Manufacturers, distributors and wholesalers increasingly adopt digital solutions to automate quote management processes, streamlining operations, boosting efficiency and enhancing customer experiences. In this article, we’ll explore the role of quotes in B2B commerce, how commercetools’ Quotes API simplifies this process and how businesses can leverage it for greater operational efficiency.
Why automated quote management is so important
B2B commerce has long been characterized by complex transactions, pricing negotiations, entitlements and tailored contracts. Unlike B2C sales, where standardized pricing models dominate, B2B interactions often involve custom terms, bulk discounts and long sales cycles. Historically, managing this complexity was done manually — a process prone to errors, inefficiencies and delays.
In fact, McKinsey estimates that non-value-adding activities, including paper- and fax-based quote negotiations and order management, currently account for about two-thirds of sales teams’ time.
The good news is that the consulting firm assesses that more than 30% of those same sales tasks and processes are partially automatable. The quoting process, in particular, is ripe for automation, enabling B2B sellers to accelerate the sales cycle by reducing response times, ensuring consistency and accuracy in pricing, handling custom requirements and negotiating deals that enhance customer satisfaction.
B2B organizations often rely on a quoting-based process for a variety of purchasing scenarios:
For lightly customizable products like electronics, quotes ensure accurate pricing based on specifications.
When buying made-to-order (MTO) products such as jewelry or high-end furniture, quotes help align customization options with costs.
For complex, capital-intensive purchases like boats, machinery or microscopes, detailed quotes are essential to address specific technical and financial considerations.
Bulk purchasing, such as ordering customized track jackets for an entire company, also benefits from quotes that reflect volume discounts.
Enabling automated quoting processes for these use cases brings a range of benefits:
Businesses can negotiate discounts for committing to specific quantities or minimum order amounts from the start, generating more predictable revenue.
The quoting process gets even easier when it’s possible to convert an accepted quote into an order automatically.
Frees up the seller’s time to focus on value-adding activities.
Greater operational efficiency from the digitization of manual overhead.
Faster negotiations and faster time-to-transaction, especially when automated quoting works hand in hand with automated approval flows.
Finally, frictionless customer experiences, loyalty and retention.
Let’s dive deeper into how commercetools empowers your business to make that happen.
Understanding quote management in B2B sales with commercetools
Whether your business sells complex, custom or costly products and services, the Quotes API by commercetools Composable Commerce for B2B can support the automation of the quoting process between buyers and sellers without friction. Here’s an overview of an intended workflow using Quotes:
Quote request: This is the starting point of the negotiation process between a buyer and the seller. The buyer selects items to purchase and requests a quote, expressing interest in receiving an offer from the seller.
Staged quote: After receiving the buyer’s quote request, the seller prepares an initial offer and sends it to the buyer. At this point, the seller can provide discounts at the line item level or to the quote as a whole, adjust the quantity, add new products, add comments and provide an expiration date.
Quote: Upon receiving the offer (the quote), the buyer can accept, decline or renegotiate it. Once the quote is accepted, it’s the legally binding result of the negotiation process between a buyer and a seller. Based on that agreement, an order is created.
The commercetools Quotes API provides a wide range of capabilities that take your automated quotation management further, including:
1. Dynamic quote creation
The Quotes API allows businesses to create quotes tailored to specific customer requests. Whether it’s a bulk order or a request for customized products, the API can handle it all.
2. Flexible and extensible quote management
Model and reflect your existing sales and quoting processes, including generation, negotiation and acceptance, in accordance with your unique business requirements.
3. Seamless integration
Designed to integrate with existing systems, the API works effortlessly with other commercetools services, such as product data or inventory availability. This ensures that quotes are always based on accurate, up-to-date information.
4. Approval workflows
The Quotes API supports customizable approval workflows, ensuring compliance with company purchasing policies and enhancing control over pricing decisions.
In other words, you can implement purchasing checks and balances, aligning with required accounting processes, and ensuring authorized purchases based on specific criteria, i.e., order total, shipping costs, product SKU, etc.
