WEBVTT
00:00:00.661 --> 00:00:05.020
Welcome everyone to another episode of Dynamics, corner Brad.
00:00:05.020 --> 00:00:07.628
What is CPQ?
00:00:07.628 --> 00:00:08.832
What does the Q stand for?
00:00:08.832 --> 00:00:10.025
I'm your co-host, chris.
00:00:10.599 --> 00:00:11.342
And this is Brad.
00:00:11.342 --> 00:00:15.132
This episode was recorded on April 18th 2025.
00:00:15.132 --> 00:00:19.167
Chris, chris, chris, what is a CPQ?
00:00:21.690 --> 00:00:22.071
No clue.
00:00:22.091 --> 00:00:23.134
Do you know how to spell it?
00:00:24.940 --> 00:00:28.225
Yeah, cpq, but I don't know what that means.
00:00:28.225 --> 00:00:30.210
Let's talk about it, though.
00:00:30.239 --> 00:00:41.340
Well, many may not know what it means, but today we had the opportunity to learn all about CPQ and a great solution to help customers with their configuration, pricing and quoting With us.
00:00:41.340 --> 00:00:56.990
Today we had the opportunity to speak with Marin Powell from Expert Logics.
00:00:56.990 --> 00:01:07.778
Good afternoon, how are you doing, Hello?
00:01:09.840 --> 00:01:10.403
Good morning.
00:01:10.403 --> 00:01:10.984
How are you doing?
00:01:11.365 --> 00:01:14.606
It's morning for you, like I said to you the other day.
00:01:15.640 --> 00:01:17.545
I'm going to throw you through a loop on this one.
00:01:19.088 --> 00:01:19.710
Good evening.
00:01:19.710 --> 00:01:20.533
No, it's morning.
00:01:21.280 --> 00:01:28.426
But Brad likes to joke around about how I'm always in a different location every time we talk and I'm calling in from southern mexico.
00:01:28.426 --> 00:01:32.072
You're in mexico that's awesome, see.
00:01:32.072 --> 00:01:40.263
Wow, so do we want to do this episode in spanish no, no, that would be actually really embarrassing for me every time I well I don't.
00:01:40.384 --> 00:01:43.725
I really don't know where you're from, but that's okay, we don't have to talk about that I.
00:01:44.492 --> 00:01:45.260
I'm from Florida.
00:01:45.260 --> 00:01:51.933
I'm a true Floridian, like a fourth-generation Floridian, unlike Brad on the call.
00:01:53.480 --> 00:01:55.227
You're the true Floridian person.
00:01:56.219 --> 00:02:02.433
Most of my friends are from the New York or New Jersey area and their family had relocated to Florida.
00:02:02.433 --> 00:02:05.661
But yeah, been in Tampa pretty much all my life, I think.
00:02:05.661 --> 00:02:09.872
When I got into being in my early 20s I was offered a job up in Boston.
00:02:09.872 --> 00:02:17.782
I kind of had the realization I'm like if I don't get out of here now, I could see myself staying in Florida for the rest of my life, and I'm so happy.
00:02:17.782 --> 00:02:21.292
I took the job in Boston too and like got to experience the seasons.
00:02:21.292 --> 00:02:31.133
Everybody had told me they're like being a Florida girl, you're going to hate Boston winters, which Boston winter is fine, because in theory that's just three months, it's spring.
00:02:31.133 --> 00:02:33.795
That really hurts because that's just winter that overstays.
00:02:33.836 --> 00:02:41.243
No, you summed that up perfectly, but at least you have the opportunity to stay in the North End, which is an adventure in its own because of the food and the historic architecture.
00:02:41.243 --> 00:02:41.985
It was great to see you last week.
00:02:41.985 --> 00:02:45.132
Was is an adventure in its own because of the food and the historic architecture.
00:02:45.132 --> 00:02:47.135
It was great to see you last week.
00:02:47.135 --> 00:02:48.198
Was it last week?
