Today’s financial services companies face more challenges than ever when trying to assist customers.
Competition is stiff, offerings are complex, and regulatory compliance is critical.
All of the steps, rules, and regulations are necessary for a great customer experience, but they also slow down processes and elongate already-lengthy sales cycles.
CPQ solutions can expedite most manual processes by streamlining aspects of the sales and approval workflows.
The results are notable:
- Reps close deals faster while maintaining compliance.
- Customers receive personalized solutions suited to their needs.
- Businesses increase deal velocity and acquire more customers.
With the right CPQ platform, companies can transform their entire approach to financial services — from the solutions they offer to the packages they deliver.
What is CPQ software, and why does it matter in the finance industry?
CPQ, short for “Configure, Price, Quote,” is a suite of tools that helps sales teams quickly generate more effective, personalized solutions.
At its most basic, CPQ products are broken into three main parts:
- A product catalog containing all offered products and services.
- A rules-based pricing engine to ensure accurate pricing.
- A quote builder to quickly generate sales quotes.
You’ll also find different variations between tools and platforms.
For example, PandaDoc CPQ is a sales tool built on top of PandaDoc’s unique from-scratch document editor, which allows for highly customizable quote generation.
Many CPQ tools also integrate with customer relationship management (CRM) software, enabling customer data to seamlessly integrate with the quoting process.
Ideally, this allows your CPQ platform to connect with the rest of your tech stack and expedite the tedious portions of your quote-to-cash process.
Particularly in the finance industry, CPQ helps finance teams by distilling complex solutions into easy-to-build product configurations.
Sales reps can use onboard tools to build bespoke solutions that meet customer requirements without missing important upsells, renewals, discounts, or cross-sell opportunities.
That’s extremely important in an industry where products are naturally convoluted and errors can have significant, long-term implications for both customers and business entities.
CPQ offers automation and optimization opportunities that increase sales efficiency — without sacrificing customer satisfaction.
How CPQ improves financial workflows
Improvements from CPQ solutions aren’t restricted to the sales process. They can also help to optimize workflows and processes across an entire organization.
Particularly when combined with a suite of document creation tools, CPQ platforms offer enhanced scalability and more personalized customer service.
Improved customization opportunities
Financial services typically provide highly personalized offerings, like custom loan packages or tailored insurance policies, to meet a customer’s needs.
However, personalization is limited by product complexity and a salesperson’s ability to create a solution. While some deals are simple, many products require a level of nuance and understanding that can make them difficult to parse.
CPQ changes that by helping sales teams configure these solutions quickly and easily — often in real time — without missing critical details.
Teams can use custom and prebuilt templates and pricing rules to meet customer needs while still adhering to business policies.
For example, a sales rep using CPQ can customize a loan package while the appropriate rates and fees are calculated automatically based on a customer’s credit score, income, and repayment preferences.
A better CPQ process improves the sales pipeline and enables reps to spend more time focused on customers rather than product peculiarities.
Renewed trust and transparency
Because many financial products are hard to understand, customers may feel blindsided by stipulations or unexpected penalties.
That can be a huge problem in a time when over 60% of individuals worry that business leaders are purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations.
CPQ can ease this process by helping to ensure that quotes and contracts are accurate and consistent, eliminating discrepancies and confusion.
Because CPQ solutions automatically apply consistent pricing rules, customers will see identical terms across all documentation and communication.
This is particularly true with platforms like PandaDoc, which enables the creation of quotes, proposals, contracts, and other business documentation on a single platform.
Your CPQ toolkit operates upstream from the rest of your document creation process, so reps don’t need to worry about checking numbers every time new paperwork is generated, and customers will always be dealing with the same costs for a customized solution.
Reduced financial risk
Mistakes in financial products (misquoted interest rates, missing regulatory disclosures, etc.) can have a major impact on profitability and business needs.
When reps are working from spreadsheets or building quotes by hand, it’s very easy for these calculations to be left out of complex pricing models and overlooked during approval processes.
CPQ software accounts for these oversights by automating the calculation, enforcing pre-set compliance rules, and — in many cases — providing a clear audit trail for every transaction.
Using automation and rulesets, teams can ensure that all generated documents comply with current financial laws and existing company policies every time a new product is created.
For example, using rules, CPQ can flag proposals that don’t meet a specific credit risk threshold or those that exceed predefined discount limits, preventing non-compliant offers from reaching customers.
In PandaDoc CPQ, administrators can set thresholds that automatically trigger an approval workflow before a document can be sent.
These and other proactive approaches reduce liability, protect business interests, and ensure compliance across all financial transactions.
Faster approvals and compliance
Often, financial services face long sales cycles due to complex approval processes and multiple stakeholders.
CPQ tools can help to streamline those workflows by automating repetitive tasks and routing quotes to appropriate approvers.
Savvy teams can take this a step further by offering live collaboration and editing tools to customers, so that everyone can actively work to overcome objections and finalize critical details.
CPQ platforms can also flag high-value proposals or customized packages for a compliance review.
This is extremely helpful for brands who build standardized packages or product bundles into their CPQ catalog to use as part of their usual offering.
