Table of Content
Businesses today have varied applications and quotation tools to help them generate sales quotations and track prices. Probably no two of these software applications are exactly alike, with good reason, as individual businesses have their unique requirements, and there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to tech solutions.
Key Takeaways:
- A comprehensive IT quoting software must centralize product catalogs with real-time pricing and availability from multiple distributors.
- Rule-based pricing engines enforce compliance with discount and margin policies to protect profitability.
- Integration with CRM and ERP systems ensures accuracy andeliminatesredundant data entry.
- Automated approval workflows accelerate quote turnaround, reducing sales cycle friction.
- Customizable templates and multi-format outputs improve buyer readability and professionalism.
The IT products reselling industry is a different ball game altogether! Selling IT products is challenging, as not only are product portfolios vast but price changes and tech upgrades are frequent.
Pricing and quoting software for the IT value-added reseller (VAR) industry has to do a lot more while creating a quote than pulling up a single line price based upon market conditions.
Quoting software for IT products, therefore, needs to factor in capabilities to handle price volatility, market dynamics, complex configurable products, and the flexibility to customize solutions to address the needs of the specific buyer.
The best IT quoting software for complex products must include a built-in configuration and pricing engine at its most basic. The more complex the product catalog, the more variable the quoting tool will need to be to address customer pain points and mitigate them successfully through unique solutions.
Before you read further, here is an article for the uninitiated to know the Key Differences between a Sales Proposal and a Sales Quotation and How You Can Get Them Right.
Others can dive right in!
14 Must-have Features in IT Quoting Software
Below we’ll get into the 14 features any IT quoting tool must have to positively impact your VAR business as a whole and not just your sales process. Read on till the end for 7 bonus features you get with VARStreet!
1. Bundle and configurator capabilities
Complex IT products are frequently built or assembled using other complex hardware or software products to create a complete turn-key solution. Complete IT solutions are composed of assemblies, sub-assemblies and individual hardware and software parts from multiple vendors.
IT quotation software must be capable of identifying each of these components as individual parts or fully configured products. Any modifications or swaps in the delivered product changes the configuration, capabilities and price of the final order.
A product configurator will guide your sales reps to select compatible products from your product catalog to create a solution that fits customer requirements.
For example, if your sales rep selects a Fujitsu Scansnap scanner, the next step in the configurator would show only compatible accessories like roller sets, carrier sheets, cleaning wipes, etc. A robust configuration engine is extremely useful to ensure that all required and correct items are included in a quote to provide a complete solution to the customer with absolutely no errors.
The more complex the configurations and the final product, the more robust the configuration capability of your quotation software must be.
Pro Tips:
• Benchmark quoting tools using real IT bundle scenarios specific to your product mix before selection.
2. Automated pricing
The complexity in product prices for IT solutions is compounded by dynamic technological innovations. New technology affects the prices of older models. Manually keeping track of all the price volatility is cumbersome and prone to errors.
Also, there is no one price for everything. Many factors affect the cost from distribution channels. Multiple distributors offer different prices for the same product, distributor promotions also affect the overall cost, plus not all customers are on the same price structure, further complicating pricing the products.
National or global selling agreements between IT businesses and high-volume customers result in special pricing. Government bodies too, expect larger discounts. Add sales, promotions or discounts to the mix, and you have various conditions and variables that affect the final price of the configured product.
An advanced pricing engine must be able to maintain all the pricing variables based on rules, market price and the company’s revenue objectives to automatically provide accurate and customer-specific pricing to the sales rep while they generate a quote.
3. Real-time price information from distributors
The only way you can achieve optimal price automation is if your IT quotation tool has real-time integrations with the product feeds of IT distributors for real-time pricing information.
A quotation tool that integrates with the product catalogs of your partner distributors provides accurate, up-to-date prices synced automatically, without you chasing or calling multiple distributors or going through various price update emails and Excel sheets.
Having access to real-time pricing while creating quotes gives you the ability to deliver last-minute price savings to your customers, create accurate quotes and increase profit margins.
VARStreet’s IT quotation software has connections with 50+ IT distributors like Ingram Micro, Synnex, BlueStar, TechData and more. Our aggregated product catalog has over 7 million IT SKUs from these distributors with real-time price and inventory information to help you create accurate and winning sales quotations.
Click here to know more about our quotation software for IT VARs.
