Have you heard any of these expressions within your shop?  “I wish we could ship what we sold ... our quoting process is beginning to make us uncompetitive ... the cost of scrap and rework is unacceptable ... or,  there is no way we can scale our business with the current quoting process.”  If so, then this two part series may be of interest to you. These comments reflect the current inefficiencies and lack of accuracy that can exist in the initial stages of the sales process.  Unfortunately, the negative impact shows up in downstream product lifecycle activities such as product design, planning, manufacturing, delivery and support. The solutions to these frustrating circumstances have been called, “product or BOM configurators,” “quote to cash,” “guided selling” and “mass customization.”  But, the recent and trendy expression is, “configure, price and quote” or CPQ.  In fact, recent and large acquisitions by Oracle and Salesforce have given CPQ significant visibility and awareness.