How The Right CPQ Can Fix Your Deal Velocity Problem | CSG
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How The Right CPQ Can Fix Your Deal Velocity Problem
CSG Insights TeamAuthor
2025-11-03
Key takeaways
Decision elimination wins: Speed often comes from removing unnecessary choices rather than accelerating existing processes
Architecture over optimization: Purpose-built systems may eliminate manual processes that generic platforms simply cannot automate
Quote-to-signature matters: The entire sales cycle creates velocity impact, not just initial quote generation speed
Ecosystem orchestration: Real-time coordination across partners, networks and pricing engines could reduce sequential bottlenecks that kill deal momentum
Deal velocity dies in the gap between promise and delivery.
You promise enterprise customers telecommunications solutions. They expect quotes within 48 hours. Your sales team spends five days navigating spreadsheets, calling partners for pricing updates and hoping the final numbers are accurate. By the time the quote reaches the customer, momentum is lost—and so is the deal.
This isn't a training problem. It's an architecture problem.
Over 50% of telecommunications providers take longer than three days to respond with quotes. But the providers accelerating deal velocity understand a counterintuitive truth: speed comes from eliminating decisions, not making them faster.
The real deal velocity killers
Want to know why deals really die? Here are some of the top reasons.
Decision fatigue masquerading as requirements
Your sales team doesn't struggle with telecommunications requirements—they struggle with unnecessary choices. Every quote requires dozens of micro-decisions: Which partner has capacity? What's the current pricing? How do components interact? These decisions multiply because systems don't communicate.
VicTrack, a CSG customer , simplified decision-making by reducing hundreds of product variations to 26 offerings. The move paid off–deal velocity accelerated by 30%. The lesson: reduction beats optimization.
Information asymmetry between teams
Sales knows what customers want. Operations knows what's possible. Finance knows what's profitable. CPQ systems that force these teams to synchronize manually create velocity-killing bottlenecks.
"We review every quote for accuracy" often means "our system can't be trusted." Manual approvals that don't add meaningful oversight destroy velocity. With the help of CSG, One NZ eliminated these bottlenecks and now launches products in days, not months.
Read the full One NZ story here.
The myth of custom configuration
Every telecommunications provider believes their offerings are uniquely demanding. This leads to over-engineering quote processes. Most "custom" configurations follow predictable patterns that purpose-built systems handle automatically.
Why generic CPQ systems struggle with velocity
Generic CPQ platforms treat telecommunications like any other industry. They miss the critical insight: telecom deal velocity requires understanding network dependencies, partner ecosystems and service orchestration—not just product bundling.
The integration challenge
Generic systems require custom integrations with network inventory, partner pricing and fulfillment systems. Each integration point introduces latency and potential failures. Demanding deals require real-time checks across multiple systems that generic platforms can't coordinate efficiently.
Configuration without context
Standard CPQ tools configure products. Telecommunications requires configuring services across networks, partners and geographic constraints. Without this context, configurations become a matter of guesswork, slowing velocity and increasing errors.
Pricing rules that don't scale
Generic platforms handle simple pricing rules poorly when they involve dynamic elements like network utilization, partner availability or regulatory compliance. Telecommunications pricing requires purpose-built logic that understands service dependencies.
Architecture patterns that accelerate velocity
CSG Quote & Order's catalog-driven architecture pre-configures valid service combinations to save time and energy. Sales teams select options rather than building configurations from scratch. This architectural choice eliminates the decision-making that creates velocity bottlenecks.
Automated product configurations handle multi-line, multi-site, multi-partner offerings without requiring sales intervention for routine combinations. Demanding scenarios get automated workflows, not manual processes.
Real-time ecosystem orchestration
The platform's TM Forum API compliance enables real-time coordination across partner systems, network inventory and pricing engines. This orchestration eliminates the sequential checking that creates delays in traditional quote processes.
Dynamic pricing updates instantly based on partner availability, network capacity and customer-specific agreements. Sales teams see current options without needing to wait for backend system queries.
Progressive disclosure
Zero-code configuration enables business users to modify offerings without development cycles. This capability prevents the IT bottlenecks that slow response to market opportunities and customer requirements.
