How Implementing a Commerce Logic Engine Helps You Sell More, Sell Faster and Maintain Less

Jul 21, 2022 11:59:31 AM | CPQ How Implementing a Commerce Logic Engine Helps You Sell More, Sell Faster and Maintain Less

Leverage ground-breaking technology to support a seamless experience for the consumerized buyer.

A Commerce Logic Engine (CLE) is specifically engineered to enhance the main areas of focus for business across all sorts of industries, platforms and channels – selling more, selling faster, and devoting less to maintenance requirements. Relatively new to the CPQ and eCommerce spheres, but nonetheless impactful, a CLE affords businesses the opportunity to get ahead of their competitors and provide top-of-the-line selling experiences that meet buyer expectations. When properly integrated into a new or existing tech stack, the results of a CLE start to speak for themselves. 

But, how exactly does a CLE drive you closer to the goals of selling more, selling faster, and maintaining less? Let’s take a deeper look.

What It Is

To understand the true value of a Commerce Logic Engine, it’s best to have a clear definition of the CLE itself. As explained in our What Is a Commerce Logic Engine? feature, a CLE is a solution which enables businesses to sell their products and services more effectively through direct sales teams and digital commerce channels with guided, flexible, and interactive selling experiences.

CLEs can be applied to modify and enhance existing Configure, Price, Quote products, as well as eCommerce environments for both B2C and B2B companies. A main feature of a CLE is the ability to import rules, relationships, recommendations, restrictions, requirements, etc. – the titular “logic” for which the product is named  – that the system can then reference in real time to guide and optimize sales. Built as a product-based configurator, a CLE forges a new path away from precedented attribute-based configurators that often get bogged down at the first sign of complexity.

If you’re trying to remember exactly what the differences between product-based and attribute-based configurators are, worry not. We have the industry’s leading breakdown available as a free, on-demand eBook you can access at https://learn.logik.io/configuration-guide

Within the product-based CLE, either direct sales reps or self-service buyers can engage with the dynamic knowledge bank that considers all the pre-loaded, custom logic to help configure their final cart and provide a final quote. The responsibility of managing or otherwise keeping track of all the moving pieces shifts from the end-user to the system itself, providing a technologically-backed lift to the overall experience. For buyers settling firmly into their consumerized preferences, only the most attuned and differentiated companies will earn their business.

 

Sell More

If you’re looking to make a successful sale, you want as few obstacles between your product/service and your buyer as possible. A Commerce Logic Engine can help you and your customers identify not just the intended selection, but also suggest bundles, add-ons, upsells or cross-sells based on product relationships incorporated into the system’s logic. 

A Segment survey showed that 49% of buyers make unanticipated purchases as the direct result of personalized shopping experiences – like those facilitated by a CLE. That means nearly half of all sales are liable to increase with properly presented suggestions. Sometimes, a lost or small sale is simply the result of your buyer not knowing the full extent of your product catalog, or the ways in which various products and services interact. Enter a CLE to get the job done. 

Taking the pressure off buyers and streamlining their experience also creates a sense of trust that keeps them in your sales loop with little to no additional effort. Gartner data has shown that low-effort transactions help increase customer retention by up to 90%. Being able to sustain your core clientele while making moves to advance the overall experience puts your business in a far more stable position to navigate the market without losing your footing.

SuperOffice reports that 86% of buyers are willing to pay a higher overall amount if the customer experience they receive is equally elevated, showing the need to consider and invest in a CLE that can meet those goals. 

Sell Faster

As much as the meaning may have been diluted over the years, it remains true in the world of eCommerce that time is money. The more drawn-out and repetitive a sales path is, the lower overall satisfaction rates register, and the more likely buyers are to seek out alternative providers. 

If they are met with a smooth eCommerce experience, though, it opens the door for quick, easy reorders. PWC reports that 86% of buyers prefer reordering from a familiar company directly through their website as compared to calling a sales representative. Catering to such a high majority of the market by providing a CLE-enhanced eCommerce environment keeps a certain amount of sales consistent period over period and builds a strong social reputation for your business at the same time.

Guided selling techniques incorporated into the fabric of a CLE also speed the sales process up by narrowing in on the most appropriate offerings and generating accurate, configurable quotes in less time. 

Recently, Keysight Technologies adopted Logik.io’s own CLE to enhance their overall CPQ environment. As an immediate result, quote processing times for Keysight products are set to decrease by 40% in just a two month span. With such a significant amount of time removed from the environment, buyers are able to seal their deals with less time and energy expended. 

Maintain Less

Traditionally, CPQ software has lacked modular components that allow businesses to tweak and tailor to their desired extent, instead relying upon custom script or coding to make things happen. Now, a CLE can provide an out-of-the-box configurable setup that does not hinge upon such labor-intensive back end support, and still outperforms alternatives.

Did you know: using JUST Logik.io and Excel, it’s possible to construct a complete end-to-end Salesforce product configuration, and that you can do so in less than 5 minutes? Not only is it possible, it’s the new norm. You can see it for yourself via this Matrix Loader Demo, put together by one of our in-house rockstars.

In our Keysight go-live mentioned earlier, it was projected that their maintenance requirements will drop by up to 80% following the full ramp-up of Logik’s Commerce Engine. Keysight had specific goals for CLE implementation centered around minimizing customization and maintenance efforts to redirect energy toward customer experience, and is already seeing that new reality materialize.

Newly introduced features like Logik.io’s debut Sets remove the need for custom scripting from the equation entirely, dramatically reducing the labor requirements for maintaining, upgrading and scaling the system across its lifetime. Leveraging field and rule reusability supported by the system’s internal mechanics 

With Gartner reporting that over two-thirds of businesses were competing solely on the basis of customer experience, but over a half anticipated their CX budget staying the same or being reduced, freeing up time and money that would have otherwise been spent on simply making the system perform as intended gets you closer to equilibrium. 

About Logik.io

Logik.io provides high performance headless configuration technology that alleviates the operational limitations of traditional configurators, streamlines complex selling processes, and enables omni-channel e-commerce sales for enterprise businesses. Purpose-built to complement and enhance Salesforce CPQ and eCommerce platforms, Logik.io delivers a headless solution with Lightspeed performance, a proprietary solving engine, and a simple and intuitive admin experience.

Logik.io is founded by a proven team with decades of experience in the CPQ space, and is backed by High Alpha and Salesforce Ventures. Learn more at www.logik.io/product.

 

Blake Grubbs

Written By: Blake Grubbs

Blake has successfully helped several high-growth tech startups build and scale marketing over the past 10 years. Held marketing leadership roles at Seismic, Drift, Alyce, and Simplr, all who successfully doubled and tripled ARR bookings during his tenure. He has a Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration and Management from Boston University's Questrom School of Business.