offered by a leading cloud-based solutions provider. But quoting on renewal agreements was a major pain point. Getting them right required extracting information from thousands of lines of code relating to past purchase histories while the system scoured the installed base (IB) for key details. Multiple problems were weighing the process down, including:

• The system couldn't handle the high volume of data generated by CPQ IB reports
• There were no central configurations and pricing engines to cover different use cases
• The CPQ platform faced scaling and performance challenges
• The system relied on the CPQ platform to customize the user experience

The solution

Boost the existing system with more computational power

Enquero conducted a thorough analysis of all the use cases in VMware's existing CPQ environment. The team quickly discovered its limitations: it couldn't scale or customize to allow for more complex computations when creating renewal quotes. With this knowledge in hand, we worked with VMware to devise the following solution:

• We designed and deployed an IB quote creation platform – Augmented CPQ – to complement the legacy CPQ with a separate powerful computing engine to calculate lengthy and complex quotes faster
• We built a reusable API-based framework so IB quote processing could take place outside CPQ platforms
• We implemented a single dashboard that gives a clear, comprehensive picture of the customer journey with respect to license agreements
• We ensured that the solution could scale up to augment other CPQ platforms as well

The impact

A seamless, lightning-fast quote process

The new renewal quote creation platform has helped VMware achieve:

• 83% faster quote creation for a better customer experience
• Higher productivity with the easy scaling up of Augmented CPQ
• Seamless enterprise license agreement management
• Accelerated turnaround time for instant quotes

And because we made the Augmented CPQ solution scalable, VMware can now adapt it for use with other functions, such as deal management, IB administration, and finance.