Modifying the standardized deal can trigger a review before the sales and invoicing process begins.
This approach accelerates deals and allows reps to operate more independently while leaving key guardrails in place.
Better scalability
When relying on manual processes, financial services struggle to scale.
Bespoke solutions, while personalized and unique, are difficult to construct and require deep knowledge of both the product and the customer.
One of the benefits of CPQ is the ability to standardize product solutions while lowering the barrier to entry for new sales reps and new products.
This is especially true when used with features like guided selling, which systematizes solutions based on customer input.
While reps should still act as a point of contact and ask additional, probing questions, these automation options can help to recommend and highlight the best baseline products on offer.
CPQ also makes it possible to expand easily into new markets and regions. Businesses need to update their product catalogs and pricing rules that align with local regulations.
All of the tedium and guesswork is automated, allowing reps to focus on working with customers and building the best solution possible.
Greater sales opportunities
CPQ tools can ease sales and accounting processes via automation and ease of use. In doing so, reps can take on new clients, work personally with more leads, and send more proposals in the same amount of time.
Additionally, reps have more opportunities for cross-selling and upselling, particularly when customizing standardized packages to create bespoke solutions.
For example, a customer requesting a loan might also benefit from additional services like payment protection insurance or a line of credit.
Because these products are also listed within the product catalog, adding them to an existing package is simple, and quotes are quickly recalculated to factor for updated pricing, benefits, and discounts.
Where is CPQ most useful in finance?
Finance is a broad industry with a lot of complexity. CPQ systems shine in many fields because it helps to simplify the complexity of highly customizable and regulated products.
Because many CPQ systems are SaaS-based and industry agnostic, they can be styled to fit a variety of niche markets.
Wealth management
Advisors working in wealth management need to provide highly personalized investment portfolios and financial plans that align with a client’s long-term goals and unique risk tolerance.
With CPQ, managers in this role can quickly assemble tailored recommendations based on client feedback, existing marketing conditions, and compliance requirements.
Upstream from the customer’s point of contact, administrators can set product rules and baseline terms to ensure that all deals stay within bounds.
The result is a faster and more transparent process that improves trust and helps advisors spend more time on client relationships.
Commercial banking
For standard customers, commercial banking is very straightforward.
CPQ solutions can help bankers offer standardized financial products while allowing for the marginal flexibility required to close deals.
However, deals increase in complexity as customer needs increase.
Small business loans may require custom solutions, factoring in credit risk, collateral value, and existing market interest rates.
In these scenarios, CPQ software can automate standard packages and trigger additional reviews for unique or particular circumstances.
Because these deals can be assembled quickly, it’s possible to build customized, compliant offers in real-time and adjust on the fly based on a customer’s feedback, information, and long-term goals.
Insurance
The insurance industry thrives on custom policies designed around individual and business needs.
Coverage levels, deductibles, and riders all need to be adjusted based on a variety of factors.
CPQ tools make this easier through rules-based pricing and product bundling. Agents can quickly adjust policy coverage amounts to factor for additional services, such as adding roadside assistance to a standard contract.
When this change is made, a CPQ solution will automatically recalculate premiums and can provide an itemized breakdown of new costs.
This approach allows for greater flexibility while ensuring accurate quotes, regardless of customization.
Fintech
Automation can be a huge benefit to financial companies operating in a digital-first environment.
According to one survey, 60% of customers expect better personalization when technology advances, when they provide more data, and when they spend more money.
In fintech, where companies operate on the cutting edge of technology, the level of flexibility that CPQ tools provide is more important than ever.
Here, CPQ solutions like guided selling can push deals much farther down the sales pipeline than in other mediums.
Using forms and integrations with other tech products, fintech can utilize CPQ to automate the majority of the sales process.
This documentation can be generated on the backend, and reps can review in advance before reaching out to customers.
By the time customers speak with the sales team, closing the deal may be as simple as finalizing a pre-selected package, cross-selling key products, and signing on the dotted line.
Choosing the right CPQ for your finance business
There are a huge number of CPQ solutions on the market today. Some are more complicated than others, and finding the one that works best for your business is critical.
Here’s a closer look at the key features that financial institutions should consider when choosing CPQ software.
Integrations
While many CPQ tools can operate as a standalone product, financial teams will benefit from solutions that integrate with existing CRM systems, like HubSpot or Salesforce, or with payment solutions like Stripe and PayPal.
These and other integrations allow teams to exchange customer information and payment data between services and consolidate outputs in one place.
For example, integrating PandaDoc with Salesforce allows all opportunity and customer data to remain in the CRM while being pushed to PandaDoc as a variable during proposal and quote creation.
When those documents are completed, they’re added to Salesforce and saved as part of the customer record.
In addition to expediting processes, integrations help to improve accuracy and consistency by removing manual actions.
Data doesn’t need to be re-typed once it’s entered into a CRM. Payment data can be added once and sent to another app for processing.
It’s fast, easy, and automatic.
Custom document generation
In the finance industry, every quote, proposal, and contract needs to be tailored to meet specific customer needs and comply with regulatory standards.
Between terms and conditions, specialized pricing, and itemized breakdowns, documents can become inherently complex.