5. Notifications
Through commercetools subscription capabilities, you can create event-based notifications for each stage of the quote lifecycle, for example, when the quote is generated, edited, accepted or approved. By leveraging subscriptions, you can integrate workflows like email notifications, ensuring both the seller and the buyer are promptly informed about important quote updates, streamlining communication and expediting decision-making processes.
6. Versioning and audit trails
Every change to a quote is tracked, providing complete visibility and an audit trail into the status of each quote. With the capabilities of Audit Log, you can track changes made on quotes, quote requests and staged quotes. You also get real-time insights into pending and accepted offers.
This feature is invaluable for industries with strict regulatory requirements or for resolving disputes.
7. Customer-specific pricing and discounts
The feature supports personalized pricing based on customer contracts, volume discounts or other negotiated terms. This ensures that each quote reflects the unique relationship between the business and its client.
For example, say a Business Unit of your company has specific prices, which is visible in your buyer portal. An associate can request a quote, for which the seller can provide an extra discount on the staged quote based on existing entitlements, e.g., orders placed over $500 USD have free shipping.
8. Scalability and performance
Built on a modern, cloud-native infrastructure, the Quotes API can handle large volumes of requests without compromising performance. This scalability makes it ideal for enterprises that must process large SKU counts and order volumes.
How does the commercetools Quotes API compare to CPQ systems
While commercetools’ Quotes API isn’t a full-fledged CPQ system, it delivers robust CPQ-like functionality that covers up to 75% of typical CPQ use cases — as recognized by leading analysts such as Andy Hoar in the Paradigm B2B Combine.Managing quotes in the Merchant Center
The commercetools Merchant Center — our command center for all things commerce — offers a user-friendly interface for managing quotes, helping your sales representatives harness the power of automated quote management without requiring extensive technical expertise. Here are the main actions in a quote process supported by the Merchant Center:
Your sales representatives can create quotes, selecting the customer or account for which the request is being created. They can add products, quantities and pricing details; the system automatically fetches pricing information based on pre-configured rules or customer-specific contracts. Moreover, they can edit, review and finalize the quote.
If the buyer wants to renegotiate a quote, sales representatives can edit quotes in the Merchant Center. They can change the quote, adding line items, adjusting quantities, applying discounts and even adding a note to the buyer. Each version of the quote is saved, ensuring that there’s a complete history of changes for your reference.
In conclusion, the commercetools Merchant Center streamlines the entire quote management process, empowering sales representatives to efficiently create, edit and track quotes while maintaining a clear history of all interactions. This ensures a seamless and professional experience for both your team and your buyers.
Why choose commercetools to automate your B2B quoting
commercetools stands out as a leader in composable commerce, offering unparalleled flexibility, scalability and versatility for B2B businesses looking to streamline their quoting processes:
Future-ready: The composable design of commercetools allows businesses to adapt and scale their quoting processes as their needs evolve with extensibility and flexible models that lets them create workflows tailored to the business.
Seamless integration: The Quotes API integrates effortlessly with other commercetools services and third-party systems, ensuring a cohesive digital ecosystem.
Enhanced experience for sales reps: The Merchant Center’s intuitive interface empowers sales representatives to manage quotes efficiently, reducing reliance on IT teams.
Frictionless customer experience: Allow buyers to complete even the most complex purchasing processes quickly and efficiently.
Trusted by B2B industry leaders: commercetools is a proven solution, trusted by leading manufacturers, distributors and wholesalers across industries, including stationary manufacturer BIC and sustainability company Treedom.
Embrace the power of automated quoting with commercetools and take your B2B commerce to the next level!
To learn more about automating your quote management process with commercetools, get started with our 60-day free trial.
Julia is a Senior B2B Product Expert at commercetools. With over a decade of experience across product and marketing teams in the tech world, she is an expert at creating innovative, customer-first strategies, and excelling in cross-functional growth & GTM initiatives.
Anastasia Drougka is a Staff Product Manager at commercetools. She has 10 years of experience in eCommerce and has worked with a number of different industries across the globe as an eCommerce specialist.