Cepheid: Bringing Automation and Efficiency to the Quoting Process

The Challenge

Cepheid has been developing medical diagnostics for more than two decades and in the last several years experienced tremendous growth. Needless to say, as the product portfolio, customer base, sales team and network of contractors and distributors grew, the spreadsheets and legacy software systems they had previously relied on were no longer keeping pace.

The team needed to streamline the quoting process, create more uniformity and ensure necessary data was replete, accurate and current across the entire company. However, since much of the quoting process was taking place in separate Excel templates, it created silos of data and the need to manually reproduce various files for different teams, which often involved complex and manual calculations. This also meant manually separating sensitive data into various secured files and tabs, creating an unnecessary data sprawl.

Cepheid wanted to create an intuitive, fast and secure quote-to-cash process that delivered a great experience for all stakeholders involved. The team also wanted a system that would automatically calculate various financial numbers, automate and streamline the approval process by routing it to the most appropriate person, and generate contracts based on quote approvals.

The Solution

Wilco Source worked closely with the Cepheid team to identify where breakdowns were occurring and where there was unnecessary waste in the form of redundancies, overlap and manual processes. With that baseline, we created a dynamic quoting and contract-generation solution that automated many of the steps that previously would take days, if not weeks, to complete.

We implemented Salesforce CPQ and created a stronger integration with SAP to create a single source of truth so data could be automatically updated in real time across both platforms. We also developed a dynamic and automated approval process and configured a custom solution within Salesforce CPQ to generate specific financial data.

The Results

The solution enabled Cepheid to:

• Create quotes from a single location and reduce the turnaround time from days to hours
• Automatically tailor quotes based on geographic region and compliance requirements using cloud-based quoting templates
• Automate the approval process based on an approval matrix that automatically routes the quote to the appropriate person
• Generate financial figures (profit margins, lease payments, surcharges, etc.) for the appropriate team and automatically restrict access to credentialed individuals
• Automatically update approved pricing records in SAP directly from Salesforce CPQ
• Quickly convert quotes to orders and contracts, and automatically update the information in SAP