While most CPQ tools have basic document creation built in, the most powerful solutions allow for customization at a granular level.
This functionality can be used to create branded proposals that look stunning and unique when compared to other industry documents.
PandaDoc CPQ excels in this category because our engines are built on a from-scratch document editor.
Teams can use this to design dynamic forms and documents that serve a specific need or use case.
This collateral can utilize variables, conditional content, and a robust content library for added flexibility before being saved as a template.
Once the templates are created, admins can lock them to prevent further changes.
When a rep activates the CPQ process, the final product selection is loaded into the document, approved, and sent to customers for review in a matter of minutes.
Electronic signatures
Like most industries, most contracts and agreements within the financial sector rely on legally binding e-signatures.
CPQ products that lack this functionality force users to combine pricing outputs with a third-party provider for final customer approval.
This approach creates extra work and can force customers to hop between multiple platforms just to finish a deal.
Robust CPQ options include onboard e-signing tools so that documents can be signed and finalized without ever leaving the platform.
Not only does this reduce the administrative burden for the team; it also creates a more streamlined process that happens all in one place.
Particularly with PandaDoc CPQ, e-signing prompts can be built into your document templates, so the modules and signing requirements are automatically generated when the document is created.
Selling tools
Strong CPQ solutions function as powerful sales enablement tools.
Look for features like analytics dashboards and reporting tools that can help you better understand customer preferences, pricing trends, and sales performance.
Using this data, it’s possible to better identify sales opportunities that can increase average order value without lengthening the sales process.
Real-time pricing and discounting capabilities can ensure that sales reps offer competitive and accurate quotes during every customer interaction.
User-friendly interface
One of the most important aspects for any CPQ solution is the ability to integrate well with the team.
When searching for the right tool, be sure that you’re not burdening your own sales teams with a steep learning curve and a lengthy onboarding process.
Great CPQs feature intuitive navigation and clear workflows to help reps get up and running quickly.
This is more important than ever before, considering that roughly half of employers in the financial sector already feel that employees will need to undertake significant retraining in the next five years.
Bonus points if your CPQ choice also features easy-to-use tools for document design, formatting, and templating.
Build better financial packages with PandaDoc CPQ
CPQ solutions can make a huge difference in the financial industry, both in terms of time spent and business earned.
If you’re searching for a dedicated CPQ option, we invite you to give PandaDoc CPQ a try.
Our platform features dynamic document creation, built-in e-signing, and advanced selling tools so that sales reps can build bespoke solutions in record time.
Sign up for a personalized demo with one of our product specialists and see firsthand how PandaDoc CPQ can align with your business goals.
Frequently asked questions
-
Yes! CPQ platforms are specifically designed to manage and simplify the configuration of complex products (both financial and otherwise).
These tools allow sales teams to input customer-specific data and apply rules-based logic to ensure accuracy. They automate the inclusion of variables like interest rates, coverage options, or repayment terms and output a custom solution designed for a customer’s specific needs.
Most CPQ tools are industry agnostic, so you won’t need a specialized tool to get great results.
-
Your CPQ can incorporate any compliance rules directly into its workflow.
However, this isn’t included automatically. You’ll need to know and understand any applicable compliance regulations and add them into the tool as part of the standardized workflow.
In addition to these rules, CPQ systems will often feature built-in validation checks to flag non-compliant regulations. For example, with PandaDoc CPQ, you can configure these elements as part of a conditional approval process. If a deal is assembled that isn’t in compliance, it’s flagged for a secondary review before a customer ever sees it.
-
This will depend on the CPQ system you use. Many platforms offer both native and third-party integrations (via Zapier or a similar platform), as well as a standalone option.
On the whole, these integrations help financial teams work faster by syncing customer data and helping to maintain consistency across the tech stack.
If you have a specific ERP or CRM solution in mind, make sure to check for compatibility during the selection process.
-
Definitely. CPQ tools aren’t just restricted to large enterprises.
Teams both big and small can see a huge performance increase from the automation and efficiency gains that these solutions provide. By reducing manual tasks and minimizing errors, CPQ helps smaller teams close deals faster and focus on delivering personalized customer experiences.
In our case, PandaDoc CPQ is an add-on for the Enterprise plan, but teams as small as five or six users can use it, and the platform can scale with you as your business grows.
-
CPQ systems are built to handle dynamic quotes, but the process that you’ll have to follow when changing the paperwork depends on the system you use.
With PandaDoc, modification is easy because we offer on-platform document creation and modification. If something is wrong, it’s easy to switch the document back to a draft and make the necessary adjustments (although users who have signed a document will need to re-sign it).
If your process is broken across multiple platforms (document design, e-signing, CPQ, etc.), then you may have to recreate the quote using your CPQ, then push it back down the appropriate workflow so that the customer can review it again.
Disclaimer
PandaDoc is not a law firm, or a substitute for an attorney or law firm. This page is not intended to and does not provide legal advice. Should you have legal questions on the validity of e-signatures or digital signatures and the enforceability thereof, please consult with an attorney or law firm. Use of PandaDoc services are governed by our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
