Digital sales 4.0
CPQ + AIA® Optimization
AIA® stands for Augmented Intelligence Assistants, intelligent assistants that do not make their own decisions in the process as artificial intelligence, but rather enrich the knowledge of their users and contribute to an optimal configuration with sensible suggestions.
Never before could customer requirements be implemented so precisely with CPQ + AIA® software: AIA® Optimization picks up customer requirements and configures the perfect quote. The intelligent module relies primarily on the guided selling principle. AIA® Optimization significantly enriches the knowledge of sales teams – no matter how complex the product and how high the product variance. Experience how digitalization is revolutionizing the sale of complex solutions and products.
Extend the Sales CPQ and Customer CPQ modules with CPQ assistants that enable configuration of the optimal customer solution and significantly increase sales efficiency.
Highlights of AIA® Optimization
Efficient sales teams and high customer centricity
AI in sales
Sales are enriched by adding knowledge on the best possible variantsDigital Sales 4.0
Define customer wishes as parameters and configure precise quotesCustomer Centricity
Ongoing insights into customers and products ensure excellent serviceA quick overview of the most important features
Intelligent assistants in everyday life
Customer centricity with multi-criteria optimization
Define criteria to produce an optimized quote
Use Sales 4.0 to make your customer journeys even more customer-centric. Thanks to multi-criteria optimization, you configure offers which are precisely tailored to customer requirements. Your customer specifies the criteria for optimization: Should sustainability be in the foreground? Are delivery times particularly important, individual customer requirements or sales specifications? Based on the selected criteria and the weighting of the criteria, existing quotes can be optimized or started configurations can be completed. Go deeper than ever before into your customers' needs and technical requirements with AIA® optimization and ensure exceptional service by focusing precisely on your customers.
Clearly structured dashboards
Clever variant view in the form individual charts
Which product variants are configured most often? What combination of options is the most economical? Compare different combinations of features based on criteria you choose yourself, such as price, weight or CO2 emissions. Identify high-runner and low-runner products and transfer the desired selection into your started configuration and get recommendations on specific features. The graphical representation makes the software user friendly and particularly intuitive.
Sales in the digital age
Vivi supports your configuration with recommendations
It is not just the users who are constantly learning, the Vivi assistant enriches its knowledge in daily use. Your configuration data provides Vivi with information about your customers and their needs. The more data available, the more Vivi enriches your sales team's expertise. Sales gains valuable insight into real-world requirements, which in turn is a significant success factor. As you learn to read and interpret your quote configuration data, you will also get visual recommendations in your configuration view. Matching features are either highlighted in color or Vivi actively suggests choices. Additionally, you can benefit from intelligent suggestions for variants that other customers have purchased.
Use Case
GreenConfiguration
In the use case GreenConfiguration, the sustainability of variant-rich products and complex services is made visible so that sales teams can configure the optimal product variant based on environmental goals such as sustainability. Consequently, this creates great added value thanks to ecological and environmentally conscious market positioning.
Users can transparently compare the environmental impact of different components and factor this into their configuration decisions. Among other things, resource consumption, CO2 emissions or water pollution of a product variant are evaluated in relation to the entire life cycle of a product family. This information on sustainability is recorded in CAS Merlin CPQ and visualized for specific target groups in GreenConfiguration.
Use Case
Guided Selling
The Augmented Intelligence Assistant, Vivi, uses existing configuration data to provide helpful and optimally fitting recommendations to suggest a configuration that follows the guided selling principle in the sales process.
Guided selling is a semi-automated consulting process in which the customer's requirements and needs are queried. Suitable products, services or product configurations can then be suggested from the vendor's existing range. Since the expertise of the sales staff has been incorporated into the configurator's rules and database in advance, no "impossible" configurations and offers are suggested.
Up-selling is an example of guiding selling in the area of B2B. Whether during or after the quotation process, AIA® Optimization promotes up-selling and cross-selling in sales teams. At the appropriate time, the sales experts are shown which additional accessories or which necessary service contracts your end customer should order in addition to the desired product. An algorithm defines essential product properties from the desired requirements and makes corresponding suggestions.
Customer centricity in sales
Insights into AIA® Optimization
Would you like to get to know more assistants?
What is AIA® Optimization used for?
AIA® Optimization enables the near-perfect implementation of customer requirements through weighting and prioritization. The recommender system working in the background, makes sales processes simpler and more solution- as well as customer-oriented. As a result, you enable your sales team to provide exceptional customer service. While at the same time, enabling your sales team to gain more knowledge.
Is AIA® Optimization stand-alone software?
AIA® Optimization is not a stand-alone program, but an extension of the Sales CPQ and Customer CPQ modules. Using the license for AIA® Optimization, you can unlock additional functions.
Is AI behind AIA® Optimization?
AIA® Optimization uses Vivi artificial intelligence for smart recommendations during configuration. Vivi calculates various configuration options, extensions and recommendation suggestions based on previous quotation data and the rule set. However, Vivi does not decide for the user, but recommends the best possible product variant for your customers. Sales teams thus benefit from additional product knowledge, but can still make their own configuration decisions.
Which AIA® assistant should I use, and when?
If you have a comprehensive variant space, your focus is on customer centricity and you want to create the best possible offers for your target group – especially for complex product variants – thus AIA® optimization is a good choice.
AIA® Collaboration is suitable for your company if your workflows regularly involve reconciliations and approvals, if there are a lot of loops in the bidding process and if you want to increase your focus on efficiency. According to a customer survey, most companies have more than four people involved in putting together a quote. In addition, there are two to ten revisions during the preparation of an quote. We recommend you use AIA® Collaboration whenever complex requirements are involved such as laws, guidelines and regulations.
Do you want the 100 percent solution for your sales department? Then simply combine both AIA®s with each other for maximum customer centricity.
Can the CPQ assistants and Merlin CPQ be used in the cloud?
Merlin CPQ and all the associated modules such as the CPQ assistants can all be used as cloud solutions. In addition to maximum flexibility in terms of pricing models and individualization of your CPQ + AIA® solution, your data is protected in accordance with the guidelines of the EU-GDPR. The subscription model guarantees you individual software tailoring and transparent costs. So you can start your CPQ project worry-free and without financial hurdles.
Is Merlin CPQ including AIA® Optimization data secure and EU-GDPR compliant?
Merlin CPQ complies with the EU-GDPR and is a trustworthy software solution, which has been awarded the Software hosted in Germany and Certified data protection quality seals.In addition, Merlin CPQ is certified with the fair.digital seal, which certifies that our software solution is economical when collecting data and has comprehensible data protection settings, among other things.
Ready for CPQ + AIA® Optimization?
Contact us – we would love to hear from you!
Do you have any questions or would you like more information on our CPQ solution?
We are happy to assist you and consult with you and your sales team.