00:02:50.961 --> 00:03:08.080
You know it's funny, I never put the name to the face because we played pong, table pong or beer pong the whole rest of the evening and I'm like I actually did not put the name to the face either.
00:03:08.121 --> 00:03:09.965
That is crazy, brad.
00:03:09.965 --> 00:03:13.953
We had a very intense game of beer pong during the the party.
00:03:13.953 --> 00:03:14.981
It was really water prong.
00:03:15.021 --> 00:03:17.447
Nobody was drinking the beer cups or anything like that.
00:03:18.149 --> 00:03:21.044
But uh, rob from your team was playing too.
00:03:21.044 --> 00:03:22.288
It got very intense.
00:03:22.288 --> 00:03:24.556
We started wagering leads um.
00:03:24.556 --> 00:03:27.926
We started throwing flags on the play with little white, two games.
00:03:28.206 --> 00:03:29.210
I think you played two games.
00:03:29.210 --> 00:03:38.103
You were so good and I just I remember just sitting with gwen and um and I was like we'll just um ref it, that's it.
00:03:38.103 --> 00:03:40.026
That's what I'm gonna do.
00:03:40.026 --> 00:03:42.551
So you guys had all this fun we did.
00:03:42.611 --> 00:03:45.639
It was so funny I was in bed every night by 930.
00:03:45.639 --> 00:03:47.125
It was sad.
00:03:47.125 --> 00:03:49.006
Even the last night I was in bed by.
00:03:49.006 --> 00:03:50.490
I think I stayed up a little bit late.
00:03:50.490 --> 00:03:51.723
I think I stayed up until 10.
00:03:52.747 --> 00:04:00.253
Which, yeah, I mean I slept for like 16 hours the day after I got back because I was exhausted.
00:04:00.253 --> 00:04:13.913
I feel like, with all of us working from home now being on your feet for eight hours and then taking people out to dinner, it's especially draining Because I'm used to my normal migration path being from my chair to the kitchen.
00:04:14.181 --> 00:04:17.009
You use your leg muscles for the first time in a long time.
00:04:17.459 --> 00:04:19.786
If I have to, go somewhere by 2 o'clock.
00:04:19.786 --> 00:04:26.461
Chris, I'm not using military time, I'm practicing 2 pm.
00:04:26.461 --> 00:04:26.822
Yes, 1, it.
00:04:26.822 --> 00:04:27.723
I'll just go back to it.
00:04:27.723 --> 00:04:28.122
I'll.
00:04:28.122 --> 00:04:33.127
If I'm not, if I go somewhere by 1400, I'm ready for bed.
00:04:33.127 --> 00:04:36.490
I'm like how can people sit in an office all day and work all day?
00:04:36.490 --> 00:04:38.091
Because you you summed it up perfectly.
00:04:38.091 --> 00:04:47.600
I think everyone has come to a certain pattern of activity and a certain pattern of normality, I guess you could say, or a habit.
00:04:47.600 --> 00:04:49.985
And what are you reading now?
00:04:52.149 --> 00:05:07.324
I'm actually still reading why we Sleep as my nonfiction book, and then I'm reading Deep in the Garden of Deep Time, which is kind of like a modern rendition of the secret garden interesting um, so I think we were talking about this in vegas too.
00:05:07.365 --> 00:05:12.605
I like to do like an audio book for non-fiction at the same time that I'm reading like a fiction book.
00:05:12.605 --> 00:05:28.273
Um, and usually I'll do like the audio book for, you know, car rides, walks, even sometimes when I'm like working out, and then you know, when I'm at home and trying to unplug and not, you know know, have any, you know, audio or visual interference, I'm just usually reading a book to go to bed.
00:05:28.961 --> 00:05:31.149
I think I told you read Slow Predictivity afterwards.
00:05:31.149 --> 00:05:35.129
That's a great book as well by Cal Newport.
00:05:35.129 --> 00:05:36.204
He's the one that wrote Deep Work.