4. Robust quoting tool
In the modern digital age, quotation software needs to do more than produce an accurate price for the sales rep and the buyer.
Buyers today expect personalized experiences and are accustomed to enhanced customer experiences in almost all walks of life, from buying coffee online to shopping on Amazon.
To gain their attention modern IT resellers must shift from traditional methods of doing business to a more modern, branded and customer-centric strategy.
A superior sales quoting software will enable your sales reps to easily generate and deliver accurate, professional sales and customized quotes for complex IT products within minutes.
Automating the sales quotation process will enable your sales reps to respond to prospects quickly, reduce errors and increase customer satisfaction.
Some important capabilities for producing a professional-looking, detailed quotation are:
- Pre-designed attractive quoting templates,
- branding and customization capabilities,
- powerful search engines to find the right products,
- time-stamps and quote versions,
- online quote availability, and
- quick delivery of quotes.
Finally, another critical element is mobility. Sales reps are typically on the field meeting customers and prospects. A mobile quotation app empowers them with all necessary information about customers and products while on the go. They can quickly create a quotation while at the buyer’s location, increasing the chances of closing the deal tremendously.
The best quotation tools ensure that visual branding standards are met and that the configured products being quoted are accurately presented. They also provide a written record of the products and services requested, the delivery expectations, terms and conditions, payment methods, and inclusions and exclusions in the prices quoted.
5. Quote customization
A sales quotation is usually the first formal document you send to potential customers. First impressions matter, and if done right, they will set a positive tone for future interactions. The look of the sales quotation that you present to your buyers represents your company, so it is important that it looks professional and includes all relevant information about your company and the products the buyer is interested in.
Most quoting software with pre-designed quote templates do not allow users to customize them completely. Some allow limited modifications, while some charge an additional fee for custom changes.
Few applications like VARStreet’s IT quotation software give users comprehensive control over the look of the quote using a simple design application at no additional cost. You can change your company logo, add branding, change fonts, create rules, add contracts, and a lot more to make the quotation completely yours.
6. Guided selling supportive architecture
Guided selling is an interactive process between the buyer and the seller. It is enabled through artificial intelligence and machine learning and facilitated through questionnaires that the buyer answers.
Initially, the questions are general and open-ended. As the quotation system gathers more information, the questions become increasingly focused and precise to identify the exact pain points of the buyer, which enables the quotation software to recommend a perfect solution.
Sales reps assigned to the particular buyer can also view the recommendations and suggest alternatives or upsell and cross-sell suggestions to further increase the average deal size.
Guided selling is advantageous as it allows buyers control over their orders, reduces errors and frees up the sales reps from creating quotations.
7. Peer reviews and approval workflows
Have you ever kicked yourself for not reviewing a quote before a sales person sent it to a customer?
Integrated approval workflows and peer reviews ensure that quotes for high-value clients, high-ticket items, margin-cuts or a quote value above a certain threshold automatically get routed through your internal approval workflow before the sales reps send them to the customer or prospect. You can set rules for approval workflows based on your unique business requirements.
Peer reviews help your sales reps, especially newer ones, create better quotes with fewer errors as there are ‘more eyes’ on the quotation to catch if they missed something or could improve an element of the quote before sending it out.
A quotation tool should have this feature to accelerate the sales process and save your sales reps time from the constant back and forth of getting quotes manually approved.
8. Business-rules-based data
Complex IT products, pricing and solution-based configurations bring up maintenance challenges. A major portion of this challenge is resolved with distributor integrations and advanced configuration and pricing engines.
But matching product SKUs with part numbers and configurations can be difficult to maintain and result in invalid product configurations.
VARStreet partners with top rich content providers like IceCat and Etilize to provide their users with normalized product content and taxonomy, which does standardize product catalogs, and makes it easier to create accurate configurations.
But creating business rules is equally important to establish the permitted and prohibited combinations of products, brands, prices and configurations specific to customer’s contractual requirements.
Quotation software like VARStreet allows IT VARs to set their rules based on various factors like profit margins, markups, distributor discounts, contract catalogs and pricing and more.
9. Integrations
Sales quotation processes are not standalone functionally within your VAR business, and they should not be standalone systemically either.
Many business operations depend on the data from the sales process. Accounting systems require accurate pricing data for profit calculation, inventory and warehouse systems communicate back and forth with the quotation system to establish the availability of products and order management tools are put into action once the quote gets approved.
