Jets, birds, Superman, price quote software — what do these things have in common? They’re perfectly at home in the cloud.
Because if you’re looking for the fastest, most scalable, and most error-free way to send sales proposals, look to the cloud.
But wait! What about proposal security? How do you know your system won’t be hacked, giving competitors and other evil-doers wide-ranging access to sensitive pricing and product configuration data?
Short answer: you don’t. But according to the New York Times, the cloud is “probably more secure than conventionally stored data.” Because think about it: if you store your pricing data and all your quotes locally, it may seem safe, but…
How often are you changing your passwords?
How much turnover is there in your company?
How prepared are you for disaster?
If you’re keeping your price quote software — and all its pricing info, all its closed/won deals, all its customer history — in a server room onsite, you’re making a pretty hefty bet that 1) everyone who has access is someone you trust completely and will trust forever, and 2) in event of fire/earthquake/overflowing toilets, your server will sprout legs and run to safety.
The cloud is the safest place for CPQ
and all you do
Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, and every company in the Fortune 100 has some, most, or all of its business tech in the cloud by now. And they don’t worry about hackers. Why? Because (again, according the Times), most attacks from the hackers hit traditional servers.
When your quoting system and business tech is in the cloud, you don’t just outsource securing the space it takes to store your information, you outsource SECURING your information. And cloud companies are where security experts from the NSA and Stanford hang their hats these days. I.e., you want expert security, hire an expert. Your cloud provider will have those experts baked-in.
Sharing bandwidth
Using a cloud-based price quote solution will also help your team move at a faster pace and enjoy more uptime than they would if you stored the software locally.
Because cloud companies stake their entire business on speed and uptime. In fact, many of them offer the equivalent of “cash-back guarantees” should you find your solution down for any extended period of time.
In the old days (i.e., roughly a decade ago), you could see business processes slow to a stop if all your reps tried to send an in-depth proposal at the same time.
But a cloud-based CPQ solution takes full advantage of the “workload sharing” the cloud enables, meaning all your reps — without slowing down your system for a second — can send in-depth, killer, winning proposals at the exact same.
And here’s hoping your reps do exactly that.