00:05:36.204 --> 00:05:38.286
I'm reading Range now.
00:05:38.286 --> 00:05:44.161
I don't have the ability, like you and many others, to read two books simultaneously, so I can only read one book at a time.
00:05:44.201 --> 00:05:47.165
So I can only read one book at a time, so I alternate between fiction and nonfiction.
00:05:48.408 --> 00:05:50.529
I read Quit recently and I had to quit it.
00:05:50.529 --> 00:05:54.154
The book told me to quit reading it because so you quit, I did quit.
00:05:54.194 --> 00:05:56.946
It proved its point, it really did.
00:05:56.946 --> 00:06:03.290
And I wonder if the author did that purposefully to see if people will really quit.
00:06:03.290 --> 00:06:10.228
Because everything in the book talks about quitting and when you should quit and why you should quit.
00:06:10.228 --> 00:06:14.007
And as I was reading the book, I'm like this book is repetitious.
00:06:14.007 --> 00:06:15.704
It's at the point where it's wasting my time.
00:06:15.704 --> 00:06:17.550
I need to quit and I did quit.
00:06:17.550 --> 00:06:18.985
And now I'm reading Range.
00:06:18.985 --> 00:06:23.011
Range is another one of those books.
00:06:23.079 --> 00:06:52.709
I'm on chapter seven and I understand repetition with books for, uh, reinforcing a point or reinforcing, but there's a point where it gets that's why I don't mind doing it on audio for the non-fiction books, because they tend to be so repetitive that it's like if I'm doing something else and I miss them saying at one time, I know I'm they're going to regurgitate that same point at the end of the chapter a little bit later on, whereas, like reading the book, I feel like it can get a little bit redundant because you're so locked in.
00:06:52.750 --> 00:06:53.653
It's the one thing you're doing.
00:06:53.653 --> 00:06:59.572
I'm the opposite for that because, like I, when I'm reading a nonfiction book I like to reference.
00:06:59.572 --> 00:07:04.291
So I usually, you know, you know, highlight a few things to reference later.
00:07:04.291 --> 00:07:06.362
The high, you know.
00:07:06.362 --> 00:07:07.447
Uh, you know, highlight a few things to reference later.
00:07:07.447 --> 00:07:12.846
But fictional books I would rather do audible, because then I can just sit there and listen and imagine, you know what they're saying, and such.
00:07:13.086 --> 00:07:19.267
So I'm the opposite of that but what if they like say a name wrong or something like I did one time.
00:07:19.267 --> 00:07:36.122
I jumped into an audiobook at like the second or third book in a series and when I was hearing them say like the character's name or even the accent, that somebody was like talking, I was like it's not how I imagined the book to be and that's not how I was pronouncing the name and it was kind of tearing it all down for me.
00:07:36.122 --> 00:07:40.841
But I think if you start a fiction book from scratch, then yeah, I like the kindle for the highlighting.
00:07:41.043 --> 00:08:07.194
And my next what's on deck for me is red rising, so that's your recommendation, so I will let you know how that next, I think you and my boyfriend have similar tastes in books based on like the three to body problem and silo and kind of the dystopian, you know sci-fi type of genre, and he really he chewed through those books pretty quickly he's on the Mistborn series right now.
00:08:07.213 --> 00:08:10.182
I have to put all these on the list of my fiction books and see yeah.
00:08:10.182 --> 00:08:18.307
I have a few other, like I had mentioned to you, I, if it's a series like Silo, I read the three books, then I went back to non-fiction.
00:08:18.307 --> 00:08:25.411
When I get to Red Rising, if the first book is really good, I'll finish those books and then I'll go back to, uh, non-fiction.
00:08:25.411 --> 00:08:27.665
So we'll see where we are I'm boring, I'm reading.
00:08:27.826 --> 00:08:29.951
I'm reading psych right now from paul bloom.
00:08:29.951 --> 00:08:36.791
It's like basic psychology um it's a great book so far.