The system reveals the details only when necessary. Standard offerings follow automated paths while truly custom requirements get appropriate oversight and engineering support.
The financial velocity connection
Financial discipline and deal speed are deeply connected. Every manual approval, pricing check and margin recalculation slows the path to revenue.
When financial governance is embedded directly into your CPQ process, sales can move fast and stay compliant. That’s the power of an industry-specific platform–it aligns finance and sales in real time, protecting margins without sacrificing momentum.
Here’s how:
Margin protection accelerates approvals
Real-time financial visibility prevents deals from stalling in approval processes. When margins are calculated automatically and protected through automated workflows, finance teams can establish approval thresholds that eliminate manual review for standard deals.
CSG Quote & Order's financial governance identifies deals requiring oversight while fast-tracking routine transactions. This selective approach prevents process bloat while maintaining financial control.
Revenue recognition alignment
In-flight order changes—common in telecommunications deals—don't require quote regeneration when systems maintain consistent data models from quote through billing. This consistency eliminates the re-approval cycles that destroy velocity.
Partner economics automation
Multi-partner deals traditionally require manual coordination of revenue sharing and margin calculations. Automated partner economics enable immediate quote generation for ecosystem deals that previously required days of coordination.
The customer experience multiplier
Deal velocity doesn’t end when the contract is signed—it extends through every customer interaction that follows. The smoother the experience from quote to delivery, the faster customers move from interest to trust, and from first sale to long-term partnership.
Expectation management through transparency
Progressive order capture handles the staged deployment typical of telecommunications services. Customers understand timelines upfront rather than discovering delays during fulfillment. This transparency prevents the post-sale friction that can damage relationships and create future sales resistance.
Change management without renegotiation
Telecommunications deals evolve during deployment. Systems that can handle in-flight changes without requiring complete renegotiation help your team maintain momentum through the entire sales-to-delivery cycle.
Real-time adjustments for scope modifications, service additions or timeline changes prevent the stop-start cycles that characterize many enterprise technology deployments.
Measuring what matters for deal velocity
You can’t accelerate what you don’t measure. Prioritize speed by gaining visibility into every step of the deal, from first quote to final signature. Measuring the right metrics reveals where friction hides, where processes stall and how well your architecture scales under pressure. Here are the metrics that matter:
Quote-to-signature time
The metric that measures sustainable velocity isn't quote generation time—it's quote-to-signature time. This broader measure includes negotiation cycles, approval processes and change management. Purpose-built systems let you optimize the entire cycle, not just the initial quote.
In-flight change frequency
High-velocity organizations minimize in-flight changes by establishing better initial configurations and clear expectations. When changes occur, they're handled through automated workflows rather than manual renegotiation.
One NZ: Velocity at scale
Before its transformation, One NZ faced the same challenge many operators do: scaling personalized offers and complex configurations without slowing the sales cycle. Generic systems couldn’t keep up with the speed customers expected—or the precision finance demanded.
By moving to a purpose-built, telecom-specific CPQ architecture, One NZ unlocked true velocity at scale.
95% of customer interactions are now digital.
Net Promoter Score rose 110%, from 30 to 63.
Product launches that once took months now take days.
"The fact that we are agile, nimble and able to configure products very quickly meant that our customers are getting speed-to-market advantage," notes Andrew McDonald, Former Head of Domestic and Global Wholesale.
These results all came down to an architectural choice: Only a platform built for telecommunications complexity could deliver that level of automation, agility and sustained velocity.
The velocity paradox
Organizations attempting to accelerate deal velocity through process improvements can inadvertently end up making it worse. More checkpoints, additional approvals and enhanced review processes often have the opposite effect.
Velocity improvements come from eliminating process, not optimizing it. The right CPQ architecture eliminates most manual processes by integrating intelligence into the system, rather than relying on human oversight.
CSG Quote & Order demonstrates this principle through design: automated workflows eliminate manual handoffs, catalog-driven configuration eliminates routine decision-making and real-time orchestration eliminates waiting periods.
Your deal velocity problem isn't about working faster. It's about working differently.
The telecommunications providers winning enterprise deals understand this distinction. They've moved beyond optimizing broken processes to implementing architecture that makes velocity the natural outcome rather than the forced result.