All of these processes should smoothly occur in a sequential, seamless manner for company-wide efficiencies and productivity gains.
This is possible only if the sales quoting software has tight integrations with all other business management systems your company uses.
Here are the important software integrations you get with VARStreet.
Some important integrations for a holistic approach to your IT VAR business are:
CRM integration
A quoting and CRM integration is an efficiency booster as your sales reps do not have to fill in customer details into each quote. A search for the customer’s name in the quote interface will show the customer details, and a single click will auto-populate the quotation with all the necessary customer information like contact details, address, shipping and billing information, etc.
Sales reps can also access previous orders or quotes to see the price history and preferred products to create customized quotations.
The integration also updates opportunity information, follow-up calls, appointments, etc., into the CRM, so your sales reps get automated reminders and a complete data set on each customer.
Accounting integration
Once the quote is approved and becomes an order, it moves to the accounting software and the order management system.
Without integrations between your quoting and accounting software, you would have to print out the orders and have the accounting team re-type the order details into their systems.
This process is counterproductive and error-prone.
Integrating quotation and accounting software aligns two of the most important business processes, ensuring accuracy in your financial statements, eliminating redundant tasks and boosting employee productivity.
ERP integration
ERP systems contain a wealth of historical customer, order, inventory, and accounting data. Tight integration between quoting and ERP software allows data like product and customer information, sales orders, inventory levels and shipping updates to move seamlessly between systems increasing accuracy by eliminating human error.
Integrations between your sales quoting tool and ERP system can help you track past and current quotes, providing accurate records and reports to refer back to, and help you accurately forecast future sales and cash flow. You can easily see trends in quoting and build sales and marketing strategies accordingly.
Shipping and tax integrations
Advanced quoting software like VARStreet’s quoting tool for IT resellers comes with an in-built tax calculator that auto-calculates taxes in the quotation based on geographies. Users also have the option to override automated calculations. VARStreet also integrates with Avalara, so IT VARs who subscribe to Avalara can pull their Avalara integration to their VARStreet quoting module.
Shipping integrations with popular freight companies like FedEx, UPS, DHL, etc., automatically add freight charges based on product weight, prices and zip codes to the quotation enabling your sales reps to reduce calculation errors while creating sales quotes.
eSignatures
Integration with eSignature providers like DocuSign for example, allows your buyers to quickly approve and securely sign quotations to get deals moving faster.
10. Reporting and back-office interface
Built-in reporting and back office capabilities in quotation software give you a 360-degree view of your IT VAR business. You can quickly pull information like a list of all outstanding quotes, all quotes per-sales-rep, all quotes won in a particular month, a list of products sold in a month, commission reports, etc. You can also customize the look of the report to suit your business strategies.
These detailed reports enable you to gain deep and valuable insights into your sales process and use that information to streamline and improve the process for enhanced productivity and increased revenue.
Pro Tips:
• Track quote revision frequency to refine rules and reduce manual adjustments.
11. Automated order management
Once a quote is confirmed it has to be converted to an order which then goes to your warehouse for picking, packing and delivering.
In a dropshipping model, the order gets converted to a purchase order which is sent to the distributor who fulfils the order and ships it to the customer.
Most IT VARs have a hybrid model of working i.e., part dropshipping and part fulfilling orders themselves with the in-house inventory.
Automating the order management process and the purchasing workflow converts confirmed carts or sales quotes and sends purchase orders to the best possible IT distributor without you touching it.
Your quoting software order contains all the vendor, product part numbers, quantities, pricing, and ship-to-location information. Integration with distributor software enables seamless flow of information ensuring accuracy of orders. Bi-directional sync allows you to see the order status from within the quoting solution, giving you real-time access to shipments, tracking numbers, serial numbers, etc.
VARStreet’s IT quoting software integrates with 45+ IT distributors in the United States and Canada. You get direct product feeds from distributors like Ingram Micro, Tech Data, etc., with real-time price and inventory updates. You can compare prices, deals and shipping charges from multiple distributors or set cost-based rules before sending in a purchase order (manually or automated) and source from the distributor giving you the best possible price.
12. Technical support
Access to customer support is important, and as much as technology, like chatbots, plays a big role in customer satisfaction, being able to speak with a sales rep or technical support rep on the phone is valuable for several reasons.
If phone support is important to you, ensure the quoting software you choose offers 24/7 support. Look for customer support telephone numbers on their website. Many quoting solution providers do not offer telephonic support and will not have a telephone number listed. If a company has only an email address, you may want to give them a miss.