00:08:37.251 --> 00:09:04.080
I guess is one of the famous uh psychiatrists harvard or something like that you're going to stop playing psych mind games no, I think it helps me kind of take a pause for a second because you know everybody has a different way, everybody has the ways, different ways of approaching things and in their response can also be driven by emotions and such.
00:09:04.080 --> 00:09:08.148
So I try to take it personally for those that are maybe upset.
00:09:08.148 --> 00:09:09.370
You know what I mean.
00:09:09.429 --> 00:09:11.333
It's a good reminder, great advice.
00:09:11.333 --> 00:09:21.653
Perspective is everything, and where something comes from is important, but we did not come today to meet today or talk today, I don't know.
00:09:21.653 --> 00:09:22.602
See, chris, fridays.
00:09:22.602 --> 00:09:23.767
We have to stop the Fridays.
00:09:23.767 --> 00:09:24.509
I keep saying that.
00:09:25.240 --> 00:09:27.789
Hey, nobody knows it's Friday, it's not Friday, it's Saturday.
00:09:28.460 --> 00:09:34.432
But my body knows it's Friday, so I always get into this tongue tied bad joke day.
00:09:34.432 --> 00:09:42.583
Before we jump into talking a little bit about what we want to speak about, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
00:09:42.803 --> 00:09:45.173
Yeah, absolutely so, miranda Powell.
00:09:45.173 --> 00:09:49.547
I work for a company called Expert Logics and I'm currently the director of strategic partnerships.
00:09:49.547 --> 00:09:54.910
I've actually been at the company for about three years, while I'm new in the role and kind of new to the channel.
00:09:54.910 --> 00:10:09.292
I've been running our marketing program and before that I was actually working for Expert Logics as an agency partner, so they were using my marketing agency and it was at that point they flew me down to their sales kickoff meeting in 2021.
00:10:09.292 --> 00:10:19.365
I presented to the whole team and it went really good in terms of what channels were not executing on the message for the market, the best fit, kind of like audiences, so on and so forth.
00:10:19.365 --> 00:10:23.684
And I was approached by the CEO afterwards and he's like, hey, that was really great.
00:10:23.684 --> 00:10:29.926
Is there a chance that you would come and do that, like you know, at ExpertLogix, or like work at, you know, within the inside of the company?
00:10:29.926 --> 00:10:50.475
And at the time I wasn't really in a position where I was wanting to leave the agency, but we kind of kept the door open and talked for, you know, about 11 months or so, and then at the end of that year I ended up switching over and kind of coming on to Expert Logics full-time, because that was really my first, you know, internal only marketing role.
00:10:50.475 --> 00:10:59.110
I'd always sold marketing software and marketing services, so I'd always had, you know, customer interactions, partner interactions, so on and so forth.
00:10:59.110 --> 00:11:05.428
So while I loved the work that I did in marketing at Expert Logics, I did miss connecting with people.
00:11:05.428 --> 00:11:08.868
I love presenting, if you guys can tell, I love talking.
00:11:08.868 --> 00:11:10.745
So that part was hard.
00:11:10.745 --> 00:11:17.145
And so I went to our VP of sales, who's always kind of been in my ear, saying like Miranda, you're a salesperson, like what are you doing in marketing?
00:11:17.145 --> 00:11:27.695
But our solution set is somewhat complex and I was like, look, I'm not trying to have a seven or eight month ramp up to be productive at a company that I've been at you know, for three plus years at this point.
00:11:27.695 --> 00:11:37.942
And so we started talking about the opportunity to partnerships and I was a little intimidated because I don't come from you know the channel and I thought that was kind of going to be my, you know, biggest weakness.
00:11:38.883 --> 00:11:47.436
Now that I've been in the role for about four and a half months or so, I actually feel like it's one of my better strengths, like I don't know how things have been done historically.
