New in Spring 2024: Guided scoping for quicker, better estimates

Here’s an undebatable truth for services organizations: providing customers with accurate and timely estimates is essential to drive customer satisfaction and thus, business success. 

When customers receive an accurate, well-scoped proposal, they’re more likely to be satisfied with the work performed, because they know exactly what to expect in terms of scope, cost, and timeline. When an estimate is incomplete or slipshod in its creation, that’s a big red flag for any prospect reviewing it. (What else is incomplete or slipshod in the organization?) And when the quote doesn’t match up with work completed and/or billed, that’s a surefire way to lose a customer.

A buttoned-up estimate, on the other hand, connotes a buttoned-up organization. And that translates to customer confidence, peace of mind…and loyalty. This is why services businesses are constantly on the lookout for better ways to craft precise, timely estimates. 

Those businesses are about to be handsomely rewarded. In our spring 2024 release we’ve introduced an innovative feature for our Services CPQ estimating solution—a feature that will not only enhance, but transform the way services businesses create estimates.

Guided scoping: A helpful Q&A head start

For decades, project scoping has been done in spreadsheets by a select group of experts—manual, siloed, time-intensive, error-prone spreadsheets—even when there’s an estimating tool in place.

There’s a better way. The new “guided scoping” feature for our Services CPQ estimator makes it easy for sales reps to create quick, accurate quotes on their own. They can get started easily, with pre-defined templates and scoping questions (set up by the organization) that uncover key details, as well as a process flow (logic is in the background) that helps them build an estimate that’s complete and precise.

New to Services CPQ?

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By answering targeted questions provided by the guided scoping tool, reps can identify unique customer needs and preferences that they may not have been aware of. With an estimate tailored to an individual customer, hidden requirements and potential upsell opportunities can be uncovered. That leads directly to more accurate and relevant proposals and quotes…which lead to accelerated deals and increased revenue. 

It also improves the kinds of improvements in customer satisfaction that build customer trust and long-term loyalty. After all, when customers are satisfied with the work performed, and when that work matches what was scoped in the estimate (which translates to minimal change requests during the project), they’re more likely to return for future business.

Another advantage: Estimators can streamline scoping further by adding their own custom questions to capture specific details. By reviewing an “Incomplete Scopes” list, reps can easily identify missing information, fill in those gaps, and complete their estimates in a timely manner.

In short, by making it easier to create accurate estimates, the guided scoping feature of Services CPQ helps organizations accelerate deals and improve customer satisfaction.

Guided scoping delivers predefined question sets for scoping to reduce complexity.

Dynamically better estimates

With the addition of guided scoping, Certinia’s Services CPQ solution continues to revolutionize estimate creation for services businesses. It empowers sales reps to have more informed discussions with their prospects and customers…which leads to faster, more accurate estimates, proposals and quotes…which leads to heightened customer satisfaction, long-term loyalty and repeat business.

How can you argue with that?