Graham McInnes, Senior Principle Product Manager, Oracle
One of the most fundamental sales challenges is to accurately communicate complex product information to a visually-oriented audience. What’s missing is being shown what the offer actually looks like. A CPQ product is great at helping the user navigate complex, oft-changing product configurations to find a solution that meets their needs.
If more than half of the human brain is devoted to understanding visual data, it’s no surprise that 65% of the people learn most effectively when information is presented in a visual fashion. Therefore, if you add visuals to CPQ to take advantage of this in order to improve the sales process, how much more might you drive revenue?
Researchers from the University of Minnesota found that visual aids increase persuasiveness by 43%. If you could make your sales quotes 43% more effective, wouldn’t you do it? The obvious answer is yes. Visualizations add value to the sales process and improve the CPQ user’s experience.
There are three primary benefits of adding visualizations to CPQ.
- They add a ‘wow factor’ to the sales experience, improve customer engagement, and address the visual buyer.
- It saves quoting time by eliminating the need to engage drafting or CAD teams for drawings.
- Visuals confirm the accuracy of what’s being purchased, especially when fitting with existing equipment.
The decision to incorporate visualizations will depend on your product and the buyer personae you're addressing. If you’re selling products that must fit into complex physical spaces, sellers and buyers might benefit from full virtual Reality modeling that creates immersive digital interaction. Less complex products, on the other hand, would benefit from simple diagrammatic representations to illustrate dimensional information.
Basic types of visualization
2D- Objects are rendered visually flat using only two planes of width and height (X and Y). Two dimensional drawings are typical dimensional drafting illustrations that are used to confirm product data.
Figure 1 Image Courtesy of Catalog Data Solutions
3D- Objects are rendered visually using three planes, width, height and depth (X ,Y and Z). Three dimensional imagery may include rendering an object with photographic realism, or, as a technical line drawing that can be interactively rotated on any axis in a 3D drawing program.
Figure 2 Image Courtesy of Catalog Data Solutions
AR - Augmented Reality is the combination of actual and computer-generated images where digital images or video are superimposed onto the real world setting to illustrate size, shape or positioning.
Figure 3 Image Courtesy of Atlatl
VR- Virtual Reality typically uses a stereoscopic headset to provide an immersive visual experience in which the user is projected into a computer-generated reality.
How will your organization benefit from visualizations? What are the steps to make visual sales your reality? Let us help you determine the best approach for your organization. Oracle CPQ works with several visualization partners for a broad range of customer applications ranging from 2D drawings to CAD engineering documents and complex augmented reality applications.
You can experience Augmented Reality now by downloading the free Oracle Partner Atlatl AR APP from iTunes on your iOS device and scanning this marker.
Click the links below to learn more information on Oracle CPQ
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Partner Links
https://www.atlatlsoftware.com/
https://www.catalogdatasolutions.com/
