Lexmark streamlines and transforms sales operations with Experlogix CPQ for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales

Powering customers’ success with digital tools

Today’s buyers are changing the rules of the game and are looking for stellar and frictionless customer service experiences. For Lexmark, a global provider of printing and imaging products, software solutions and services that help customers save time and money, digital transformation has been a top priority. The company has helped organizations in more than 170 countries accelerate and optimize their adoption of Internet-of-Things technology and digitize the management of printing and imaging devices. 

When Lexmark sought to transform its own operations, sales and reporting processes were key areas for improvement. The company’s complex product and service ecosystem made it difficult to build configurations using its old CPQ system, and a lack of integration between different platforms meant there was no easy way to visualize and track every aspect of the customer’s journey. To truly understand its customers, Lexmark needed an integrated CRM and CPQ system that could meet the needs of an enterprise committed to helping and growing businesses around the world.

As the Lexmark sales, pricing, and IT teams evaluated their existing processes, a few other challenges and areas of needed improvement emerged:

• Sales and services teams leveraged different systems for tracking customer data.
• The company’s old CPQ software lacked the functionality to handle reporting.
• The old CPQ tool used an unintuitive, JavaScript-based interface.
• Products, services, and supplies were available for sale in myriad combinations, making it harder to predict demand and maintain inventory.

“The main challenge we had to solve was the complexity of our requirements,” said François Lourdel-Henaut, Enterprise Business Application Front Office Manager at Lexmark. “We needed a tool that could streamline the process of building configurations, while also helping us track and generate complex reports. As we went through demos, it became clear that Experlogix was the right solution.”

Integrating Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Experlogix CPQ to transform sales operations

Lexmark chose Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales for its CRM system, favoring the platform for its robust application ecosystem, flexibility, and intuitive interface. After getting a sense of the company’s product configuration and reporting requirements, Experlogix CPQ was recommended for its deep integration with the Microsoft ecosystem and ability to handle configuration complexity.  

The Experlogix and Lexmark teams collaborated to implement CPQ initially for the sales team. This allowed the company to quickly take advantage of Experlogix’s modern interface and integration with Microsoft.   

“The integration capabilities between Experlogix and Dynamics 365 have been a huge help,” said Dawn Smith, Enterprise Business Application Front Office Manager at Lexmark. “Our sales team spends a lot less time copying quotes between systems, and the more modern interface allows us to build configurations much faster.”

Delivering customized, accurate services with a unified intelligent system

The sales team can now visualize and track the entire customer journey, from the moment a customer becomes a lead to all the way through their lifecycle. Experlogix enables buyers and sellers to deliver highly customized, accurate product and service proposals with deep, native integration to Dynamics 365 for Sales. 

In addition to making the quoting process faster and more accurate, Lexmark benefits from Experlogix CPQ’s guided selling feature. For example, when a printer is configured, the system can automatically recommend relevant cartridges, warranties or managed services. The new integrated system offers a few key benefits:

• Improvement in order accuracy, resulting in a 43 percent drop in quote revisions
• Significant reduction in time-to-quote
• Sales representatives can easily build and show multiple configurations using an intuitive interface

“The performance of Experlogix allowed us to get past the limitations of our old system,” Lourdel-Henaut said. “We can easily build multiple configurations and see different feature options in real time. Our reporting has also gotten much easier because Experlogix can handle the complex formulas we use for profitability and other analyses.”