New Dynamic: Why Quote-to-Cash Now Drives B2B Marketing

Quote-to-cash (Q2C) has long been the revenue backbone in many business-to-business (B2B) organizations. New needs for digitization, privacy regulations, and provider policies are impacting how service providers work, what customers expect, and how organizations can market their business. This makes third-party data no longer a reliable tool for marketing programs and forces businesses to rely on their owned data. 

This change means enterprise B2Bs are now enormously dependent on their quote-to-cash ecosystem (software, processes, and data) to drive acquisition, revenue, and care

Moving forward, B2B leaders will be looking at three core areas:

  • Acquisition: How does the business maintain (or improve) return on ad spend (ROAS) without reliance on 3rd-party data?
  • Revenue: How do we capture more market share by being easier to work with?
  • Care: How do we better and more proactively service our customers?

Surprisingly, the solutions to these challenges live in the Quote-to-Cash systems. Your Q2C must be made up of:

  • the right software, optimized for your business
  • comprehensive processes to synthesize, extract, and analyze data
  • a system for strategically using this data to power acquisition, revenue, and care programs

 As you can see, this is principally a data problem -- and it has a data solution.

Defining Quote to Cash (Q2C)

Quote-to-cash (Q2C) is the process of businesses selling to other companies (B2B). The Q2C process can be described by the following ten steps:

  1. Configure a product, service, or solution
  2. Price the product, service, or solution
  3. Quote
  4. Create a contract
  5. Negotiate the contract terms (price, payment terms, indemnifications, etc.)
  6. Close the contract
  7. Bill the client
  8. Fulfill the contract
  9. Receive revenue
  10. Renew or subscribe
Quote-to-cash (Q2C) process graphic

We can now say that a ‘golden spike’ connects the once siloed quote-to-cash (Q2C) processes for B2B sales organizations, transforming those processes into a more integrated end-to-end solution. Q2C includes configuration, pricing, quoting, contract, order and billing management. These processes leverage applications that include configure, price and quote (CPQ), price optimization and management (PO&M), and contract lifecycle management (CLM) platforms.
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The Quote-to-Cash Cycle 

The Q2C cycle rests within a broader business cycle that takes a client from Acquisition to Revenue to Care.

  • B2B Customer Acquisition is the marketing that drives prospects into the quote-to-cash journey
  • B2B Revenue is the money-making engine that drives business dollars
  • B2B Care (also called Service) are the programs for retaining, nurturing, and growing existing clients

The Changing Importance of Quote-to-Cash

So why is Q2C now the key to solving Acquisition, Revenue, and Care? Three forces have converged to cause this monumental change:

  • A multi-year pandemic forcing businesses to do more volume digitally.
  • Public and private policy changes that now prioritize privacy over freedom of data
  • Death of the third-party cookie
Marketing Dependence on Digital Quote to Cash Cycle graphic

Impact of COVID-19 on B2B Q2C

COVID-19 forced many B2B organizations to ground their sales teams and quickly provide digital self-service. This made Q2C being digitized a top priority across every B2B organization.

Changing Landscape of Privacy Policies

Widespread legal changes began in 2018 when Europe enacted GDPR (a comprehensive set of regulations that allowed customers to choose if a site they were using could sell their data). California, the world’s 5th largest economy, followed by the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and the California Privacy Rights Act CPRA. As regulation and enforcement of data privacy increases, service providers are increasingly enacting their own controls.

Losing Access to Third-Party Cookies

In the last decade, individual web platforms have started blocking third-party cookies, with Safari blocking third-party cookies in 2017, and Firefox joining in 2019. Google Chrome, though still the market leader, announced it will block third-party cookies in 2023, though they later extended the deadline for deprecation of third-party cookie support into 2024.

How Changes in Third-Party Data Usage Impacts B2B Marketing

The shifting regulations for third-party data have broad impacts on the B2B Q2C lifecycle. Enterprise B2B organizations who have relied on third-party data to drive acquisition will now have a new reliance on first-party data (see “organizations need to be able to optimize, access, and market to their first party data” for more information). 

Q2C is where 90% of the digital signals needed to create first-party identity profiles live. This first party-data, drawn from your Q2C system, is the new center of the B2B universe.

Digitizing Quote-to-Cash

Organizations that replatform to a revenue and data cloud to digitize Q2C now need to think through how their revenue and data cloud will:

  • Create effortless backend user experiences to improve efficiencies and satisfaction
  • Deliver seamless buying experiences for associates, partners, and customers
  • Build for a new era of marketing: capturing first-party data and consent and leveraging this data for strategic marketing programming 

The technologies that own quote-to-cash – or the business process by which B2B organizations sell their products – are fundamental to your business. And the data that’s compiled, synthesized, and utilized, is now more valuable than ever.  

A Comprehensive Quote-to-Cash Software Suite 

For complex businesses, it’s essential to choose Q2C solutions (CRM, CMS, CPQ, and Commerce) that service the entire lifecycle from acquisition to care.  

Oracle is best positioned to deliver this comprehensive solution. The major components – CPQ, CMS, Commerce, Service, Sales, and Marketing – all reside on the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).  Each solution is natively integrated to provide the most optimized Q2C solution on the market.  

Importantly, Oracle launched Unity – a customer data platform (CDP) which enables all the signal data to be brought together in one place. This makes a powerful engine – with Oracle CRM, CPQ, CMS, and Commerce all working natively together –  to deliver a world-class Q2C journey with the infrastructure to efficiently build out first-party data for acquisition, revenue, and care.

This powers the Oracle Advertising and Customer Experience (CX) platform which offers a suite of applications connected by data (beyond a traditional CRM) to help you create, manage, serve, and nurture lasting customer relationships. 

This gets increasingly complex. According to a new report from McKinsey, B2B Businesses now work in 10 channels: in-person, procurement department, email, phone, website, mobile app, e-procurement portal, video conference, web chat, and web search.  

Your business will need to service and support each of those channels. By connecting your business data across advertising, marketing, sales, commerce, and service, you can capture, analyze, and utilize every customer interaction. This builds a complete, owned, view of your customer – empowering your business to deliver exceptional customer experiences at every touchpoint. 

In this new world, the solution is in your owned data – and your data’s depth, accuracy, and extractability. With steps that acquire consent and protect privacy, your business can utilize the data you’re capturing to drive acquisition, retention, and care programs – all driven by accurate and owned first-party data.  

With Oracle’s focus and strength in data, it is uniquely positioned to drive a new era of B2B acquisition, revenue, and care. 

Takeaways: Marketing’s New Dependence on Quote-to-Cash

  • COVID-19 forced the digitization of Q2C. The side effect is that Q2C now generates most of a business’s first-party data.
  • Public and private policies put the burden of consent on the holders of first-party data on Q2C. First-party data is now the currency that will drive the return on advertising spend (ROAS).
  • Oracle is well-positioned to take the top position in having a comprehensive, competitive Q2C suite of solutions.

Need help preparing your business for this shift? Reach out to the team of experts at Object Edge for a free consultation.

About the Author

Blue dotted circleRohit Garewal

Rohit Garewal

CEO

Rohit is a forward-thinking eCommerce evangelist, especially focused on re-energizing the B2B sector and merging the old disciplines with new technology opportunities. He is passionate about delivering profitable growth through people-driven digital transformation. Watch his talk on digital transformation.


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