About the Client

Innovating with Confidence 

This global company empowers customers with the proper certifications, software products, advisory offerings, and more. It works hard to transform challenges into opportunities for its customers by helping them launch new products, enter new markets, and navigate complex supply chains to drive sustainable and long-lasting growth. 

The Situation 

Configuring a Better Way to Generate Quotes

There are multiple ways to craft exceptional customer experiences. One way this global company wanted to deliver on customers’ increased expectations for speed and convenience was by transforming the quoting capabilities of its CPQ system.

Having already built out a successful pilot program, the company wanted to move into the next phase: preparing for implementation. But additional work would be required to configure the pilot program to now work enterprise-wide.

More specifically, additional documentation of pricing logic, price points, questions to configure the product, pricing attributes, and tables would need to be completed. And to complete the documentation, the company needed someone adept at extracting information from a group of engineer minds and translating that into Excel to be built out by the Technology team. 

Since the company wanted to launch the new CPQ configuration in three months and needed the help of a certified expert to complete the initiative, it decided to explore an on-demand talent acquisition platform to address its needs. 

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The Solution

Former McKinsey Consultant with Deep Sales Expertise 

After learning about the Graphite network of 9,000+ qualified consultants, the company decided to look deeper into the platform and engaged an Account Executive (AE). Once connected, the AE explained how Graphite maintains high-quality talent in its network, how payments and interviews work, and how it could provide a list of curated candidates to review within 24-48 hours. 

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The company set a subsequent meeting with the AE to discuss the scope of the project and qualifications for the role. It wanted someone with formal management consulting experience at a Big Four or similar firm. It was vital for the selected candidate to have at least 3+ years of Big Four technology experience. Other nice to haves included: 

1. Pricing and/or Sales Experience
2. CPQ business requirements gathering experience 
3. Technology transformation experience 

With the information provided, the AE was able to provide a vetted list of five candidates that best matched the company’s criteria. The company then used Graphite’s in-app messaging and meeting room features to schedule a call with each candidate. Of the five candidates, the company decided to move forward with an ex-Mckinsey consultant with over six years of experience leading a corporate strategy team of five ex-MBB consultants.  

The Results

An Improved CPQ System with Complex Quoting Capabilities

Before starting the project, the AE set a meeting with the company, the expert, and one of Graphite’s Customer Success Managers. The Customer Success Manager guided the conversation to ensure the expert and company aligned with the project scope and to clarify any questions. 

Likewise, the Customer Success Manager also established a regular meeting cadence with the company and the expert around key milestones of the project. Other topics discussed included onboarding material, working hours, and how payments are made on the platform. 

With a clear understanding of the project scope and next steps, the expert first worked with the project lead and subject matter expert to understand the work done to date, the pilot program, and additional configurations that needed to be made to the CPQ system. 

The expert then moved forward in interviewing the engineering team to develop a set of questions that the software would use to configure the product, identify the price points of each attribute, and then configure a document with the price logic that ties it all together.

By the end of the third month, the expert had synthesized all the data gathered during her interviews and translated them into template deliverables. This enabled the Technology to leverage the deliverable to implement all the possible pricing scenarios, and the company was able to launch the new CPQ system.