00:11:47.436 --> 00:11:57.027
I feel like I'm looking at stuff with a fresh set of eyes and one of the biggest things that's been, you know, like an eye-opener to me is like why are we not doing more for our partners?
00:11:57.027 --> 00:12:03.582
Right, like I think that sales has historically owned our partner relationships and they come in very one-track minded.
00:12:03.582 --> 00:12:05.647
Right, it's like what do you, what do you guys have for me?
00:12:05.647 --> 00:12:08.633
Not like how, how can we generate leads together?
00:12:08.633 --> 00:12:18.063
How can we go after you know a certain segment or you know, on the other end, expert logics is unique in the ISV space and the fact that we've been, you know, in the channel for over 20 years.
00:12:18.163 --> 00:12:21.928
So we have a lot of customers that are on nav or AX or great planes.
00:12:21.928 --> 00:12:29.216
Eventually they're going to need to migrate and that's probably the you know leads or opportunities that our partners are most interested in.
00:12:29.216 --> 00:12:36.179
So how do we do a better job of kind of recycling our on-prem customers, our leads that come into us, without a partner from a direct perspective?
00:12:36.179 --> 00:12:53.590
Like historically in marketing, we were disqualifying you know a lead that would recognize they need CPQ but they don't yet have an ERP or CRM and I was like, okay, bye, instead of you know, hey, here's VC partner, it's a great ERP for you guys to get started on as a manufacturer that's trying to grow your tech stack.
00:12:53.590 --> 00:13:06.014
So I'm trying to bridge the gap a little bit more between our partner channel, our direct channel, and then some of our existing you know, legacy customers, so that it's more of a symbiotic relationship.
00:13:06.860 --> 00:13:24.386
You hit on a key point there and I like that You're talking about the relationship because the I'll use it for the reference to the conversation the old way of doing things seems to not be working and I was thankful and I picked up on it a lot last week when we were at the conference.
00:13:24.386 --> 00:13:36.033
A lot of people are realizing that businesses need the partnerships and have that relationship to work with each other to bring each other along through the journey.
00:13:36.033 --> 00:14:00.379
As you had mentioned, you may have a product with ExpertLogic, which I'd love to hear more about and then, if you're working with a partner for Business Central, you may have you know, like customers, that you can work together to help the customer become successful, because at the end, that's what's the most important is for this customer to be successful with whatever they use and whether it be Business Central, whether it be Expert Logics or any other product.
00:14:00.379 --> 00:14:05.967
And if the customer is successful, then everyone's successful and other customers will be happy to use the product as well.
00:14:05.967 --> 00:14:07.971
So I like that approach.
00:14:08.412 --> 00:14:26.053
Exactly, and I feel, like a lot of these conversations too, like I am really trying to make it more about the partner and understanding their niche and where they add the most value, because then you know, at the end of the day, this is all about getting the customer in contact with somebody who has the most experience in their industry and their challenges.
00:14:26.053 --> 00:14:41.413
You know, manufacturing is broad, but I've been talking to some partners who are like you know, if it's a metals manufacturer that's looking to go on BC, like that is our space, or like furniture manufacturing, and so trying to define or carve out these little niche segments for each partner.
00:14:41.413 --> 00:14:48.485
So you know there's no overlap, essentially, and then again, it's in the customer's best interest, because I'm like, hey, I'm gonna introduce you to this partner.
00:14:48.485 --> 00:14:54.378
They're highly experienced in metals manufacturing and helped a lot of customers like you take the first step in their digital transformation journey.
00:14:54.378 --> 00:14:54.620
I like that.
00:14:54.740 --> 00:14:57.803
There was a session last year and they did the same thing this year as well.
00:14:57.803 --> 00:15:02.693
About what can ISVs do for VARs and VARs price versus last year was in the panel.
00:15:03.916 --> 00:15:30.110
And that was a perfect conversation where we have to help each other right, like if they're making it so easy for clients of Business Central to look up a product and app source and just sign up and may not involve their partner, and so it can create a I don't know like a distrust in some way where now you're implementing something that a partner's not aware.
