Quote-to-Cash is the fundamental, yet often unrealized, business process that aligns quoting with contracts, renewals, and revenue management. It starts at creating a quote for a prospect or customer, and then continues on to negotiating an agreement, order management and invoicing. Data is shared throughout the process. However, execution is often siloed, spanning numerous departments or functions inside an organization.

For years, each of the business functions along the Quote-to-Cash continuum — from Configure Price Quote (CPQ) and Contract Management to Revenue Management — was handled by different custom or point solutions, usually with on-premise software. The result: inefficient hand-offs, bottlenecks, and poor visibility into what is working or not working in the selling cycle. With the relatively recent emergence of the enterprise cloud, tying these previously disconnected processes together in a highly flexible and secure cloud deployment is paying dividends for innovative businesses.

Automating the Quote-to-Cash process can dramatically improve price execution, speed up the contract negotiation process, and better protect revenue by giving stakeholders full visibility into the entire deal process. Businesses are recognizing the direct impact that Quote-to-Cash has on top-line and bottom-line results, and are looking to manage it as one seamless process that significantly improves sales effectiveness.

Here are the top three reasons why you need to automate Quote-to-Cash today:

1. Speed time to revenue: Let your sales teams spend more time selling and less time pushing deals to close.
2. Improve insight into the end-to-end selling process: By automating Quote-to-Cash on a single platform, sales execs and sales ops leaders get the visibility and controls necessary to eliminate maverick pricing and unfavorable contracts and drive strategic revenue growth.
3. Enhance upsell and cross-sell opportunities: Increase revenue from existing business while reducing renewals issues that can leave money on the table.

Apttus, a strategic Bluewolf partner, has developed a free, platform-agnostic Quote-to-Cash Certification program for Sales, Legal, Finance, and Operations professionals interested in learning how to close bigger deals more quickly in the cloud. The program is non-technical in nature, focusing instead on Quote-to-Cash processes and the positive impact they can have on revenue.

The certification, delivered as an online webinar series starting March 26, will give business professionals a deep-dive into Quote-to-Cash processes and best practices. Following the conclusion of the series on April 23, participants will take a timed, thirty-question online test to earn their badge.

Mastering Quote-to-Cash can mean the difference between missing revenue goals and blowing them out of the water. By becoming certified, participants will be be empowered to drive business value within their organizations in addition to boosting their own marketable skills in a rapidly growing software category. Visit certification.apttus.com to start on the road to getting your Quote-to-Cash badge.