Prospects of CPQ: evolving toward industry platforms

Abstract

Since CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) suppliers are often referring to their products as platforms, a question arises as to what extent present CPQs have such characteristics supporting platform ecosystems. In this paper, the features of seven case CPQs are compared to each other and to the critical characteristics of a multisided platform. CPQs have diverse features, and most are very similar to their competitors. CPQs are internal platforms, but they typically do not have the characteristics of industry platforms that enable multisided ecosystems. Some CPQs are clearly on the way to becoming true multisided platform ecosystem enablers, but none of the case CPQs studied was ready yet.