00:15:30.110 --> 00:15:42.312
So I love your approach where, hey, let's connect you to it with a partner to make sure that this is a right fit for your industry, and that's perfect, and I think we all need to support each other in that sense.
00:15:42.312 --> 00:15:46.308
So I appreciate you calling that out, because that is the relationship right.
00:15:46.360 --> 00:15:52.308
We need that built right at the get-go In 2025, that's the one thing that you cannot forget.
00:15:52.308 --> 00:15:54.668
So you've been with Expert Logics.
00:15:54.668 --> 00:15:56.323
Can you tell us a little?
00:15:56.323 --> 00:15:58.609
What is Expert Logic?
00:15:58.629 --> 00:16:09.254
Yeah, so again, we've been in this space for over 20 years and our backbone and our roots are really in CPQ.
00:16:09.254 --> 00:16:14.873
So the joke at the company is, you know we've been doing CPQ since before it was a three letter acronym.
00:16:14.873 --> 00:16:18.163
The company was established back in 1995.
00:16:18.163 --> 00:16:21.767
I think our first integration went live with CRM 4.0 back in 2004.
00:16:21.767 --> 00:16:23.850
With CRM 4.0 back in 2004.
00:16:23.850 --> 00:16:39.552
And so helping people, you know, configure highly complex products right, like in the 21st century, that's been an increasing need from you know, especially manufacturers is being able to offer custom built solutions for their clients.
00:16:39.552 --> 00:16:55.208
But the downside of that has always been, you know the work that's involved or the risk that it takes, like how do you know if you make this customization or you swap out you know a transmission that it's going to work with the engine that you have for a certain truck that you're building, so expert logics really safeguards and foolproofs.
00:16:55.208 --> 00:17:01.926
You know the configuration and the sales process so that sales isn't selling something that manufacturing, at the end of the day, can't produce.
00:17:01.926 --> 00:17:07.936
And while you know I think we got our you know start in manufacturing, we have so many other use cases too.
00:17:07.936 --> 00:17:16.944
So we work with a lot of professional services companies, field services companies anybody really where the product or service catalog is pretty complex.
00:17:16.944 --> 00:17:19.650
You know we can add a lot more structure to that.
00:17:19.650 --> 00:17:28.973
It helps, you know, new sales reps get ramped up or become proficient at selling just as much as their most seasoned or tenured sales reps.
00:17:28.973 --> 00:17:37.829
There's even stuff where I'm going to go back to the example of the truck If you add on a sleeper cabin, it's going to have a pop-up within the configurator.
00:17:37.829 --> 00:17:39.252
Say, hey, they bought the sleeper cabin.
00:17:39.252 --> 00:17:43.612
Why don't you ask them if they're interested in a mini fridge and a mattress to go along with it?
00:17:43.612 --> 00:17:45.166
So there's upsell prompts.
00:17:45.166 --> 00:17:50.546
There's rules that will fire, you know, if there's certain components of the configuration that don't work together.
00:17:50.546 --> 00:17:55.991
There's automated like discount and engineering requests that you're able to put in through the solution.
00:17:56.660 --> 00:18:00.290
And then you know that's kind of talking more about the quote generation.
00:18:00.290 --> 00:18:01.766
We also push the quote to order.
00:18:01.766 --> 00:18:03.619
It generates the bill of materials.
00:18:03.619 --> 00:18:04.986
It generates all the routings.
00:18:04.986 --> 00:18:21.073
You we also push the quote to order.
00:18:21.073 --> 00:18:22.032
It generates the bill of materials.
00:18:22.032 --> 00:18:23.513
It generates all the routings.
00:18:23.513 --> 00:18:28.316
You could even go and do the customer is very cost sensitive, like how do we get them in there?
00:18:28.316 --> 00:18:41.221
Because I know that they need this and our sales rep had asked the partner it's like, hey, how much money are they losing due to manufacturing errors at the end of their process based on something that was sold that couldn't really be configured?