VARStreet offers 24/7 customer support and also has various services to help you with implementation, unique customizations, integrations, design, and any other assistance you may need.
Bonus Features with VARStreet’s Quoting Software for IT VARs
If you’ve read till here, kudos! Read on for 7 essential quoting features for IT VARs you get with VARStreet’s quotation tool.
1. Link to Dell
VARStreet’s quotation software integrates with Dell Premier Portal giving you the ability to PunchOut to DPP to buy and sell Dell products more efficiently with many built-in functionalities like single sign on, quote import, integration with Dell distribution and more,
specifically for Dell partners.
Dell products are sold better through VARStreet no matter where you source from!
2. Link to CISCO
VARStreet platform has direct integration with CISCO Commerce Workspace (CCW), with a billion dollars worth of CISCO business passing through the VARStreet application every year.
- CISCO resellers can easily import CISCO estimates and deal registrations in VARStreet quoting tool with just the estimate ID,
- quote CISCO deal IDs for ordering CISCO SKUs through distribution to honour customer commitments,
- easily upload CISCO Bill of Materials in the VARStreet quoting tool, and a lot more!
3. Zebra Technologies catalog integration
VARStreet has catalog integrations with multiple Zebra Technologies distributors for real-time price and inventory updates, accurate product information and rich content for over 30,000 Zebra Technologies products.
Functionalities built-in for Zebra solutions resellers increase the efficiency and accuracy of the sales quoting process and accelerate order processing.
VARStreet’s sales quoting software is the only tool you need to sell Zebra devices efficiently .
Click here for more on the Zebra Technologies catalog integration.
4. RMA
Return Merchandise Authorization (RMA) functionality by VARStreet has multiple options to manage returns as per your business needs.
You can configure various criteria or parameters:
- VARStreet allows resellers to configure a list of “Return Reason(s)”,
- configure various RMA statuses. The status is shown to customers based on what stage the return is at,
- define RMA types like credit only, repair, refund etc.,
The RMA capability allows IT VARs to handle customer returns efficiently, increasing customer satisfaction and retention.
5. RFQ on eCommerce store
With VARStreet’s integrated eCommerce and quoting solutions, your customers have the option of RFQ or Request for Quote on your VARStreet powered eCommerce store. Sales reps get alerted as soon as a customer ‘requests for a quote’. They can respond immediately with an accurate quotation created with the quotation tool and either send it to the customer by email or upload it to the store for the customer to view.
Click here to know more about VARStreet’s eCommerce platform for IT VARs.
6. Quoting for GovEd contracts
VARStreet holds decades of experience working with US Government contract holders, helping them meet requirements and guidelines for federal, state and local contracts like DHS FirstSource, Netcents, SEWP, DHS Eagle, ITES, ECS etc.
VARStreet’s solution supports all GovEd contracts from a single platform, making it easy for GovEd VARs to manage their orders.
GovEd VARs can create complex quotations with the help of special features like contract pricing, rebates, technical refresh, hosted eCommerce store, PunchOut integrations and a lot more.
Check our unique Bid Support Package for GovEd VARs.
7. FREE rich content
VARStreet partners with top rich content providers, like Etilize and IceCat, and also with IT distributors for FREE rich content with every VARStreet subscription.
Rich content like detailed product descriptions, high-quality images, product videos, tech specs, standard taxonomy, universal part numbers, product names, etc., ensures that your sales quotations contain all relevant product information to help the buyer make an informed and quick decision.
Conclusion
The days of knocking down the price 5% to close a deal are long gone. Buyers today want solutions that closely align with their unique business needs and requirements. IT quoting software solutions ensure the accuracy of quotes and improve the quality of the customer experience delivered.
Quoting software driven by guided selling, robust configuration and pricing technology, seamless integrations, and features that ensure enhanced customer experience will help you serve your customers better and provide increased value.
Click here for a FREE product demo of VARStreet’s sales quotation tool for IT VARs.
Further reading
- How to Write a Professional Sales Quote: Detailed Guide and Proven Tips
- 7 Common Challenges Faced by B2B Businesses to Manage their Sales Quotation Process and How to Overcome Them
- When Should a Company Consider a CPQ Software
- What Value Can a CPQ Software Add to Your VAR Business
- Quote – Purchase Order – Sales Order – Invoice – What is the Difference?
