As ICT VARs are all aware, managing the quoting process efficiently is crucial for staying competitive. However, costing sources that today’s ICT VARs and Cisco Partners need to connect with often exist in various silos, making VAR quoting a significant challenge without effective CCW integration. In this blog, StrataVAR discusses what CCW is, the challenges VARs face when quoting without CCW integration, and the leading advantages of Cisco CCW quote integration.
What is Cisco’s Commerce Workspace (CCW)?
Cisco’s Commerce Workspace (CCW) is a mandatory configuration and quoting tool that Cisco Partners and VARs use to source costs for Cisco products and services. It’s an integral part of the Cisco ecosystem, designed to help partners create accurate and efficient quotes by providing access to Cisco’s pricing, incentives, and promotions. However, many partners find CCW’s proprietary data format and the difficulties of integrating it with other systems to be challenging.
The Challenges of Quoting Without CCW Commerce Quoting Integration
The way CCW is used for sourcing costs introduces several challenges, especially when it comes to the formatting of source data. A Cisco quoting solution must take this formatting into account to ensure accuracy and efficiency. CCW, along with other sources like CCW-R (Cisco Commerce Workspace for Renewals) and VIP (Value Incentive Program), uses a proprietary data format that can be difficult to use and adapt to your quoting needs.
For example, a typical Cisco Partner might rely on exported Bills of Materials (BOMs) from costing sources such as CCW. These BOMs often contain hundreds or even thousands of items, making manual methods of processing and quoting not just inefficient, but nearly impossible.
VARs waste valuable time when merging prices, incentives, discounts, and delivery data. While you can automate this work by writing scripts or configuring Excel templates for quotes, it isn’t a surefire way to deal with this pricing source. In addition, CCW does not take into account end-customer pricing, only VAR cost. All this costing data needs to be unified in a solitary workspace. It then must be prepared for every aspect of quoting, from pricing to VIP rebates.
Because of this deluge of data, preparing and bringing it into a solitary workspace in-house is a highly complicated and error-prone process.
Solution: CCW Integration with a Quoting Tool
The solution to overcoming the challenges in the quoting process lies in a robust CCW integration with quoting systems. By implementing Cisco quote integration, you can seamlessly consolidate all necessary data—ranging from pricing to VIP rebates—into a single, unified workspace. Cisco quotation integration not only automates the data parsing and preparation phases but also ensures that all relevant information, including cost, incentives, and delivery data, is readily available and accurate.
The benefit of Cisco CPQ integration is a streamlined, error-free, and efficient quoting process that accelerates time-to-quote and leads to business growth. And grow you will. According to the 2023 State of Process Automation, 95% of IT respondents are seeing increased business productivity and 93% are seeing increased business growth due to automation.
The Top 5 Advantages of Cisco Commerce Workspace Quoting Integration
While there are many benefits of Cisco CCW quote integration, the most helpful ways in which Cisco quote integration will help your business are listed below.
1. Shortening the time-to-quote
By integrating CCW with your quoting system, you can accelerate the time it takes to generate a quote from days to minutes by automating the data collection and formatting process. Often, there will be multiple iterations of a quote, and manually updating and revising the information can be laborious and time-consuming. With all the necessary information readily available in a single workspace, your team can focus on more strategic tasks rather than getting bogged down in the minutiae of manual data entry. This accelerates the entire quoting process, enabling you to respond to customer requests more quickly.
In addition, CCW quoting integration allows you to easily update item details, such as pricing, availability, or product descriptions. A quick refresh of price quotes enables ICT VARs to make necessary changes and updates requested by the customer without rebuilding the entire price quote, saving much time and effort.
2. Ensuring quoting accuracy
Accuracy is critical in quoting, especially when dealing with large BOMs and when quoting from multiple pricing sources, as errors can severely impact a VAR’s ability to create complex pricing algorithms, offer tailored solutions, and handle increasing volumes of quote requests. One of the main benefits of Cisco CPQ integration is that it helps eliminate issues that may arise by automating data entry and retrieval – no more Excel spreadsheets! — ensuring that all relevant data is correctly formatted and imported into the quoting system. This automation mitigates the risks of discrepancies, such as incorrect pricing, missed incentives, or version control errors, which can lead to costly mistakes and damage a VAR’s reputation.
3. Cutting costs
Another advantage of using the Cisco Commerce Workspace CCW tool and integrating it with your quoting system is that it significantly lowers costs. Cisco quote integration eliminates the expense of human resources needed for manual work. By automating data entry and retrieval, the need for copying and pasting data from one system to another is eliminated. When manual tasks are reduced, sales personnel can focus more on selling and less on administrative duties, potentially increasing sales productivity and effectiveness.
4. Enhancing customer experience
Customers have positive experiences when VARs deliver quick and accurate quotes while responding efficiently to any requested changes. When customers know they can trust the accuracy of your pricing and receive prompt updates, they feel more confident in your ability to deliver your services. This, in turn, fosters a deep sense of trust and satisfaction, which helps build long-term customer relationships and drive repeat business.
5. Better decision making
Quotes created through manual processes are often scattered across multiple files, making it difficult to collate information for emerging trend analysis to derive meaningful insights. An additional benefit of Cisco CCW quote integration is that it can consolidate the quote database into a centralized platform, providing the in-depth visibility necessary for analyzing trends. When armed with trend-based data, VARS are empowered to make proactive adjustments to maintain competitive pricing and maximize profit margins.
Light at the End of the Quoting Tunnel
For ICT VARs and Cisco Partners, integrating CCW with your quoting system is not just a luxury—it’s a necessity. The benefits of Cisco CCW quoting integration, including faster quoting, greater accuracy, lower costs, enhanced customer experience, and better decisioning, make it a critical tool for staying competitive in today’s market. StrataVAR offers solutions to help resellers integrate quoting software with Cisco CCW. If you’d like to speak to a PqW (Partner Quoting Workspace) integration expert at StrataVAR, please contact StrataVAR.