00:18:41.221 --> 00:18:42.523
And the partner wasn't sure.
00:18:42.523 --> 00:18:48.854
He's like, let me go and, you know, ask the customer that Came back and he said they're losing $500,000 a year.
00:18:48.854 --> 00:19:05.887
And so it's just like an immediate business case in some of those instances, on top of, you know, accelerating sales processes, increasing the average order value of those deals and, again, reducing and eliminating any of the errors that might come with building a highly complex or configurable product.
00:19:06.842 --> 00:19:12.191
So that's our backbone and until 2019, we were really exclusively CPQ.
00:19:13.143 --> 00:19:30.756
Then we started growing through a series of acquisitions, first one being document automation, which in some cases is kind of the Q in CPQ, so it can take that quote or the different line items, cpq, so it can take that quote or the different line items, and it uses, you know, dynamic imagery and dynamic text based on what the customer has purchased to pull in the terms and conditions.
00:19:30.875 --> 00:19:39.372
Or if they bought that sleeper cabin, it'll show a picture of the sleeper cabin and kind of give it a little bit of description in terms of you know the layout, what's included, so on and so forth.
00:19:39.799 --> 00:19:43.623
But document automation also has a lot of use cases where it can stand on its own.
00:19:43.623 --> 00:19:50.068
So think of anything that's highly regulated or very document heavy, like we're working with the whole US court system.
00:19:50.068 --> 00:19:59.797
We signed Wells Fargo towards the end of last year as well, so banking, insurance, government are all good document automation fits that don't necessarily need a configurator.
00:19:59.797 --> 00:20:05.881
And then the last acquisition that we made was a company based over in Ireland that was in the e-commerce space.
00:20:05.881 --> 00:20:11.084
So now we have the ability to have B2B e-commerce dealer portals, customer portals.
00:20:11.084 --> 00:20:33.557
And what's going to be really exciting and is on the roadmap either at the end of this year or early next year, is when CPQ and digital commerce are actually integrated and you're able to give the customer the ability to build a highly configurable product from scratch without any risk of you know it, it not being something that could be manufactured right, that's a lot.
00:20:33.576 --> 00:20:35.882
So cpq, let's go back to it's a lot.
00:20:35.902 --> 00:20:39.169
So tie a nice tie a nice bow around that too.
00:20:39.169 --> 00:20:42.903
Expert logics makes it easier for your customers to buy from you.
00:20:42.903 --> 00:20:50.119
So, whether that that's CPQ, document automation or digital commerce, streamlining the sales and quoting process and enable self-service purchasing channels.
00:20:50.200 --> 00:20:50.843
I love that.
00:20:50.843 --> 00:20:56.151
Finish, chris, did you hear that Makes customers easier to buy from you, and that's the ultimate Make it easy.
00:20:56.151 --> 00:20:59.730
So that CPQ what does CPQ stand for?
00:20:59.730 --> 00:21:01.965
Configure price quote.
00:21:02.579 --> 00:21:27.339
So there's the product configuration, component pricing, so highly complex or dynamic pricing, or even if dealers have special discount pricing, that can all be warehoused within CPQ and then quote, which is the ability to produce a very impressive again pulling in dynamic imagery, having these longer forms of text where it's really describing what the customer is purchasing, these like longer forms of text where it's really describing what the customer is purchasing.
00:21:29.079 --> 00:21:35.766
And I love to talk about, you know, the queue within CPQ and like how that differentiates in a sales process too, because we all know that the person that's going through the sales process isn't always your decision maker, right?
00:21:35.766 --> 00:21:38.401
They're a champion and now they have to go and sell internally.
00:21:38.401 --> 00:21:51.465
So if they have two proposals or two quotes that are essentially just you know, tables that have been exported from Business Central, and then they have another quote on the table that has, you know, all this information, description, pictures, da da da.
00:21:51.465 --> 00:21:59.131
Who's going to be, you know, in the best case, to win that deal, who's enabling their champion the best in order to win Right.
00:21:59.131 --> 00:22:05.750
So it's all about enabling your champion, giving them that information and and we're yeah, I won't go too far into the nitty gritty.
00:22:05.771 --> 00:22:08.906
No, I can tell I'm excited about it as well.
00:22:08.906 --> 00:22:19.940
So, with ExpertLogix and CPQ just to take back all the great information that you had mentioned it allows you to quote and sell to a customer safely.
00:22:19.940 --> 00:22:41.460
So if you have lots of products or you have a large product catalog, it makes it easier for whomever is going to be putting together or working with a customer to ensure that what they have together works well together and you can put it together safely but also may introduce other benefits that they can get from other products based upon what they're buying, and then it can come up with the pricing for that as well I like the example.
00:22:43.584 --> 00:22:46.288
Yeah, like it definitely increases the of CRM and ERP.
00:22:46.288 --> 00:22:57.075
All of that information will write back over to either CE, business Central or F&O so that they have better forecasting from a sales perspective.
00:22:57.075 --> 00:23:06.291
You can pull Power BI reports that aren't just specific to the opportunity, but it's like hey, what was the product that's most often quoted within this time period?
00:23:06.291 --> 00:23:17.423
So it allows you to get a little bit more granular in terms of the specific components that are sold more frequently, allows for better inventory planning, allows for better sales forecasting.
00:23:17.423 --> 00:23:25.271
So, yeah, it benefits the other technologies that it integrates with, and we're never a standalone solution either.
00:23:25.271 --> 00:23:31.766
So all three of our products require a CRM or ERP, which is again why the partner channel is so important for us.
00:23:31.766 --> 00:23:34.959
We're not making any sales without you know that technology in place.
00:23:35.019 --> 00:24:05.692
So with the CPQ form for ExpertLogic CPQ, with Business Central, you can work with a customer, create an order for a customer, create an order for a customer, create a quote for a customer based upon the configuration that they want for a particular product, and it will send the production order and the order back over to business central so that you have that same information that you then can process and create the order and send back out to the customer through Business Central.
00:24:05.692 --> 00:24:14.165
Okay, excellent, with Business Central, with Expert Logics, which versions of Business Central, ce and F&O do you work with?
00:24:14.165 --> 00:24:16.035
Do you go back to Dynamics Nav?
00:24:16.035 --> 00:24:19.182
Do you work with Business Central Online, business Central On-Premises?
00:24:19.202 --> 00:24:23.570
So today we're just doing the on-cloud solution.
00:24:23.570 --> 00:24:27.144
So today it's just Business Central Online, f&o Online, ce Online.
00:24:27.144 --> 00:24:36.146
But again, we do have a lot of legacy customers today that are still on-premise CRM or on-app or on AX or on Great Plains.
00:24:36.146 --> 00:24:49.166
So it's integrations that we have supported in the past, but in order for them to really take advantage of XperLogic's newest features and rollout so on and so forth, they need to be on a cloud ERP or CRM.
00:24:49.666 --> 00:25:08.067
Which is why those on-premise customers could be interesting, not only for us getting a stronger relationship with partners, but we're in the midst of rolling out our AI-enabled CPQ solution and none of our on-premise customers are going to be able to take advantage of that or really, you know, benefit kind of from the, the stickiness of it.
00:25:08.067 --> 00:25:22.788
So, working with partners to migrate them over, not not so just their, you know, tech stack is a little bit more future-proofed, but also so that they can take advantage of, you know, the newest rollouts so you know so, even though, even though they're in bc on-prem, they won't be able to take advantage of that.
00:25:22.808 --> 00:25:25.333
They have to be bc online so you're rolling out a new.
00:25:25.393 --> 00:25:26.255
I heard the ai feature.
00:25:26.255 --> 00:25:31.204
I understand that and I'm going to assume then that expert logics is also a cloud-based application.